After saying that, I motioned for the people behind me to come forward. “Teach her a lesson and show her how to be a proper assistant.”
Maya was the assistant Carlos had hired at a high price and he once said the business needed someone to handle it, that violence wouldn’t last and he wanted to free me and the child from worry.
Yet I never thought that in only eight months, Carlos would turn away from me and the child for her.
The men advanced with iron bars and Maya, terrified, fell to the ground behind Carlos while clutching his sleeve.
“Carlos, help me! Hannah wants to kill me…”
The bar came down and her screams of pain echoed through the room.
Carlos finally moved; though bound, he suddenly stood and grabbed the iron bar with one hand.
“Enough, Hannah! Can’t you see she’s only a foolish girl? You’re still pregnant, yet you’re shouting and lashing out like a killer!”
I sneered inside, because he hadn’t remembered I was pregnant when he lured me into this kidnapping, yet now he suddenly remembered when it came to Maya.
“Don’t you have anything to say?”
The sound of blood dripping from the knife’s tip mixed with my rough breaths against the floor.
He gave a laugh, let out a sigh and tugged at his wrinkled collar. “This was all for Phillips’s. Don’t you also want our child to be born into a better place? Mr. Landers agreed and if you had come just a second earlier, that piece of land in the south city would already be ours.”
I listened to his smooth lies, as if today’s mess was only because I had been late, as if he and Maya had been the ones fighting for Phillips’s.
“It’s true, I was blind.” I turned to the other man in the wager, whose amused face suddenly froze.
I spoke quietly, “Mr. Landers, we accept the loss. Let’s carry out the real bet now.”
With Carlos’s shocked eyes on me, I dragged Maya over and forced her to the ground.
“Hannah! She’s pregnant!”
His large hands pressed down on my shoulders. I paused before pressing my fist against my stomach.
I smiled at Carlo. “Do you want my unborn child, or hers?”
The weight on my shoulders eased as he let go, his hands falling away while he stepped aside with a blank face. I pressed harder until a dull ache spread through my belly, then rose slowly to my feet.
I tore a few sheets of paper from the table, wiped the blood from my hands and threw them at Carlos with disgust. “Will you write the divorce papers, or should I?”
Carlos’s eyes flickered at last. “I won’t divorce you, Hannah. I told you, only death will end us.”
The moment those words left him, I picked up a knife from the floor and swung it at him.
He looked at the blade without moving, his gaze the same as when he was eighteen, surrounded by men, fearlessly lighting gasoline.
The blade cut across his body and blood instantly soaked his custom suit.
He pulled the knife from my hand without any change in his expression and tossed it aside. “Hannah, one life is enough to ease your anger.”
Maya’s lower body was soaked in blood and the child was gone. I watched Carlos carry her away and said silently, “Carlos, it wasn’t just one, it was two.”
I stayed in the hospital for seven days and during that time, Carlos and Maya vanished from my world.
It was then that I reached out for the first time to the person I had least wanted to see.
