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Heaven ran out of the room so quickly that she missed the fourth step of the stairs; the hard thud of her body colliding with the steps and tumbling down them sounded like shoes in a dryer. Her loud screams stopped abruptly when she landed at the very bottom.

“Heaven! Heaven!” Miranda screamed as she ran down the stairs to her child. She moved so quickly that she skipped steps and twisted her ankle. Adrenaline protected her from feeling the pain. Her only concern was her child.

As soon as Miranda reached her, she grabbed Heaven’s head, ignoring the blood pouring from the sides of her mouth, and began CPR. Miranda worked furiously, delivering expert chest compressions on Heaven’s broken sternum to restart her heart. She tried to force air into her body, but it was useless. Heaven lay completely still.

“Heaven get up! Heaven get up, please!” Miranda shook her violently, then slapped her across the face to wake her up, but nothing brought her back. Heaven’s eyes were open, seeing nothing.

“Not my baby! No! No! No!” An ancient animalistic sound of agony exploded from Miranda’s mouth. Her pain was raw and guttural. Linda gripped her chest as the sounds of a mother losing her child filled the home.

The fragile pieces that Myla tried to hold together shattered completely. Her birth daughter, seventeen-year-old Heaven Renee Oxendine, was gone.

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Heavy tears rolled down Myla’s face as she sat in the destruction of her bedroom. She felt as broken as all the items that covered the floor. She was a doctor, but she never thought that an ambulance and medical examiner would be needed at her home.

After the black body bag containing Heaven’s lifeless body was loaded into the medical examiner’s van, Miranda was rushed to the hospital due to signs of a heart attack. Intense grief had caused severe emotional stress on her heart. Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, better known as Broken Heart Syndrome, was her prognosis.

“Heaven, I loved you so much. I'm so sorry. I was just a stupid selfish kid back then. The best thing I ever did for you was allow Miranda to raise you. I knew....wait a minute.”

Myla sat up so abruptly that it felt as if something had pulled her up. She couldn't finish her sentence because a new thought instantly took precedent.

How did he know about Heaven? In seventeen years, she had never mentioned Heaven’s conception or adoption. The only person who knew the truth was her father, and since he was dead, she knew he hadn’t spoken a word. She hadn’t even spoken to Dakota. They acted as if the other didn’t exist.

Running through the closet, Myla opened her fireproof box and screamed. The first thing she noticed was the fact that all the cash, five stacks of $10,000, was gone. Running to her purse, she dumped the contents onto the already cluttered floor and opened her wallet and pulled out the cash. Turning the bills over, she looked at the back of the bills, then let out a crazed laugh.

While in college, she received fake bills from an ATM. Since then, whenever she received cash, whether from a bank or a store, she would write an H on the back of the bill with a counterfeit marker. Looking at the six $100 bills in her wallet, she saw the H on each one.

“This motherfucker was giving me my own money to pay the bills in my home,” Myla laughed, even though nothing was funny.

In addition to that, she saw that Heaven’s original birth certificate that had her listed as Baby Girl Pleasant born to Myla Pleasant and Dakota Oxendine was out of the envelope. Myla was numb. She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted Dante.

She hated that at this moment, the only person who could bring her any form of comfort was the person who had completely broken her. He was the only person who could fill the void that she was now feeling.

“I gotta get out of here,” Myla said as she reached for her keys that were on the bedroom floor. Her hand halted when she saw what was left behind. The hint of a smile covered her face as she grabbed the item, her purse, and walked out of her home to go to Windsor Wellington.

She needed someone to talk to. Someone who would tell her she was behaving irresponsibly, but she had no one. The only person who had called her was Dakota. He had only called to say that he wished it were her that died instead of his daughter. The person who had tried to warn her from the beginning was hospitalized. Sadly, Myla knew that hers and Miranda’s friendship was officially over.

The only person she could call was her mother. As she dialed her number, tears stung her eyes while she waited for Linda to answer.

Linda looked at the incoming call and wanted to decline it. Myla was the last person that she wanted to talk to. She had never felt this way about her daughter before. Linda’s finger hovered over the red icon to decline the call, but she thought better of it and answered.

“How are you feeling, Piggy?” Linda asked dryly.

Myla could hear the anger and heartbreak in her mother’s voice. She hated that she was the one who made her sound this way. She also knew there was no need to ask how she was feeling. The way Linda sounded told Myla everything she needed to know. Linda loved Miranda and Heaven as if she had birthed them, and now that Heaven was gone, she knew her mother would never be the same.

“Mommy, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know things would escalate like this. I never imagined that my life would turn out this way.”

Linda was silent. The type of anger that no mother should have toward her child bubbled in her core. She couldn’t believe that Myla was more concerned about how her life turned out. Linda bit back the barrage of curse words forcing its way up her throat. She could hear that Myla was driving and decided to focus on that.

“It’s late, Piggy. Where are you going?”

Myla hesitated. She knew that telling her mother where she was would make her angry. But there was no need for her to lie; after all, she did call because she wanted someone to tell her she was behaving recklessly.

“I-I-” Myla stuttered, “I’m on the way to Dante’s.”

Her belief that Linda would lose it after she told her where she was going was correct. Linda lost it.

“Are you fucking insane?!” Linda screamed. “You brought that devil into our lives, destroyed our family, now you’re running back to him! Heaven is dead, Myla! Mimi is stretched the fuck out fighting for her life! You were fired! All of this shit happened because of Dante, and you’re running back to him! During those twelve years of schooling, were you a subject?