“Your daughter didn’t die in the incubator, Winona. I just swapped her with a dead orphan.”
Paula, my husband’s mistress, said as she wore the custom diamond necklace Carter had sworn was a one-of-a-kind anniversary gift just for me.
I lay on the cold concrete, my body weak from twenty-one days of being locked in the dark, starved and told by my husband that my grief was just “postpartum insanity.”
“I paid the doctor to send your real baby to a black-market orphanage,” she whispered. “Carter didn’t even look at the body. He was too busy comforting me because I was ‘scared.’ He really is stupid, isn’t he?”
For weeks, I had cried until my eyes bled, begging Carter to let me see my baby’s grave. Every time, he looked at me with disgust, telling me to stop acting crazy and scaring Paula.
Before I could even force a sound out of my dry throat, the heavy sound of footsteps echoed on the stairs.
Carter was coming down.
In a flash, Paula’s smile vanished. She pulled a small, sharp blade from her pocket, didn't hesitate for a second, and sliced it deep across her own forearm.
Blood spilled instantly. She threw the blade near my hand and let out a piercing, terrified scream.
“Help! Carter, please, help me!”
The heavy steel door was thrown open.
Carter burst in. When he saw Paula bleeding on the floor and me lying nearby, his eyes turned completely red with rage.
“Carter, I just wanted to bring her some food…” Paula sobbed, curling into a tight ball. “I didn’t mean to upset her. She just grabbed the knife…”
Carter didn’t even look at me to ask if it was true.
He rushed over, pulling Paula carefully into his arms like she was a fragile piece of glass. Then, he turned his head and looked at me with utter disgust.
“You vicious, crazy bitch,” he spat out. “Paula is pregnant with my son! She came down here out of kindness, and you try to kill her?!”
He stood up, his polished leather shoe raising in the air, and brought it down brutally on my right leg.
A sharp, sickening crack echoed in the basement.
The pain exploded through my body, so intense that my vision went black for a second. My bone was snapped.
In the past, I would have screamed. I would have grabbed his pants, crying and begging him to believe me, asking him how the man who once promised to protect me forever could do this.
But this time, I didn’t scream.
I didn’t shed a single tear.
I just lay there, looking at the man I had loved for a decade, the man I built a tech empire for, and the heart in my chest went completely quiet.
Since Carter was no longer the Carter who once cared for me, I chose to cut away my feelings and let him go.
While Carter was busy checking Paula’s wound, her phone slipped from her pocket and landed face-up on the concrete near my face.
The screen lit up with a new message.
It was from Dave, Carter’s personal chauffeur.
[Did you get the money from him yet? Our baby needs that trust fund, Paula. Don’t keep me waiting.]
I stared at the glowing screen.
Paula’s pregnancy was a complete fraud. She was using Carter’s blind arrogance to secure her bastard child’s inheritance, and he was destroying his own life, and his real family, to protect her.
A wave of ridiculousness rushed through me.
“Don’t worry, Paula, I’m taking you to the hospital right now,” Carter said, his voice full of gentle panic, the same tone he used to use on me.
He lifted her into his arms. Before he walked out, he looked down at me one last time, his eyes cold and empty.
“Reflect on what you’ve done, Winona. If anything happens to my son, I’ll make sure you rot down here.”
He carried the sobbing Paula away, not caring that I was bleeding and broken on the floor.
The heavy steel door slammed shut with a loud bang, locking me in the dark once again.
The silence returned.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t call out his name.
I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood, using the pain to keep myself awake. I dragged my broken, agonizing body across the rough concrete, inch by inch, until I reached the back wall.
My fingers, shaking and stained with blood, reached out and pulled a loose brick from the corner.
Behind it sat a tiny, blinking micro-camera.
I had installed it three weeks ago, right before Carter locked me down here.
I pulled the camera out, my thumb brushing over the cold metal.
It had recorded every single second. Paula’s confession. Her cutting her own arm. Carter breaking my leg.
I held the camera tight against my chest in the dark, and for the first time in twenty-one days, I smiled.
Just wait, Carter.
I will make sure you lose everything.
