At the hospital, I had been rushed into surgery. My last conscious thought was my baby’s cries.
But when I woke, Darren’s voice sliced through the fog:
"Good. Now take the heart and prep my son for surgery."
The words didn’t register at first. Then the room spun. My baby—my child—was his sacrifice.
I was too weak to move, but I heard it all. His threats. The doctor’s protests. The silence that followed when my newborn was taken from me.
By the time I dragged myself down that hallway, my son was gone.
And there they were. Darren. His mother, Janine. And Sally—his first love. Cooing over the living child in Sally’s arms.
Their baby.
The baby who had my child’s heart beating inside its chest.
Sally’s smirk had cut me deeper than any knife.
Janine’s sneer burned into my skin. "She’s not the first to lose a child, she can make another."
And Darren, nodding along, confessing that the attack on me had been his idea. That my labor, my pain, had been engineered.
It was the moment my love died.
The moment something colder, sharper, unbreakable was born in its place.
Now, as I stepped into the hospital room, Darren shot to his feet, the guilt clear in his eyes.