I Found My Pregnant Wife on a Hospital Floor—Then Her Sister's Face Changed When She Saw the Camera / Chapter 35 / 75

Chapter 35 - The Sinking Pier

"Out! Get out!" I roared, dragging Isabella up onto the dock planks.

The heat was instantaneous and suffocating. Fire sprinted along the fuel lines feeding the inboard motorboats, ignited by the falling sparks. Thick, toxic black smoke rolled down from the rafters, blinding us.

Khloe sprinted past me, holding Nathan shielded beneath her coat, racing for the open double doors leading to the snowy shore. "Mark! Come on!"

I hauled Isabella over my shoulder, stumbling through the smoke toward the light. Behind us, the ceiling timbers were snapping like rifle shots, falling into the lake slip in pillars of flame.

Suddenly, an iron grip clamped onto my ankle.

I crashed down hard onto the burning planks, Isabella rolling out of my grasp toward the door.

I spun around. It was Anthony. His hair was on fire, his face blackened with soot, his eyes burning with demonic desperation. He was crawling across the flaming floorboards, his broken hand digging into the leather of my boot.

"You're... not leaving..." Anthony hissed, smoke pouring from his mouth. "If I burn... you burn with me!"

Through the roaring inferno, the main dock support pillar groaned. A massive, burning timber beam swung downward, crashing into the center of the dock between us and the exit.

The floorboards beneath my feet gave way.

The entire rear half of the boathouse collapsed into the freezing lake.

Cold water swallowed me again, but this time, Anthony went down with me, his fingers locked around my throat like steel talons. We tumbled through the boiling steam and freezing black depths, the burning roof collapsing into the water above us like a flaming tombstone, sealing the surface in a cage of fire and floating wood.

Underwater, my lungs screamed for oxygen. I smashed my elbow into Anthony’s face once, twice, three times, until his grip finally tore free from my neck, his body sinking into the lightless abyss of the lake.

I kicked upward toward the burning surface, finding a small pocket of freezing air between two floating logs.

I hauled myself onto the snowy bank twenty yards from the blazing inferno.

Ten feet away, Khloe was on her knees in the snow, weeping hysterically, clutching baby Nathan against her chest. Isabella was beside her, shivering under a blanket, alive.

The boathouse groaned one last time and collapsed completely into the lake, sending a massive plume of steam and ash into the gray morning sky.

It was over. The nightmare was dead.

Then, sitting in the snow beside Khloe's knee, a cell phone began to vibrate.

It wasn't my phone. It wasn't Khloe's.

It was Anthony’s encrypted satellite phone, thrown clear onto the shore during the struggle.

Khloe reached out with trembling fingers and pressed speaker.

A woman's voice came through the line—cold, clinical, and unmistakably alive.

*"Anthony, the decoy operation at Winnipesaukee is complete. The Boston police believe Catherine died at the lake. We have the real embryo ready for extraction at the Zurich clinic. Bring Khloe's second child immediately."*