BLOOD, LIES, AND THE ROMANOV HEIR

ISABELLA

“Somebody help me please,” I groan, finally collapsing on the ground. A nurse runs towards me, her file hitting the ground as she crashes. “Code red, code red,” she says calmly into her pager.

“Hello ma'am,” I turn my head towards her, her face blurry from my tears. “Please,” I beg. “Save my baby.”

“Possible miscarriage occuring, requesting a bed.”

A bed is rolling towards us and I feel strong arms grab me from underneath my shoulder, helping me up and placing me on it.

I refuse to look in-between my legs, refusing to acknowledge it’s happening again.

Tears fall from my eyes as they rolled me into the hospital room and after what seems like forever, a male doctor drags the curtains open.

“Mrs. Whitfield?” He looks at me sadly. “I am so sorry. The baby did not make it.”

The first drop falls on my face and I taste it, the salt in my sadness. “I.. I lost it?”

“Yes dear. We tried our possible best,” he says assuringly, “but by the time you came in, it was already too late.”

I close my eyes, hating myself even more for ignoring the signs. I’d gone through this three times. Why did I think the pain was normal?

“I just wanted a baby,” my voice breaks as the sobs become louder. I was so fixed on making sure tonight was right, getting my hair styled just so I could tell my husband the good news.

Three babies, all gone. I never made it past the first trimester. Marcus had deflated the last time he brought me here, which is why I came alone.

“Would you like some time alone?” He asks and I can see the sadness in his eyes.

“Yes please.” I sniffle

The doctor leaves me to my thoughts, spiralling around me. “What am I going to tell him?” I cry, clutching the hospital pillow to my chest.

Snot falls down my face as I remember how excited I was when I called him this afternoon, asking for a date night between us.

I wanted him to be a father so much. It’s been three years already and he’s been so patient.

I shut my eyes tight, wanting all the pain to go away. I had failed him multiple times, after how good he was to me.

I fell in love with Marcus so hard, his witty smile, his natural charisma, the way he cared for me and became the family I had lost. All I wanted was for us to finally start our family, have children and be in love forever.

“Mrs. Whitfield,” a short nurse stood at the door, “you've been discharged. She hands me a piece of paper. “This is your prescription, take these wdrugs and if you are in any pain, please don't hesitate to come back.”

Everyone in the hospital probably knows I have lost my third baby. “Thank you,” I say, setting my legs to the ground for the first time since I collapsed. It felt cold, just like my empty broken heart.

I wear my clothes and grab my bag, thanking all the hospital staff for their care and attention. It isn't their fault.

I am the broken one.

The journey home is silent, my heart is crying and my lungs dragging air on slowly, like I am afraid to breathe. I wanted to surprise him tonight. Tears sting the back of my eyes, but I blink them away, focusing on the long winding home instead.

We would have celebrated and he would have hugged me, then slowly danced throughout the house. “You'll be an amazing mother,” he would have whispered to me, and my heart would have kept for joy.

“Fuckkkkk,” I scream, letting all my rage out in the world. The tears came down harder but I refused to let them stop me.

I need my husband's touch.

I park my car quickly, almost running to go inside so I can tell him. I want his comfort, as scared as I am, I really want him tonight.

The front door is locked. We never lock our house, even when travelling. This area is so safe, if a robbery occurs, it will make national news.

“Marcus,” I find my key in my bag and open the door. The house is silent, the hardwood floors creaking underneath my feet as I walk towards the stairs. He will be in the room, upstairs.

I hear giggling coming from the top of the stairs. “That's a woman's giggle,” I whisper in confusion.

Luckily, I convinced him last month to change the staircase so it doesn’t creak or make any weird noise under my weight.

Our bedroom door is open, and I can see the light coming from it, illuminating the somewhat dark hallway. The laughter has gotten louder and with it, I can hear low murmurs of someone speaking.

“Oh, my God,” a woman giggles. I creep closer to the door, struck between calling for my husband or the police. Who could be in my house.

When I finally look inside, two people are on the bed. The woman's blonde hair spills over to the side of the bed and she raises her head up with an arm, placing it on my soft bed. It’s my best friend, Sarah. What is Sarah doing inside my room?

“Can you believe she didn't tell me this time?” Cold shivers run through my spine at the voice. I see him clearly now, standing at the edge of the bed, talking to Sarah and she is looking up at him with admiration.

Marcus Whitfield, my broad shouldered sharp brown eyed man, that seems to always look through a person, yet his focus is entirely on talking to my best friend. In our bed.

“I couldn't imagine why,” Sarah says in her fake seductive voice. I hate when she sounds like that, even when she jokes she does it to capture men's attention.

“Thank God I found the pregnancy test. Imagine having a little mistake from a bigger one.” He walks closer to the bed, climbing on it. “Those birth control pills are very effective.”

A soft gasp escapes my lips. Surely, they couldn't be talking about me? “So you slipped her the pills?”

“It was easy again. She's so in love,” Marcus rolls his eyes, “it makes me want to puke.”

“Well,” Sarah rises up, kneeling on the bed, “you think it would have worked by now?”

“As usual.”

As usual. Usual means multiple times.

The words ring in my brain, bouncing around the orbits of my mind as I try understanding what I hear and what I am seeing.

“I always knew she couldn't be the one for you,” Sarah says with a sneer, “she's too plain, and too boring. She acts like her life depends on being the perfect housewife.”

She runs her hands on my husband's chest. “Yes, which is why I have you, my love.” He bends down, capturing her lips with his. The hand on his chest moves higher and I see a large diamond, glinting across the room.

I trusted Marcus so much. Every night, he gave me my last cup of coffee, he called it his love cup. I drank it all, kissing him afterwards and then, we would make love all night.

Marcus killed my baby.

Marcus, my husband, the man I have been in love with, the only person I consider my family, killed the one thing he knows I want badly.

I push the door open furiously, causing them to break apart. Marcus doesn't look remorseful while Sarah's face turns red as she sees me.

“Isabella,” she stands up. “We didn't want you finding out like this.”

"You’re early, I expected you to be wallowing for at least another hour.” Marcus says, his voice flat and bored, and he doesn't even have the decency to look ashamed.

I couldn't care less about his infidelity. “What pills did you give to me?”

Marcus' eyes turns red, “What are you talking about?”

You drugged me," I whisper, the words feeling like shards of glass in my throat, and I step toward him, my hands shaking with the urge to wrap them around his neck. "You murdered our children, you son of a bitch, you sat there and watched me bleed and you laughed about it."

"I did what was necessary to protect my assets, Isabella, because I wasn't about to let a woman like you tie me down with a kid when I have a real future with someone who isn't a total disaster," he says, standing up and towering over me, his face a mask of cold arrogance. "And don't bother with the 'our children' bullshit, they were just cells, and now they’re gone, just like you’re about to be."

"I’m going to kill you," I say, and for the first time in years, I feel a strange, chilling calm settle over me, a legacy of a life I tried so hard to forget.

"With what? Your tears?" He laughs, stepping closer until his chest is almost touching my nose, and he smells like the betrayal he is.

"You have nothing, Isabella, no money, no family left who gives a shit about you, and a medical record that says you’re mentally unstable. You go to the police and I’ll have you committed before you can finish your first sentence. You'll get the divorce papers soon.” He ends

He can’t be serious. “Sarah,” He stretches his arms open for her and she walks to him, settling on his body, “is my fiancee,” Marcus says, lifting his hard gaze back to my face.

“And she's pregnant.”

Sarah looks at me with a smirk, her hand moving to her stomach in a protective gesture that makes me want to rip her heart out. "He’s right, Izzy, so why don't you just do us all a favor and go find a bridge to jump off?"

She’s pregnant.

Sarah is pregnant with my husband's baby. I look at the man I love and the woman I trust, drinking my liquor in my bed and the fairy tale shatters.

I finally see the monster behind the mask. He spent three years convincing me I was a broken, helpless doll but he forgot who he married. I stare dead into Marcus’s arrogant eyes.

"You are trying to destroy me. You forgot who my father was."

"Your father is dead, Isabella, and his little empire died with him," he sneers, but his voice is a fraction higher than it was before.

"The empire didn't die, it just went underground, and it’s been waiting for me to wake up," I say, turning on my heel and walking toward the door.

I snatch the orange pill bottle from the nightstand without screaming or crying, taking nothing but the evidence, my phone, and the name I was born with.

The rain hammers against the windshield of my car as I drive for forty minutes into the darkest part of the city. I think about my father—Alexei Romanov.

He taught me how to shoot before I knew how to drive. He ruled this city with an iron fist, but to me, he was safety. When he died five years ago, I ran from the blood and straight into Marcus's lie of a normal life.

Normal is a lie rich men sell to women they plan to destroy. I pull up to an abandoned industrial district, parking outside a chain-link fence crowned with razor wire. I pull out my phone and dial a number I haven't used in three years.

It rings twice.

"Uncle Viktor," I say. My voice is pure steel over the phone line. "I'm ready to come home." I pause, staring at the razor wire through the rain. "And I need you to sharpen the knives."

A heavy silence hangs on the line. Then, a low, gravelly chuckle echoes through the speaker, a sound that promises blood and absolute ruin.

"I've been waiting for this call for a long time, little bird."