Chapter 2 - Ten Minutes Before The Door Opened
Ten minutes earlier, Suite 402 had been completely silent except for the rhythmic beep of the fetal heart monitor.
I had been half-asleep, drifting in that twilight state common to high-risk pregnancy wards, dreaming of nursery colors and tiny cotton socks. The door had clicked shut softly. I thought it was Marcus returning from the cafeteria with chamomile tea.
Instead, the sharp scent of Tom Ford’s *Black Orchid* invaded the room.
I opened my eyes. Isabella had stood at the foot of my bed, locking the heavy brass deadbolt behind her. She wore black leather gloves.
“Did you really think a few smashed guardrails on Route 9 would get rid of you, Khloe?” Isabella had whispered, her voice melodic and sickeningly sweet. “You always were an annoying cockroach.”
My breath had caught in my chest. “You… the brake failure. It wasn’t a mechanical fault.”
Isabella smiled, walking slowly toward the side of my bed. She pulled a glass vial containing an amber liquid from her designer handbag, along with an unmarked oral syringe.
“Marcus’s father left fifty-one percent of the Vance Trust to the firstborn child of the legitimate lineage,” she said, her voice dropping into a chilling hiss. “Our father died six months ago. Marcus is the golden boy, and you’re the little middle-class charity case he married. If you give birth to his daughter, the trust seals permanently. My mother and I get pennies. Dividends. *Allowances*.”
She unscrewed the vial with practiced clinical precision.
“I offered Marcus everything,” she continued, stepping closer until her face was inches from mine. “I offered to merge our assets. I offered to be the woman beside him. He laughed in my face. He chose you. And then you had to go and get pregnant with an heiress.”
“Get away from me!” I had screamed, scrambling to reach the emergency buzzer.
Before my finger could touch the plastic cord, Isabella lunged. With terrifying athletic strength, she grabbed my hair, wrenching my skull back against the pillows. Her leather-gloved hand clamped over my jaw, squeezing my cheeks until my teeth cut into the inside of my mouth.
“This is Misoprostol combined with high-grade potassium,” she whispered directly into my ear. “In five minutes, your placenta will ablate. You’ll hemorrhage so violently the doctors will have to perform an emergency hysterectomy just to keep you alive. The baby will suffocate in utero. And you will never, ever give Marcus an heir.”
Adrenaline surged through my blood. I had bit down on her fingers through the leather. Isabella shrieked in pain, dropping the syringe, and I rolled out of the bed, tumbling onto the hard marble floor in an attempt to crawl toward the door.
My IV line ripped out of my vein, spraying blood across the white tiles.
Isabella recovered instantly. Her eyes were completely manic. She followed me, stepping heavily onto my hemline, pinning me down. When I turned onto my back to protect my stomach, she raised her foot.
“You don’t belong in this dynasty, Khloe,” she snarled, pressing the stiletto heel into my ribs, bearing down with her weight. “Die with your bastard.”
I had scratched at her ankles, sobbing, suffocating under her pressure, curling my spine around my baby with every ounce of maternal instinct left in my soul.
And then—the heavy crash of the door splintering open. Marcus.
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Now, standing in the wreckage of the room, Isabella knew. That tiny lens in the ceiling had captured every single second of her confession, every drop of the poison, and every word of her attempted homicide.
***
