Read The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins novel by Artemis Z.Y. Updated 2025 -26 - The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins Chapter 451

The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins Chapter 451

I’m alone in the garden. My hands are still in the dirt. I can feel it under my nails, gritty and warm, can feel the sun on the back of my neck burning, and there’s that smell-dry earth and dying roses and heat.

I should get up. Should go inside. Wash my hands. The thought drifts through without landing anywhere.

The light is changing. The brightness is fading, bleeding out at the edges. The roses lose their color first, turning gray, then the grass, then everything. Like watching a photograph develop in reverse. The world going pale. Going transparent.

Wet.

That’s the first thing. Wet.

My face is wet and I don’t know why and I can’t open my eyes yet. My mouth tastes strange. I try to swallow and my throat is dry. Where am I?

I blink. Nothing happens. Try again. This time my lids separate slightly. My ceiling.

The water stain in the corner. That crack. I’ve looked at that crack a thousand times.

Home.

I wipe my face. The blanket slides off me as I sit up. Kyle’s at the other end of the couch.a

He’s asleep with his head tilted back against the cushions, mouth slightly open, and in the pale morning light filtering through the curtains-that gray light that belongs to the hour before dawn commits to becoming day-all the tension has drained from his face, smoothed away the lines that bracket his mouth, softened the furrow between his brows that never quite disappears when he’s awake.

He looks like someone I used to know, someone I fell in love like a lifetime ago, before everything got complicated and sharp and painful.

His chest rises and falls, and I watch the rhythm of it for longer than I should, watch the way his ribs expand under his wrinkled shirt, watch the pulse visible in the hollow of his throat.

I look away from him and find my phone on the coffee table where I left it hours ago.

The screen lights up when I turn it over and the brightness is painful in the dim room, makes me squint. 6:47 AM.

I unlock my phone, and I scroll through my contacts without knowing why, just

moving my thumb down the screen watching names blur past until I see it: Women’s Correctional Facility, Bedford Hills. I saved this number six months ago when Victoria was first transferred there, when the social worker gave it to me and said Madison might want to write or call or have some kind of contact.

My thumb hovers over the number and I should keep scrolling, but something makes me press it before I’ve consciously decided to.

The ringing stops with a click and a woman’s voice comes through, flat and professional, the voice of someone who has said these words so many times they’ve lost all meaning: “Bedford Hills Correctional Facility.”

“Hi, I’m—” My voice comes out rough. “I’m calling about an inmate. Taylor Porter.”

There’s a pause and I can hear keys clicking on the other end, computer sounds, the digital shuffle of records and databases and systems. “Are you family?” the woman asks.

“I’m her sister,” I say, and the words taste strange in my mouth. “Half-sister.” “One moment.”

The line goes quiet but not dead, not disconnected, just empty for a second before music starts filtering through, that horrible instrumental muzak that exists only for waiting, and I sit there holding the phone pressed to my ear, watching Kyle sleep at the other end of the couch.

The music cuts off abruptly mid-phrase and there’s another click, and a different voice comes through, male this time, older: “This is Warden Mitchell. You’re calling about Taylor Porter?”

“Yes,” I say, and I realize I don’t know how to finish that sentence. “I just wanted to

“Ma’am, I’m sorry to inform you that Ms. Porter passed away early this morning.”