Part 4 — The husband accused me because of his former lover and stabbed me twice, but one gesture from the doctor changed his face

After Selina’s message, everyone in the room began speaking at once.

“What does the third recording mean?” Flynn asked Nora.

“I am asking you that,” the detective replied.

Marcus locked the door and called a nurse to bring security. I, meanwhile, stared at the ceiling. A small white lamp was flickering there.

The third recording existed.

But it did not belong to Selina.

“Call my lawyer,” Flynn said.

He picked up the phone, but after a few seconds his face changed.

“He is not answering.”

Nora chuckled.

“He is answering. He is simply already a witness for my team.”

Flynn called again.

“Victor, answer me!”

A man’s trembling voice came from the phone turned on speaker.

“Mr. Vance, I can no longer cover this up.”

“Where are you?”

“At the police station.”

Flynn threw the phone onto the bed.

“Everyone is against me.”

For the first time I looked directly at him.

“No, Flynn. Everyone simply no longer protects you from the consequences that you yourself created.”

Nora turned on the recording.

It was not Selina’s voice.

It was mine.

The recording showed a date from one month earlier. I was sitting outside Flynn’s office, holding a positive pregnancy test. The door had not been fully closed. Therefore I left my phone’s voice recorder switched on.

Inside, Flynn was talking to Selina.

“I will leave Mabel soon,” he was saying. “I will also dismiss her from the company. There is too much information in her hands.”

Selina’s voice was low and calm.

“As long as she is alive and free, we cannot take the documents.”

Then Flynn said the words that at that time stripped the support from my life.

“If necessary, we will declare her insane.”

The recording stopped there.

Flynn slowly turned toward me.

“You knew this?”

“I knew I would face the news about the baby alone. I did not know that you were planning my destruction.”

“Why did you do nothing?”

“Because at that time I still loved you.”

Those words struck him more than any accusation.

The next day Flynn was arrested immediately after leaving the hospital. He was charged with intentionally causing harm to health under aggravating circumstances, financial fraud, and attempting to conceal evidence. Selina was found at the airport, while Victor Hale agreed to a deal and admitted all the bank transfers.

Flynn’s lawyer requested a meeting with me.

“If Mrs. Vance softens her statement, the charge may lead to a shorter term,” he told me in a small conference room at the hospital.

I was standing by the window.

“My husband’s knife entered my body twice. Which part would you like me to soften?”

The lawyer lowered his gaze.

“You are very angry.”

“No. Anger ended a long time ago.”

That same day I filed for divorce.

In court Flynn heard his own voice for the first time. The recording was played in the large hall. His words struck the walls and returned to him.

“If necessary, we will declare her insane.”

Flynn raised his head.

“I did not say that.”

Nora played the second recording.

There his voice could be heard more clearly.

“I will leave Mabel soon.”

Flynn placed his hands on the table.

“Enough.”

The judge replied calmly:

“No, Mr. Vance. It is beginning now.”

Three months later most of the company’s shares were sold. My marriage also ended. The house in which my blood had been spilled was left to me by the court, although I could not return there.

When I opened the door for the first time, everything in the living room was in its place.

The sofa.

The carpet.

The small fruit-cutting knife.

But one thing had been removed from the wall—our wedding photograph. Only a dusty trace had remained.

I did not bring the photograph back.

The empty wall seemed more truthful.

Flynn admitted his guilt in court. Selina also admitted the embezzlement of the money and the preplanned provocation. Neither of them could look into my eyes for long.

And I was no longer trying to justify them.

Six months later I moved to another city. I took a small apartment by the river and started working again as a financial consultant. In the morning I brewed coffee myself, and in the evening I sat by the window and watched the city lights.

The pain disappeared not in one day, but in small parts.

First the fear left the room.

Then the shame.

Finally, the hope that Flynn would ever become another person.

One morning Doctor Marcus called me.

“How are you?”

“For the first time I am at peace.”

“That is a good answer.”

“I still think about the children.”

My voice broke off.

Marcus said nothing for several seconds.

“Their existence does not end with your pain, Mabel. They existed. And you loved them.”

His words remained in my heart for a long time.

That evening I placed two white candles on a small shelf. I did not give them names. Some love does not need a name to be real.

Eight months later I received a letter from Flynn. The lawyer sent it to me because I no longer opened personal letters sent from prison.

“Every day I hear your breathing in that hospital room. Now I understand what I did to my own life. If you are ever able, meet me at least once.”

The lawyer asked me:

“Shall I send an answer?”

I shook my head.

“Only one sentence.”

“Which one?”

“Tell him that there will be no meeting.”

It was not revenge.

It was a door that at last I closed for myself.

On the first day of winter, snow came. I was walking alone by the river when I put my hand into my bag and touched a small thing.

It was a piece of the white ribbon from the roses that I picked up from the hospital floor that day. At the time I did not know why I had kept it. Perhaps because I wanted to remember: those flowers could not stitch anything. They could not restore the body. They could not bring back the children. They could not turn an attempted murder into a mistake of love.

Now I placed the ribbon on my palm.

Snow was slowly falling.

I let the ribbon go with the wind.

And for the first time I was no longer afraid that I was losing something.

I was already free.