The Day My Daughter Celebrated Chapter 14

Stella was injured.

But she didn't fall.

She endured the pain, and while the guards held Mark, she picked up my broken old phone from the floor and used her last bit of strength to smash it into Mark's face.

It was an old flip phone I'd bought—heavy and hard.

Hit him right in the forehead.

Mark groaned and fell backward, pinned down by the rushing guards.

Shrill sirens approached from the distance.

The police arrived.

Mark was handcuffed and taken away, still cursing unwillingly.

"Monica! Stella! You wait for me! I won't let this go!"

The world finally went quiet.

I rushed to Stella's side, catching her swaying body.

"Stella! Are you okay?"

Blood stained her sleeve, burning my eyes.

"Mom..." Her face was deathly pale, lips trembling.

"I'm fine... just a flesh wound..."

She tried to smile at me but grimaced in pain instead.

My tears broke through the dam.

"Ambulance! Ambulance!"

I held her, incoherent.

This daughter I'd hated, this daughter I couldn't forgive.

Yet now, she'd used her body to protect me.

In the ambulance, lying in my arms, she suddenly said softly.

"Mom, my phone has a complete recording of him breaking in and attacking."

"And him admitting he's my father and demanding money."

"I started recording the moment I walked in."

I froze.

She looked at me, her eyes holding a kind of relieved calm.

"I'll never let anyone use my birth to hurt you again."

"That so-called Joy Day isn't your sin, or mine."

"It's his."

"He should pay the price for all of this."

I looked at her—this girl who'd once branded herself "woke."

After everything, she'd finally achieved true awakening.

In my arms, from blood loss, she slowly lost consciousness.

Holding her, I felt "mother's burden day" for the third time.

The first was her birth, the second when she tortured me with words, the third when she took a knife for me.

Each time, heart-wrenching pain.