PART 1
“If you ever touch Selina again, I swear to God I will kill you.”
Those were the last words I heard from my husband before a sharp, icy pressure tore through my abdomen.
My name is Nora. Until that afternoon, I was foolish enough to believe my three-year marriage to Julian could be saved. He was the CEO of Vance Global, and I had given up my career for him. But the rot in our marriage had a name: Selina Cole, his first love.
That afternoon, Selina burst through our front door in tears. There was nothing more than a superficial scratch on her forearm. Julian was cutting an apple in the living room.
“Julian… I didn’t want to come here,” she sobbed. “Nora pushed me. She cornered me downtown. She tried to hurt me.”
I was in my silk pajamas. I hadn’t stepped outside all day. “That is an absolute lie, Julian.”
But Julian didn’t let me explain. The silver knife slipped from his hand onto the marble table. He picked it up, his eyes completely dead.
“Did you put your hands on her?!” he roared.
“No!”
Behind him, Selina whimpered. “Please, Julian, just leave it alone. I don’t want you two fighting over me.”
That was all it took. The first plunge left me breathless. The second sent me crashing onto the Persian rug. I looked up, expecting him to drop the knife in horror. Instead, he stepped right over my collapsed body, knelt beside Selina, and draped his jacket over her shoulders.
“It’s okay now,” he whispered tenderly.
Selina glanced over his shoulder at me. Then, she smiled.
I wasn’t going to die just a victim. I let my eyes roll back and my body go limp, my left arm hidden beneath me. With agonizing slowness, I tapped my smartwatch twice.
Voice Memos. Record.
“She’s gone,” Julian said hollowly. “I… I did it, Selina. Just like you said. We’re free.”
Three days later, I opened my eyes in the ICU.
Julian entered my room carrying an enormous bouquet of white roses, looking disheveled, as if flowers could repair the severe internal trauma in my stomach. “Nora…”
Dr. Caleb Reed stepped smoothly between us. “Mr. Vance, before you come any closer, there’s a medical reality you need to know.”
Julian frowned. “I’m her husband. Get out of my way.”
“Exactly,” Dr. Caleb Reed said coldly. “Which makes this all the more tragic.”
He removed an ultrasound image from my chart and placed it on the tray. Two tiny silhouettes could clearly be seen…
PART 2
“Your wife was eight weeks pregnant when she arrived in my O.R.,” Dr. Caleb Reed stated, his voice a lethal whisper.
Julian’s lungs seized in utter paralysis as every particle of color deserted his features.
“It was twins,” Dr. Caleb Reed continued relentlessly.
The massive bouquet of white blossoms plummeted from his nerveless fingers, littering the bleached clinical floor like discarded frost.
“No…” he choked out, stumbling backward until his spine hit the wall. “Both heartbeats… gone?”
Collapsing hard against the floor, he buried his fists in his hair while an agonized, fractured wail erupted from his ribs. “Nora, I swear to God, I didn’t know!”
My unblinking gaze remained fixed on the sniveling wreck groveling beneath me—a man I had once prioritized above my own soul. The hollow ache within me solidified into impenetrable, vengeful iron; his manufactured guilt meant nothing to me now, for I craved nothing short of his systematic destruction.
Yet before a single syllable parted my lips, the overhead fluorescent bulbs convulsed with an aggressive hum, and the entire critical ward was instantly swallowed by suffocating, pitch-black darkness…
PART 3: The Shadow in the Dark
The sudden silence of the ICU was deafening. The continuous beep-beep-beep of my heart monitor cut out, replaced by the desperate click of backup generators struggling to kick in.
In the pitch black, Julian stopped groveling. His frantic sobbing vanished, replaced by an eerie, sudden stillness.
“Julian?” Dr. Caleb Reed’s voice cut through the dark, sharp and wary. He reached for his pocket penlight.
