The antiseptic stung my nostrils before I even opened my eyes. Somewhere nearby, a monitor beeped steadily, like a countdown I hadn’t agreed to. My limbs refused to cooperate–heavy foreign, as if they belonged to someone else. Pain lingered, dull and distant, like an echo
underwater.
Voices broke through the fog. Familiar ones.
“…resign right after the procedure,” one of them said, firm and sharp. “No one must find out Especially Veronica.”
I didn’t breathe. I couldn’t. That was Elias–my husband. I forced my eyes to slit open. Across the room, his silhouette stood beside a man in a white coat. The doctor.
“She can’t ever know I let our baby die,” Elias added.
My heart split in two.
No… My child? Gone?
For five long years, I had tried to conceive, fought through heartbreak and frustration just to reach this moment. And in a blink, everything shattered.
The doctor hesitated. “Removing her uterus means she can never have children again. Are you absolutely sure-”
“I don’t care,” Elias snapped. “Sabrina and I have a daughter. She doesn’t want Veronica–or any competition–around.”
Sabrina. That name shot through my chest like shrapnel. His first love. The one who left him, the one he supposedly got over. And now they have a child?
Elias’s voice turned cold, detached. “Veronica was convenient. Nothing more. I pitied her. Now, I’ll make sure she’s no longer a threat. She won’t leave me anyway.”
A fresh wave of pain surged–more brutal than anything physical. I wanted to scream. To leap off the bed and end it all right there. But the anesthesia held me hostage, dragging me down into the dark once again.
Just before everything changed, I had been smiling. My hands cradled my swollen belly as I waited for my check–up. Then came the screech of metal, a blinding burst of headlights, and the sickening snap of impact.
Then–silence.
The next time I came to, the lights were glaring. I was on the operating table. Panic surged, but my body refused to obey.
I begged–silently, desperately–for someone to stop them. To save me.
No one came.
When I woke again, everything felt muted. Dull grayness coated the world. But the pain in my
The Mo
1/3
5:27 pm
DDD
abdomen roared to life.
Then I saw him. Elias, sitting at my bedside with the expression of a man preparing to lie.
“There were… complications,” he said gently. “The baby didn’t survive.”
I clenched the sheets, already knowing.
He paused–just long enough to look appropriately devastated. “And… due to the damage, they had to remove your uterus.”
Tears fell freely, but not for the reasons he thought. I cried not just for my unborn child, but for the betrayal pulsing in every word he’d spoken earlier. And still, I said nothing.
I played the part, Grief–stricken. Broken. Obedient.”
He reached for my hand, stroking it like a saint. “We can still have a family,” he murmured. “I’ve already found a child to adopt.”
Adopt?
Just like that?
No mourning. No hesitation.
But I stayed silent, let him keep believing I was powerless. That I was still the woman he thought he could manipulate.
He smiled–calculated and false. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful, Veronica? We can move on. Start
fresh.”
I looked up, eyes rimmed with tears. And smiled back.
“Of course,” I whispered.
But behind that smile, something new stirred. Not sorrow.
Revenge. Cold and quiet. And coming for him.
