My Scars, His Fiery Oblivion

“For years, I was Faron Blackwell' s "whipping post." A cruel pact with his mother forced me to endure one hundred public humiliations for his affairs, a living tally of his conquests. I was a joke to high society, the wife who couldn't keep her husband. After the final scandal, I discovered I was pregnant. But Faron, repulsed by the scars his family' s punishments left on my body, hadn't touched me in months. He was convinced the child wasn't his. He ordered his mistress, a doctor, to terminate the pregnancy. "Make sure she feels every bit of it," he said. "No anesthesia." To force a confession about a lover who never existed, he trapped me and the children from my non-profit in a building and set off a bomb. As the inferno raged, I heard him screaming my name. I ran straight into the flames, ready to end the nightmare. But Faron didn't know his own mother had a different escape plan for me all along.”