Mason disconnected the call, the click echoing in the cavernous silence of the room. He slid the consent form and the pen across the table, nudging them closer to Camila's limp hand.
"You heard him," Mason said, his voice devoid of any inflection. "Sign it."
Something inside Camila snapped.
She thought of Claire's trembling hands, the nurse's eyes darting to the door. Was that a warning? She hadn't understood then. Now, it was too late.
With a guttural cry that was more animal than human, she swept her arm across the table. The folder, the papers, the pen—they all went flying, scattering across the floor in a cascade of white and blue.
Her hands flew back to her belly, a reflex she couldn't suppress. Her chest heaved, each breath a ragged, painful gasp. Tears streamed down her face, hot and furious, but her eyes burned with a fire that Mason's coldness couldn't extinguish.
"I don't believe it... I won't believe he would do this to me..." she chanted, the words a desperate mantra meant to convince herself. She looked down at her swollen belly, whispering, "I won't let him hurt you."
She threw back the covers. A deep, dragging pain radiated from her lower back, a familiar ache magnified a hundredfold by the turmoil in her soul. She ignored it. She had to move.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, the effort making her grunt with pain.
Mason moved to intercept her. "Miss Conner, your condition is not stable. You shouldn't be moving."
"Get away from me!" she shrieked, shoving him with a strength she didn't know she possessed. "I have to see him! I have to ask him myself!"
Every step was agony. The weight of the babies pulled at her, a constant, heavy anchor. But the pain in her heart was sharper, a blade twisting with every memory that now felt like a lie. That pain fueled her.
She braced herself against the cool, sterile wall, shuffling, dragging her body toward the door. Her only goal, her only thought, was to find Carlisle. To see his face, to hear his voice, and to force him to admit this was all some kind of monstrous, twisted joke.
Mason didn't try to stop her again. He simply followed a few paces behind, his silence a heavy, ominous presence. He knew what she would find.
Camila finally reached the door. Her hand, trembling, closed around the cold, steel handle. She took a shuddering breath, steeling herself to pull it open.
But before she could, voices drifted from the hallway. His voice. Carlisle's. And another, deeper and more hesitant—Dr. Marcus Price, the clinic's chief physician.
"Carlisle, are you certain about this?" Dr. Price sounded strained, his professional calm frayed at the edges. "She's carrying quadruplets. To induce now, forcibly... the risks are astronomical."
Camila's hand froze on the doorknob. She held her breath, pressing her ear against the smooth, cold wood of the door.
Carlisle's reply was immediate, cutting through the air with chilling finality. "I've assessed the risks. Seraphina can't wait."
"But the children are innocent," Dr. Price pressed, his voice rising slightly. "They're your children, for God's sake!"
Camila's heart felt like it was being squeezed in a vise. She waited, desperate, for his answer. A part of her, a small, foolish, dying part, prayed he would show some flicker of paternal feeling.
A short, sharp laugh echoed from the hallway. It was a sound completely devoid of humor, a sound of pure, derisive scorn.
"Children?" Carlisle's voice was laced with a mocking cruelty she had never imagined possible. "Children can be replaced. Seraphina can't."
The words were a rusty saw, dragging back and forth across her soul, severing the last, thinnest thread of hope she had clung to. Outside, the rain intensified, hammering the glass like the final hammer blow on a coffin.
She clutched her belly with both arms, holding her children close. These children were not replaceable. They were her everything.
All the strength drained from her body in a single, devastating rush. Her legs gave out, and she slid down the door, collapsing in a heap on the cold, polished floor.
A voice echoed in her memory—her mother's, soft and steady, from a time when she was small and frightened. "Mama's here. Don't be afraid." But her mother was gone. There was no one here to save her.
It was true.
Her love was a lie.
Her children were disposable.
The entire three-year fairytale he had so carefully constructed was nothing but a bloody, grotesque joke. And she had been the punchline.
She curled into a ball, as much as her pregnant body would allow, wrapping her arms around her stomach. The physical pain from the contractions and the emotional agony in her chest merged into one unbearable torment. She felt like she was being torn apart from the inside out.
A contraction seized her, and she welcomed it. The physical pain was easier to bear than the emptiness in her chest.
But strangely, she didn't scream. The tears stopped.
The pain was too immense for tears. It went beyond sorrow, beyond heartbreak, into a vast, empty wasteland of numbness. A cold, dead calm settled over her.
For the first time, she stopped fighting the truth. She let it swallow her whole.
The voices in the hall continued, but the words no longer made sense. They were just a meaningless drone, the buzzing of flies over a corpse.
She finally understood. The man she had loved, the man she had promised her life to, had never existed.
There was only this monster. A monster who would sacrifice her, and the four lives she carried, without a second thought, all for another woman.
The rain began to ease, but the cold inside her only deepened.
