The call came at 5:17 AM, shattering the fragile peace of early morning. I fumbled for my phone in the darkness, Alexander's name flashing on the screen like a warning.
"Isabella." His voice was clipped, devoid of greeting. "Be ready in ten minutes. Car's waiting downstairs."
"What's happened?" I asked, already sliding out of bed, my body responding to his command before my mind could catch up.
"Victoria's been in an accident." The way he said her name—soft, almost reverent—made my stomach clench. "She needs blood. You're going to donate."
Not a request. A statement of fact.
"I don't understand," I said, though I did. All too well. "Why me? Surely the hospital—"
"She has a rare blood type. You're compatible." A pause. "This is nonnegotiable, Isabella."
The line went dead.
I dressed mechanically, my fingers trembling as I buttoned my blouse. The irony wasn't lost on me—I was being summoned to save the woman who had replaced me. The woman who looked like my sister. The woman Alexander paraded before me just last night.
Seven minutes later, I slid into the back of the waiting Bentley. Alexander didn't look at me, his profile sharp and unforgiving in the dim light. His knuckles were white where they gripped his phone.
"How bad is it?" I asked, my voice small in the cavernous silence.
"Bad enough." His jaw tightened. "She was coming to see me. The driver lost control on the FDR."
Coming to see him. At five in the morning. I swallowed the bitter taste in my mouth.
The hospital corridors were a blur of fluorescent lights and antiseptic smells. Alexander strode ahead, doctors and nurses parting before him like water. I followed in his wake, invisible as always.
Victoria lay in a private room, her face as pale as the sheets beneath her. Tubes and wires connected her to machines that beeped and hummed. Even broken and unconscious, she was beautiful. Even now, she looked like Serena.
"Mrs. Blackwood." A nurse approached with a clipboard. "We need to run a quick screening before the donation."
I nodded, following her to a small adjacent room. The questions were routine—medications, recent illnesses, travel history. Then:
"Is there any chance you could be pregnant?"
My heart stuttered. My period was late—just a week, nothing I'd mentioned to Alexander. Nothing I'd allowed myself to hope about.
"I... I'm not sure," I whispered.
The nurse's expression softened. "We'll need to check before proceeding."
Twenty minutes later, I knew. Five weeks along. A tiny spark of life I hadn't known existed.
"Mrs. Blackwood," the doctor said gently, "blood donation during early pregnancy isn't recommended, but in emergency situations—"
"She'll do it." Alexander appeared in the doorway, his expression thunderous. "Victoria needs that blood now."
"Mr. Blackwood," the doctor began, "your wife is pregnant. There are risks—"
"Did I ask for your opinion?" Alexander's voice dropped to that dangerous register I knew too well. "Prepare her for the donation. Now."
The doctor's face tightened, but he nodded. In Alexander's world, everyone eventually nodded.
I sat in a reclining chair beside Victoria's bed, a needle in my arm drawing out my lifeblood for the woman my husband loved. Alexander stood at her bedside, his fingers gently brushing her hair from her forehead—a tenderness I had never known from him.
I closed my eyes, one hand drifting to my abdomen. My secret. My child. Alexander's child, though he didn't seem to care.
The cramping started three hours later. A dull ache at first, then waves of pain that left me gasping. I stumbled to the bathroom in our penthouse, doubling over as something tore inside me.
Blood. So much blood.
I knew what was happening even before I called the doctor. Even before the confirmation came, clinical and detached over the phone.
Miscarriage. Complete. Nothing to be done.
I sat on the cold tile floor, arms wrapped around my empty womb, and felt the last piece of my heart crumble to dust.
That afternoon, Alexander didn't come home. I saw him instead on the television, standing at a podium at the Four Seasons, his face alight with joy.
"Victoria and I are delighted to announce that we're expecting a child," he said to the assembled press. "A new chapter for both of us."
I turned off the TV and stared at my reflection in the black screen. The child I had lost—our child—already forgotten. Already replaced.
Just like me.
