The heavy iron door of the basement groaned open.
I was shivering on the bare concrete, clutching my bleeding stomach. The damp air clung to my skin like ice, making my teeth chatter.
Raphael stood at the top of the stairs, looking down at me like I was a rat that had infested his beautiful mansion.
“You will stay down here until the baby is born,” he said. His voice was flat. Empty.
I stared up at him, my vision swimming with tears and pain. “What? Raphael... it’s freezing down here. I’m sick and pregnant.”
“Which is exactly why you’re staying down here,” he replied, stepping down one concrete stair. “You look like death, Elena. Your sickness, your constant crying... it’s stressing Beatrice. I won’t have her or my true heir put at risk because of your dramatics.”
My chest caved in. “Why are you doing this? I am your wife! This is your baby!”
Raphael stopped. His jaw clenched, a muscle ticking in his cheek.
“I’m not sure about that anymore.”
The words hung in the damp air.
“What does that even mean?” I choked out, trying to push myself up, but my arms gave out.
He reached into his tailored suit jacket and pulled out a stack of glossy photographs. He threw them. They fluttered down the stairs, landing in the dirt around me.
I looked down.
It was me and Harold. My best friend. The only person who had ever treated me like a human being in this mafia cage. Photos of him holding my arm when I was dizzy. Photos of him putting me in his car when I was bleeding to death yesterday because my own husband wouldn't look away from his mistress.
“You’re always with him,” Raphael sneered, his eyes dark with a twisted, hypocritical possessiveness. “He was the one who rushed you to the hospital. He’s the one who held your hand. For all I know, that bastard growing inside you is his.”
“Are you insane?!” I screamed, my voice tearing my throat raw. “I have never touched another man! This is yours! He is yours!”
Raphael didn't even blink.
“If he’s Harold’s, he dies the moment he takes his first breath. If he’s mine... I’ll take him and raise him with Beatrice. Either way, you are nothing to me now.”
He turned his back.
“Raphael, please!”
The heavy iron door slammed shut.
The lock clicked.
Total darkness.
I was left alone on the freezing floor. The cold seeped into my bones, but it was nothing compared to the ice in my heart.
I curled into a ball, wrapping my trembling arms around my swollen belly. My tears soaked the concrete.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to the dark. “I’m so sorry.”
A weak flutter answered me from inside. My baby. Still fighting. Still alive.
“I promise you,” I sobbed, rocking back and forth. “We will leave here. I will not let them take you. I will not let anything happen to you.”
Then, the pain hit.
A sharp, blinding agony ripped through my womb. The cancer. The stress. The bleeding. It was all too much.
My breath hitched. The darkness closed in completely, and I fainted.
When I woke up, I wasn't on the concrete floor anymore.
The blinding glare of surgical lights burned my eyes. The smell of bleach and iron filled my lungs.
I tried to move, but thick leather straps bound my wrists and ankles to a cold metal table.
Panic exploded in my chest. “Help!” I rasped. “Where am I?!”
“Keep her still,” a voice ordered.
I turned my head frantically. It was the syndicate’s underground clinic.
The doctor stood beside me, pulling on surgical gloves. Behind him, standing on the other side of the glass observation window, was Beatrice. She was smiling, sipping from a crystal glass.
“What are you doing?!” I screamed, thrashing against the restraints. “My baby! Don't touch my baby!”
The doctor picked up a scalpel. He didn't look me in the eye.
“The Boss gave the order, Donna Elena,” he said quietly. “He said the child is Harold's.”
My blood ran completely cold.
“No...” I breathed. “No, Raphael wouldn't—”
“He already signed the consent forms,” the doctor interrupted, his voice dead. “We are removing your womb today. I'm sorry, but your baby won't survive the procedure.”
My heart shattered into a million jagged pieces, piercing my lungs from the inside. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even scream.
The doctor held up a clipboard. At the bottom, in bold, black ink, was Raphael’s unmistakable signature. The exact same handwriting that had signed our marriage certificate.
The same hand that used to trace the curve of my stomach in the dead of night, whispering soft promises to our unborn child.
I looked through the glass window. Beatrice raised her crystal glass in a mocking toast, her red lips curling into a triumphant, venomous smile.
"Please," I sobbed, thrashing wildly against the thick leather straps. The metal buckles dug into my skin, drawing warm blood down my wrists, but I didn't care. "I'll sign the divorce papers! I'll leave the country! Just let me keep my baby! Please, he's innocent!"
A tiny, frantic kick fluttered against my ribs. My baby was fighting. He knew.
"Hold her down," the doctor ordered the nurses, his voice devoid of pity. "Administer the anesthesia."
A freezing liquid burned through the IV line in my hand. Panic clawed at my throat as the edges of my vision began to darken. The room spun into a sickening vortex of blinding white lights and Beatrice's laughing face.
"I'm sorry, little one," I wept, my voice fading into a weak, broken whisper. "I failed you."
The doctor raised the scalpel, the sharp silver blade gleaming mercilessly.
But just as the cold metal pressed against my bare stomach, a deafening gunshot shattered the clinic's silence.
Warm blood splattered across my cheek.
The doctor’s eyes rolled back, and he collapsed dead onto the floor.
Through my fading, drug-heavy eyes, I heard Beatrice scream behind the glass. And then, the heavy steel doors were kicked completely off their hinges.
