"I protected this family," Paige said. "I protected you from her."
"You protected yourself," Everett said. "From losing me to two boys who were never part of your plan."
Paige's face went pale. "You don't understand what she is," she said. "What she would have taken from you."
Paige had grown up watching her own mother lose everything in a divorce. No savings, no house, no name left on anything that mattered. She'd promised herself, young, that she would never end up on that side of a settlement. Marrying into security wasn't cruelty to her. It was survival, dressed up as ambition. She had simply decided, somewhere along the way, that Naomi was the obstacle. Standing between her and safety.
"She never took anything," Everett said. "You did. All of it. Every single piece."
Paige's hands were shaking now, her voice climbing higher. "You would have left me eventually anyway," she said. "The moment she gave you sons, I'd have been nothing to you." "So you decided to erase her instead of trusting me to choose," Everett said. "I decided to survive," Paige said. "The way I've always had to."
