The Final Severance

​POV: Liora Vance

The sound of the beeping machines went straight into my brain, and when I finally pried my eyelids apart, the room was dark but for the icy moonlight pouring onto the floor. I attempted to move my body, but a pungent, hollow pain stabbed me in the lower abdomen, taking my breath away, and I experienced a fearsome void within me that made me stop breathing.

I didn’t need a doctor to tell me what that silence in my body was signaling, and the tears were rolling down my face before I even had the strength to dab at them I heard muffled shouting behind the door in the hall, and then I heard Matthew—his voice deep and booming, and he was arguing with someone, but I was too weak to call to him.

The door opened with a forceful thud, but it wasn’t my brother who entered the room, it was Adrian and he looked like he hadn’t slept in days. The moment his eyes fell on me his face shifted to disgust. Where was the man I married?

He flung a folder on my lap "I hope you're proud of yourself, Liora, I really do," Adrian said, his voice quivering with a soft, lethal anger, ​ "I spent three years trying to rebuild my family’s name after what your father did, and all the while, you were laughing at me behind my back with your lover."

“What are you even talking about, Adrian? I had the baby, I’ve been in surgery and you're coming in here to talk about lovers?" My voice was barely audible and my hand was trembling as I grabbed the folder.

“Don’t act like a victim, Elena and Clara saw you with that man in the hallway and they have the photos of you meeting him behind everyone’s backs lately,” Adrian said as he pointed at the blurry picture of me sitting in a cafe with Matthew, though his face was covered, “is that why you were so quiet all this time? Were you too distracted planning your exit with him to give a damn about the company?”

I skimmed over the images and noticed how Elena had meticulously framed all the times I have had lunch with my very own brother as if it were some sort of a sordid affair, and I felt that I needed to scream that Matthew was my brother, but then I looked at the utter revulsion on Adrian’s face, and the words died in my throat. He didn’t have the right to know, and he had every reason to believe that I was lying when I said that this was the worst for him after all he had sacrificed for me, so there was nothing else to look for.

“You lost the baby, Liora, and to be fair, it’s a miracle ,” said Adrian, and he chuckled shortly, a bitter laugh that felt like a blade turning in my stomach. "it’s a blessing that I don't have to raise a child with your tainted blood in its veins, because I would have always wondered if it belonged to that man in the hallway."

​“You... you’re glad?” I asked, the cruelty of his words making me dizzy, “I’m lying here in a pool of my own blood and you’re telling me that you’re glad our child is no more?”

​“I’m glad I’m done with you,” he said, digging into his coat pocket and producing a stack of legal papers, “these are the divorce papers, I’ve already signed them, and I’ve included the infidelity clause, so you don’t get a cent, you’re going back to the gutter where I found you.”

I grabbed the pen from the nightstand, my hand unusually steady despite the tears on my cheeks, and signed my name on each line. There was a crushing, lifeless burden on my heart for the child I believed I had lost, and it lent the act of signing the papers the feeling of burying the last piece of my soul.

"I'm done, Adrian," I said, passing him the papers with a chill as barbaric as his own, "your name, and your money, and your lies, can all go back to Elena. "

​“Good riddance, Liora, I hope he is worth the destruction you have brought on yourself,” he said as he took the papers from my hand and headed toward the door, never once glancing back at me.

"Adrian," I called, and he halted with his hand on the door, "you should mark this day as the day I will take everything I gave to you, and when you find yourself in the ashes, don’t you ever come looking for me."

​He gave no answer, but sped out and banged the door to, which left me alone in the hush. A moment after, the door opened once more, and in rushed my brothers, Matthew and Liam, their faces taut with concern.

​"He’s gone, Liora, we saw him leave," Liam said, bending over the bed and grabbing my hand, "did he hurt you again?"

​"He’s gone for good, Liam, he thinks I cheated and he’s glad the baby is gone," I wailed, shutting my eyes, "he thinks I’m barren now."

​"Liora, listen to me," Matthew said as he leaned in close and dropped his voice, "the doctor came to talk to us after the surgery, and you have to remain calm, you were pregnant with triplets, and although the trauma of the fall made you lose one, the other two are still there, they are still viable. "

​I froze, my eyes flying open as I glanced at my brother, my hand instinctively reaching to my stomach, "What? You mean... I didn’t lose it all?"

​"No, but Adrian never must know," Matthew said, his expression hard and intent, "the hospital records are being sealed as we speak, and as far as the world knows, you lost the only child you were carrying, we are going to get you out of here and take you to a place where he can never find you."

​"He thinks I have nothing," I whispered, a dark, cold resolve settling over me as I looked at the door Adrian had just walked through, "he thinks he stripped me of everything I ever had."

​"Let him keep thinking that," Liam said, squeezing my hand, "let him think he won while we build something that will crush him."

​"I’m going to make him watch," I said, my voice steadying as the pain began to turn into a sharp, focused anger, "I’m going to make him watch me become the person he told me I could never be, and he won't even see the blow coming until it's too late."