A violent tremor racked my body.
"No—Dustin, I'm carrying your child!"
I stumbled backward, both hands pressed protectively over my stomach, grasping for any last shred of his mercy—even though the baby was already gone.
But he only stared at me, nothing in those eyes but frozen contempt.
"Do it."
He didn't want me. He didn't want our child. I'd known it for a long time, but the knowing didn't stop my heart from ripping apart.
The next second, a bodyguard clamped down on my arms and forced me downward. I refused to yield. A boot slammed into the back of my knee.
The pain was blinding, as if the bone had split in two.
"Ahh!" I screamed as my knees hit the floor.
Someone grabbed my hair. "Bow. Apologize."
The grip was merciless, treating my skull like a ball to be bounced off the ice-cold tile.
"Never!" The room spun around me. I wanted to fight back, to run. But I was powerless.
The guard gripped my head and drove it into the floor again and again.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack…
Blood ran down—warm, sticky—streaming along my brow and into my eyes. The world dissolved into a blurred wash of red.
Through that red, I saw Alice.