Chapter 5
Darkness swallowed the room.
Nora screamed.
Marcus threw himself against the steel door.
“Mother!”
Victoria’s voice came through the speaker above the monitors.
Calm.
Soft.
Almost loving.
“My poor son. You were always too loyal to broken women.”
Marcus went still.
I grabbed his sleeve.
“She’s listening.”
Victoria laughed.
“I have listened for months. Elena crying. Elena doubting herself. Elena begging you to believe her.”
My eyes burned.
Marcus looked like he had been struck.
“Mother, open the door.”
“No.”
“You’re hurting my wife.”
“She is not your wife in any way that matters. She is a vessel who became unstable before the heir arrived.”
I held my belly.
The baby kicked.
A hard little protest.
Marcus looked at the speaker.
“If you touch her, I will destroy you.”
Victoria sighed.
“You sound like your father before I had him committed.”
The room froze.
Marcus whispered, “My father died.”
“No,” Victoria said. “Your father became inconvenient.”
A monitor flickered.
An image appeared.
A man in a wheelchair sitting near a window in a medical room.
Older.
Thin.
But alive.
Marcus stumbled backward.
“Dad?”
My chest tightened.
Arthur Mercer had supposedly died ten years earlier after a stroke.
Victoria’s voice softened.
“He never understood legacy.”
Marcus hit the door again.
“You monster!”
Nora searched the shelves.
“There has to be another exit.”
I found a red emergency switch behind a stack of medical boxes.
Before I could pull it, gas hissed from the ceiling vent.
Nora covered her mouth.
Marcus wrapped his jacket around my face.
“No. No, Elena, stay awake.”
The room blurred.
May you like
The last thing I heard was Victoria’s voice.
“By morning, everyone will know she attacked you, Marcus. And I will save the child.”
