“There is no heartbeat.”
I stared at the blank ultrasound screen in the sterile hospital room. My womb was as empty as my chest. The tiny life I had tried so desperately to protect had been flushed away on a cold linoleum floor, stolen by the man who had promised to love me forever.
I discharged myself against medical advice.
My body ached with a hollow, throbbing gravity. Every step felt like walking on broken glass. The IV puncture wound on my arm was bruised a deep, sickly purple. But I couldn't stay in that bed.
Today was my mother’s cremation.
The sky outside was a bruised, weeping gray. Freezing rain lashed against the pavement, turning the city into a bleak, washed-out painting.
I dragged my bleeding, broken body up the stone steps of the funeral home.
I expected silence. I expected the solemn, quiet grief of a crematorium.
Instead, I was blinded by flashbulbs.
Through the glass doors of the adjacent banquet hall, champagne flutes clinked. Laughter echoed over the smooth jazz playing from hidden speakers.
A massive, gold-lettered banner hung over the grand entrance: Celebrating the Engagement of Daniel Ridge and Jessica Hollden.
I stopped, the freezing rain soaking through my thin coat.
They had hijacked my mother’s funeral venue.
Jackson and Jessica were using the Hollden family tragedy as a backdrop for their triumph. They were seamlessly pivoting the press's attention from a sudden, suspicious death to a billionaire's whirlwind romance.
I ignored the flashing cameras and walked past the banquet hall, heading for the dark, forgotten crematorium wing in the back.
The room was cold and entirely empty.
Sitting alone on a cheap metal table was a small, plain wooden urn. Jackson controlled the funds. He had threatened to throw her in a mass grave, and this cheap box was his twisted compromise. It was all that remained of the woman who had died in my arms.
I slowly reached out, my trembling fingers brushing the rough wood.
"I wouldn't touch that if I were you."
I didn't flinch. I slowly turned around.
Jessica stepped out of the shadows. She was wearing a stunning, backless crimson dress—a stark, mocking contrast to the mourning black she should have been wearing for the woman who raised her.
Two massive, suited bodyguards flanked her.
She looked me up and down, her eyes lingering on my pale face and the dried blood still staining the hem of my skirt.
"I heard the news," Jessica smiled, a sweet, poisonous curve of her lips. "Such a tragedy. A miscarriage in a public hallway. You couldn't even keep a bastard child alive."
I didn't react. I just looked at her.
"It’s really for the best," Jessica sighed, stepping closer, her expensive perfume masking the smell of the crematorium. "Jackson and I don't need any loose ends. A baby would have just complicated the inheritance. Just like we didn't need that stupid old woman."
She glanced at the wooden urn on the table. Her eyes darkened with a sudden, vicious cruelty.
"Take it," she ordered.
Before I could move, one of the bodyguards shoved me aside. I hit the floor hard, my weakened body unable to resist the force.
The other bodyguard grabbed the urn.
"Jessica, don't," I whispered. My voice was a dry, broken rasp.
"Throw it out," she commanded.
The bodyguard walked to the open side doors leading to the back alleyway. The rain was pouring down in sheets, turning the dirt path into a thick, filthy sludge.
He raised the urn high above his head and slammed it down onto the concrete steps.
The cheap wood splintered with a sharp crack. A cloud of pale gray dust exploded into the damp air, instantly catching the wind.
Jessica laughed.
She stepped forward, her expensive red heels crunching over the broken wood. With a graceful, deliberate swing of her leg, she kicked the remaining pile of ashes straight off the steps and into the muddy rain.
The downpour hit the ashes, instantly turning my mother into a gray, unrecognizable sludge in the dirt.
"Enjoy the funeral, Monica," Jessica sneered, turning on her heel. "Don't forget to wash your hands before you leave."
Her laughter faded down the hall, swallowed by the cheering crowd in the banquet hall.
I lay on the cold floor.
I didn't scream. I didn't cry.
My soul simply died.
I crawled forward, dragging my body out the open doors and into the freezing rain. The mud instantly soaked through my clothes, chilling me to the bone.
I fell to my knees in the dirt.
My hands were bruised and shaking. The bandage on my arm tore open, bleeding fresh red drops that mixed with the gray mud.
I dug my fingers into the freezing sludge. I desperately scraped the wet, muddy ashes from the dirt, gathering whatever I could find. Dirt, rocks, water, and bone dust—I scooped it all up in my bleeding hands.
I pressed the cold, filthy mud to my chest, holding my mother against my empty womb.
I knelt there in the storm, covered in blood and ashes, and looked up.
Through the large glass windows of the banquet hall, I saw him.
Jackson was standing on a brightly lit stage. He was holding a microphone, smiling handsomely down at Jessica as she walked up to join him in her crimson dress. He wrapped his arm around her waist and kissed her cheek. The crowd erupted into applause.
I looked at the man I had loved for ten years. The man I had mourned. The man who had drained my blood, killed my baby, and covered up my mother's murder.
The love inside me didn't shatter. It didn't burn.
It just evaporated.
It vanished into the freezing rain, replaced by a chilling, dead emptiness. A void so vast and so cold that it swallowed every ounce of fear, grief, and pain I had left.
