I carried my late wife’s wedding dress — the one she stitched with love for our daughter — like a symbol of hope, memory and future dreams. When my niece came to stay with us, I warned her not to touch the spare room where the dress was kept. But one day I found it horribly mangled on the floor: torn, stained, embroidery hacked, destroyed — not by accident, but by deliberate violence.
My niece sat calmly, said “it was just a dress,” and then revealed a shocking secret: the dress was meant for her — she claimed to be my late wife’s real daughter, given away years ago to hide an affair. According to her, the life my wife built with me had erased her existence; the dress was her only inheritance, proof of her mother’s love.
Everything I believed — the dress, the promise, the memory — collapsed then. What I thought was justice, protection and legacy became a heavy monument to betrayal.