Chapter 106 Whispers Through The Bars

• Rachel POV
• The Morrow mansion loomed around me like a gilded cage, its marble floors gleaming with a cold, unyielding light, its towering ceilings pressing down like the weight of my grief, stripping away the warmth I’d once found in its halls. My old bedroom, preserved like a museum piece frozen in time, was both a sanctuary and a prison, its pastel walls adorned with faded posters, its shelves lined with trinkets—a photo of Bonnie and me laughing by the lake, a stuffed bear worn from childhood hugs—that mocked me with memories of a simpler era, before Celine’s lies wove their venomous web, before Jeremy’s arrest shattered my world, before everything I loved crumbled to ash.
• I lay curled on the bed, the comforter pulled tight around me like a shield, my body trembling with silent sobs, my eyes swollen and raw from hours of crying, the salt of my tears stinging my cheeks. My parents hadn’t let me stay in my apartment, their insistence on “protecting” me a chain I couldn’t break, their pitying glances and whispered assurances that they’d “fix” me a wound that bled with every moment, a betrayal that cut deeper than words. I felt inconsolable, a hollow shell of the woman who’d stood defiant in the police station, who’d screamed her truth to the paparazzi’s flashing cameras, only to be silenced by the world’s disbelief, their judgment a tidal wave that drowned my voice.