02/26/2026
Let nature do the dirty work tonight, tomorrow I'll be rich," whispered my husband as he kicked my hospital bed to induce a heart attack, unaware that my General father was waiting for him in the dark.
The sound of the fetal monitor, that rhythmic beep-beep that should have been the soundtrack of hope, had become the metronome of my torture. The hospital room was plunged into a bluish gloom, cold as the inside of a morgue. It smelled of cheap antiseptic and, even more repulsive, of her cloying perfume.
Elena. The woman I thought was my husband's distant cousin was now sitting on my legs, pinning me down with surprising strength. Her smile was an open wound on her perfect face. But the true terror, the one that froze my blood and caused my baby to thrash violently in my womb, stood by the bedside.
Julian. My husband. The man I had shared three years of my life with, the father of the girl fighting to be born.
"You're pathetic, Isabelle," Julian whispered, adjusting his shirt cuffs with psychotic calm. "All this time thinking you were the princess in the fairy tale, and you were just the ATM."
Julian raised his leg and delivered a sharp kick against the side of the mattress, right where the sensors were connected to my belly. The impact didn't touch me physically, but the vibration shook my body, and the fetal monitor shrieked a sharp alarm. My baby's heart rate skyrocketed.
"Stop!" I screamed, but my voice came out as a broken croak. Elena pressed me harder against the mattress, her nails digging into my wrists. "Shut up, darling," she hissed. "Let Julian finish. We have waited fifteen years for this."
The physical pain of the preeclampsia was already unbearable, a constant pressure in my skull and a fire in my kidneys, but the betrayal hurt more. Julian leaned over me, his breath smelling of mint and pure evil.
"I never loved you," he confessed, with a coldness that shattered my soul. "My father rotted in a cell because of yours. And now, I'm going to enjoy watching you and that thing inside you slowly fade away. The stress will induce labor, your blood pressure will cause a stroke, and I will be the grieving widower who inherits the Dubois fortune."
Hot tears rolled down my temples into my ears. I felt paralyzed, a rag doll in the hands of two predators. The monitor beeped faster and faster, a countdown to my daughter's death. I closed my eyes, praying to a God who seemed to have abandoned me, feeling the darkness beginning to devour the edges of my vision. I was alone. I was dying.
But what Julian didn't know, what his arrogance prevented him from seeing, was that the red light on the security camera in the corner of the room wasn't blinking in the usual way.
What atrocious secret about my father's true identity was about to turn Julian's victory into his own grave?
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