CHAPTER 1: The Kick in Room 407
The private maternity suite on the seventh floor of Saint Aurelia Medical Center was supposed to be the safest room in the city.
It had soft blue lights, polished floors, a wall of quiet monitors, and curtains thick enough to hide the storm outside. Olivia Blackwood had been told to rest there for two days after a scare with her blood pressure. Seven months pregnant, exhausted, and still wearing the loose gray hospital gown the nurses had given her, she had tried to convince herself that nothing bad could happen in a room filled with doctors.
Then Vanessa Cross walked in wearing black leather gloves, a burgundy blouse, and boots sharp enough to make every step sound like a threat.
Olivia knew that look. She had seen it at charity dinners, investor events, and family boardrooms — the look people gave her when they thought she was too ordinary to be married to Ethan Blackwood. Vanessa had never hidden her hatred. She had wanted Ethan for years, and she treated Olivia’s pregnancy like an insult to her future.
“You really think a baby will keep him?” Vanessa asked.
Olivia sat up slowly, one hand moving to her stomach. “Get out.”
Vanessa smiled as if she had been waiting for those words. She stepped closer, her heel clicking against the floor, her face cold and certain.
The kick came so fast Olivia barely had time to turn. Pain flashed through her side as she fell from the edge of the bed, landing hard on the cold hospital floor. She gasped, both arms wrapping around her belly.
Vanessa stood over her.
May you like
For one terrible second, the only sound in the room was Olivia’s broken breathing and the faint beeping of the monitor beside the empty bed.
Vanessa leaned down and whispered, “By the time Ethan gets here, he’ll believe you fell.”
