Chapter 2

I stared at the message until the elevator doors opened and a nurse nearly collided with me.

"Mrs. Ashford! You shouldn't be walking around. Let me take you back to—"

"I'm fine." I wasn't fine. Nothing was fine.

When I got home—if you could call the cold, sterile east wing of the Ashford estate "home"—I went straight to the bathroom and opened my prenatal vitamin bottle.

The pills looked normal. Same size, same color. But the anonymous text had planted a seed of doubt I couldn't ignore.

I took out one pill, wrapped it in a tissue, and hid it in my pocket. Tomorrow, I'd find a way to get it tested.

That night, Dominic didn't come home. He didn't call. He didn't text. I lay awake with my hand on my belly, feeling my baby move, and for the first time, I was truly afraid.

Not of Dominic. Of what he might do to take this child from me.

The next morning, I called the one person I still trusted—my best friend, Maren.

"Elara? Oh my God, are you okay? I've been trying to reach you for months! Your number kept going to voicemail—"

"Maren, I need your help. Can you get a pill tested at a lab? Quietly?"

Silence. Then: "What kind of pill?"

"My prenatal vitamins. I think... I think someone might have tampered with them."

"Jesus Christ. Bring them to me. I'll handle it."

I snuck out while the housekeeper, Mrs. Crane, was in the kitchen. The Ashford estate had security cameras everywhere, but I'd learned their blind spots months ago when I used to take walks in the garden.

Maren met me at a café three blocks from her apartment. When she saw me—eight months pregnant, dark circles under my eyes, wearing the same maternity dress I'd worn three days in a row—she burst into tears.

"What has he done to you?"

"Everything." I slid the pill across the table. "Please. Just get this tested."

"I will. But Elara, you need to leave him."

"I can't. Not yet. If I leave before the baby's born, he'll use every lawyer in the country to take my child. I have nothing—no money, no family, no proof of anything."

Maren grabbed my hands. "You have me."

I wanted to cry, but I couldn't afford to fall apart. Not yet.

Two days later, Maren called me with the results.

"Elara, those aren't prenatal vitamins. They contain a low-dose sedative and an estrogen blocker. Whoever prescribed these is deliberately weakening your body and suppressing your immune system. If you'd kept taking them through delivery..."

She couldn't finish the sentence.

"What would have happened?"

"You'd have been too weak to survive a complicated birth. And at eight months, with the dosage you've been taking, complications during delivery are almost guaranteed."

The room spun. I grabbed the edge of the bathroom sink to steady myself.

They weren't just planning to take my baby. They were planning to let me die on the delivery table.

A clean, convenient death. A tragic complication. And Dominic would walk away with his heir and his inheritance, free to marry Sophia and raise my child as hers.

I stopped taking the pills immediately.

That evening, Dominic finally came home. He walked past me in the hallway without a word, then paused and turned back.

"You look better today. The vitamins must be working."

He smiled—a cold, clinical smile—and continued to his study.

I stood there, frozen, my hand on my belly, understanding for the first time exactly what kind of man I had married.

My phone buzzed again.

Good. You stopped taking them. Now check the bottom drawer of his study desk. The truth about who you really are will change everything.