Chapter 2
I clutched the memory card in my fist so tight my nails dug into my palm.
The room felt cold.
The baby kicked hard against my ribs, like he knew something was wrong.
“Did you hear me?” Ethan said. His voice was different now. Not the soft husband I’d married. Sharp. Demanding. “Give it to me.”
I backed away until my legs hit the bed.
“You signed something,” I said. My voice cracked. “What did you sign, Ethan?”
He stepped closer.
“It’s complicated.”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t explain it right now. You’re upset, you’re pregnant—”
“I’m your wife!” I shouted. The sound burst out of me before I could stop it. “And you were in that room with her. You said ‘make sure she never finds out.’”
Ethan’s jaw tightened.
For a second, I saw guilt flash across his face. Then it was gone, replaced by something harder. Something I didn’t recognize.
“Mom was right,” he said quietly. “About you being too fragile for this.”
That hit harder than a slap.
I grabbed the lamp from the nightstand—not to hit him, just to have something between us.
“Stay back.”
“Emily, don’t be ridiculous.”
He reached for me.
I scrambled sideways, around the bed, putting the mattress between us. My breath came in ragged gasps. Seven months pregnant, moving fast, my lower back screamed in protest.
“I’m calling the police,” I said, fumbling for my phone on the dresser.
Ethan moved faster than I thought possible.
He was across the room in two strides, his hand clamping down on my wrist—not painfully, but firm. Unbreakable.
“No,” he said. “You’re not calling anyone.”
I stared at him.
This was the man who’d cried when we saw the first ultrasound. Who’d rubbed my feet every night for three months. Who’d promised, in front of God and everyone we knew, to protect me.
“Let go of me,” I whispered.
“Not until you give me the card.”
“Why does it matter so much? You already said it. I heard it. What’s on there that’s worse than what I already know?”
His eyes flickered.
That was the answer.
There was more.
So much more.
I twisted my wrist, hard, and he loosened his grip just enough for me to yank free. I ran for the door, but he caught me by the arm before I made it to the hallway.
We struggled.
I stumbled.
My shoulder hit the doorframe.
A white-hot pain shot through my belly.
I gasped and doubled over, one hand flying to my stomach.
The baby went still.
Silence.
Ethan froze.
“Emily?”
I couldn’t breathe. The pain was sharp, constant, low down where it should never be. I felt dampness between my legs.
Not much.
Just enough.
“Oh God,” Ethan breathed. He let go of me like I was burning. “Oh God, Emily, I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—”
“Get away from me.”
I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor, my back pressed against the wood, my legs splayed. I pressed both hands to my stomach, silently begging, please move please move please move.
A tiny kick.
Weak.
But there.
I sobbed in relief.
Ethan was on his phone already, pacing the hallway, his voice tight. “We need an ambulance. My wife—she’s seven months pregnant, she fell—there’s bleeding—”
I looked at the laptop still open on the bed.
The recording was paused on Ethan’s face.
He’d hung up the camera in our baby’s room.
He’d watched me.
Listened to me.
Planned behind my back.
And now he was calling an ambulance like he was the concerned husband.
“Emily,” he said, kneeling in front of me. His hands hovered like he wanted to touch me but knew better. “The paramedics are coming. Everything’s going to be okay. The doctor will check you, and then we’ll talk—properly, this time, I promise—”
“I’m not going to any hospital your mother knows about.”
He flinched.
“Emily, this isn’t about Mom right now. This is about the baby.”
“You don’t get to say that.”
The sirens started in the distance.
I used the wall to pull myself up, my legs shaking. Ethan tried to help and I flinched away so hard I nearly fell again.
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t you ever touch me again.”
He raised his hands in surrender.
“Okay. Okay. Whatever you want.”
I knew, with a certainty that settled cold in my bones, that if I went to the hospital with Ethan, if Diane met us there… I would leave without my son.
They had papers.
They had a plan.
And the only thing stopping them was a tiny plastic memory card clenched in my fist.
The paramedics banged on the front door.
Ethan started toward the stairs.
“Wait,” I said.
He turned.
I reached into the drawer beside me—the junk drawer where we kept batteries and tape and random junk—and pulled out a pair of scissors. Not big. Just sharp enough.
I held them up.
His eyes went wide.
“Emily, what the hell—”
“You stay in front of me,” I said. “You tell them I fell. You don’t say anything else. And if you so much as look at my stomach wrong, I will tell them you attacked me. Do you understand?”
His mouth opened and closed.
The banging came again, louder.
“Ethan!” I snapped.
“Yes,” he said quickly. “Yes, I understand.”
We walked down the stairs together, me three steps behind him, the scissors hidden in my pocket, the memory card tucked inside my bra where no one would find it without a fight.
When the paramedics asked what happened, Ethan spoke exactly the words I’d told him to.
But I saw his face.
I saw the way he looked at me when he thought I wasn’t watching.
This wasn’t over.
It was only just beginning.
May you like
And I was seven months pregnant, alone in a house with a husband who’d betrayed me, and a mother-in-law who was coming for my child.
The ambulance ride was the longest twenty minutes of my life.
