Chapter 3 - The Awakening and the Hidden Talent
The next morning, Sister Mary helped me contact a local technician to fix my phone, and I finally saw the dozens of missed calls and frantic text messages from Liam. He had returned early from his business trip, discovered what his mother had done, and was panicking.
Before I could decide whether to reply, the church doors opened, and Liam rushed in, looking disheveled and desperate.
“Chloe! Thank God I found you! Mom is... she’s impossible, you know how she is. Please, come back home. Let's just pretend this never happened,” Liam pleaded, grabbing my hands.
I looked into his eyes, searching for a spark of true manhood, of genuine protection, but all I saw was fear—fear of his mother, fear of confrontation, fear of losing his inheritance.
“Liam, I am not coming back,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “We are done. Think about what you want to do with your life, because I am filing for divorce.”
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I walked away, leaving him stammering in disbelief. I checked into a modest motel using the small emergency savings I had secretly hidden in my old college backpack—savings from freelance graphic design work that Beatrice had never known about.
For the next few weeks, I threw myself entirely into my work. During college, I had secretly designed high-end branding layouts and UI/UX interfaces for tech startups under a pseudonym. I contacted my old clients, pitched new design concepts, and within days, lucrative freelance contracts started rolling in. My talent was undeniable, and word of mouth among tech entrepreneurs quickly turned my small motel room into a bustling digital studio.
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