The Flower That Grew from Ashes novel Chapter 114

Annelise stood her ground. The whip wounds on her back burned like fire, sending a tearing agony through her body with every breath she took.

She was trembling slightly, not out of fear, but because the anger and injustice she had buried for so long had finally found their breaking point.

Her voice was shockingly steady, completely devoid of any ripples, like a lake frozen over for a thousand years.

She didn't cry, and she didn't scream.

She simply reached into a hidden pocket of her dark blue dress—a pocket soaked in blood but still perfectly intact.

She pulled out a tiny silver flash drive.

She held it up high, making sure every single person in the banquet hall could see it clearly.

"On this drive is the entire truth of my four-year marriage to the Lehman family."

Her gaze swept calmly across the crowd, like the most composed prosecutor making an opening statement.

"If anyone here is interested in the truth..."

She didn't actually need to plug it in.

Because in that moment, her voice, her eyes, and the horrifying wounds on her body held infinitely more power than any video file ever could.

She slowly turned around, locking her eyes onto her husband, Hackett, whose face was already the color of a corpse.

Staring right at him, she clearly articulated the secret that was about to destroy him and the medical career he was so incredibly proud of.

"Four years ago, I was admitted to Cresthaven General Hospital for an acute appendicitis."

"My surgeon was my newlywed husband, Cresthaven's youngest and most brilliant surgical prodigy, Dr. Hackett Lehman."

"But during that routine operation, he did something else completely off the books."

She didn't hesitate for a second. Her words sliced with surgical precision, carving open the bloody, rotting truth they had kept hidden for four years.

"He gave me a bilateral tubal ligation."

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