Chapter 1 – Only if…

“Help me!”

Maeve screamed from unbearable pain. Her contractions were now unbearable but she forcefully dragged herself from her bedroom, looking everywhere for her husband, Dylan Grayson.

“Darling, please help!”

She screamed but was only met with the echoes of the room. She scrambled for her phone, thinking that Dylan had gone to get her special morning salad as always.

Picking her phone with shaky hands and before she dialed the number, she heard laughter from downstairs.

‘Thank God, perhaps it’s the maids or even Dylan,’ Maeve thought in her mind. She was surprised that the maids had not even come to check on her like they always did and Dylan.

He always brought her morning salad by now so why was he not here when she needed him the most?

Masking her pain, she rose to her feet and stuttered to the door before another painful contraction kicked in, she groaned, her face beaded with sweat before she yelled again,

“Help me please!”

The sound of laughter echoed once more and she felt like her screams were not loud enough. Her strength was likewise failing her so she dragged herself through the pain out of her room and through the corridors until she reached the stairs.

Another contraction kicked in but she was in so much shock that red liquid began to slip from between her thighs.

“Dylan?”

Her voice was thin and she felt hazy. The man broke up from the kiss with no one but her cousin Sandra and looked at her with fake remorse. His words were soft but after what she had witnessed, it only felt poisonous to her.

“What is wrong, sweetheart?” He pretended to care. The woman he was making out with before, Sandra, Maeve’s cousin began to run up the stairs as if she cared too.

“She looks like she’s in labor.”

Mock care shone in Sandra’s eyes once more. Dylan ran up the stairs to Maeve like the doting husband he was, at the same time Maeve sank to the floor, too shocked and disgusted by what she had seen and their contrasting behavior.

“You mean our baby is due to come out?” Dylan knelt before her, caressing her large bump.

“Ahhhhhhhhh, please help me,” she cried. “The contractions are so painful.”

At least, they could get her to the hospital before she addresses what she just saw but little did she know what was coming.

“I can get you to the hospital but you have to sign this to me first,” Dylan spoke in a serious tone. From Maeve’s blurry eyes, she saw a stack of documents in his hands.

Her hands clutched her stomach tightly because of the contractions, emotional pains, and heartbreak. Dylan guessed she did not know what it was and went on to explain further,

“You need to sign off on the company, money, and all assets. Only then, will I take you to the hospital,” he stared her in the eyes with a taunting smile, Maeve wondered. Was this the same man who used to kiss the very floor she walked on? The reason why she rejected many suitors?

These assets were her family’s hard work for decades so how could she give it away to traitors? Maeve was devastated at how stupid she had been. Hatred and pain pierced her heart like stab wounds.

All these years he made her believe that he was her protector, her knight in shining armor when he was just a fraud. With another painful contraction, her mind was back to the child in her womb. She needed to save her baby and herself today, and fight tomorrow.

With shaky hands, she signed the documents, just as Dylan and Sandra burst into laughter. Sandra glared at Maeve with disgust. She was a mess from the pool of blood she sat in.

“She’s so stupid. She believed you,” Sandra laughed. Sandra was her only cousin. The only one she trusted, for which reason her relationship with her best friend, Doreen, hit the rocks when Sandra informed her that her best friend had eyes for Dylan.

Maeve felt a stab in her heart. What has she done? Her father tricked her to marry Gabriel Scott but on the night of their honeymoon, she lashed out at him, forcing him to divorce her while she married Dylan Grayson, the man she loved.

She even helped Dylan to make Gabriel’s life miserable and lost billions of dollars of business deals. Maeve was so numb, it felt as if she was paralyzed from the shock.

“I can’t believe an educated woman like you, the CEO of Cambridge Incorporated, could be so naïve. Your father was smarter, making me sign that prenup. He was a tough one but I killed him with your mother in a plane crash,” Dylan confessed without any form of guilt.

Maeve’s shaken and painful look, accompanied by sobs, made him laugh. He never met a woman as stupid as her.

“You look surprised. I just paid someone to tamper with a few things on the private jet before it took off with all those businessmen. Hahaha, I turned you against Gabriel Scott. The dude loved you though but your foolishness did not allow you to see. You helped me to destroy him. You were the tool I used to make him lose all those businesses, so I could have them.”

Maeve could not believe her ears and she was in so much pain, she did not have the will to live. Gabriel Scott was her childhood friend but when she met Dylan in college, he told her that Gabriel’s father, a lecturer, was not rich and Gabriel was using her to climb the business ladder. Words failed Maeve whiles Dylan continued to reveal,

“Now that I have everything, I have no use for you.”

Maeve shook her head, clutching her nine months bump. She extended her hand to Sandra to help her down the stairs.

“Sandra!”

Maeve called out. For the fact that they were cousins, she expected that Sandra would have a little mercy and help her.

“Stop calling my name, dummy. Dylan and I have been dating for five years. Did you think that the two of you bumping into each other at the library was a coincidence? I arranged it. I only loaned him to you.”

Sandra was excited at how everything fell into place in spite of the hindrances.

“Haha, Maeve, I have to admit that Gabriel Scott made things difficult for us. He thinks he can be your knight in shining armor and place people around you to watch over you, but guess what? We outsmarted him and we have people watching him too.

She showed a new set of documents to Maeve and let out a wicked grin,

“Very soon, his business would also collapse because of the bad people we sent there and he would become a penniless son of a bitch, just like the bitch you are,” Sandra blurted out victoriously.

Maeve always thought that Gabriel was the enemy and that all he wanted were her family’s business connections. She just found out that the real snake was the man she fell right in love with. Ah, the pain was more than the contraction which had kicked in again, as she held her protruding belly.

“You can have everything, just take me to the hospital,” Maeve bargained with tear-filled eyes. Her pain bristled with both emotional and labor pain. Sandra laughed once again but before she spoke, Dylan revealed,

“Do you think that what you are going through is labor pains?” Maeve was confused and had paled from losing so much blood. Dylan laughed at her stupidity.

“I see you enjoyed the midnight snack I brought you. Gabriel planted your maid, Hannah, to watch you so all my attempts failed until this night.”

“What…what are you talking about?” Maeve stammered, blinded by tears.

“Do you think I would let you give birth to my child? I added poison to get rid of the baby and the so-called labor pains you are feeling, are the results of it. I could only do it after the stupid Hannah went to sleep after being in the kitchen all night like she always does.”

“Trust me Maeve, this should have happened months ago but that stupid girl monitored and prepared every food. She would even spy on me until I brought it to you.”

Maeve froze like a statue but she was also trembling and her heart rate was too high. She hated Hannah because the latter loathed Dylan, not knowing that her eagle eyes kept Maeve alive till now. Anyone who hated Dylan automatically became Maeve’s enemy and now she felt miserable. If only she had known.

“So, my sweetheart, if you think I'd let you live to carve out a revenge plan, then you are wrong.”

“It wasn’t easy to get you like this and we won’t take chances, Maeve. You have to go,” Dylan Grayson laughed. His eyes carried a victorious glint from the blood that kept oozing out of her thighs.

“I was good to you,” Maeve cried in pain, as she pleaded with Sandra with deep pants, completely ignoring Dylan. She could feel her life draining out of her.

“You never would have graduated from college without my help and my parents would not have accepted you after you lost your parents if not for me,” Maeve said in painful breaths.

“You know that you did not even pass the interview but I forced my father to break protocols for you. When you decided that you wanted to own a clothing line in addition to your work, I coughed out every penny to set it up for you. Before your kid sister died of brain cancer, I was there. The hospital bills were footed by me and it was my shoulders you cried on every day.”

“Sandra, please don’t do this to me. I’ve loved you like a sister,” Maeve shook her head, recollecting how she argued and even went wayward, just so her father could do what she wanted for Sandra.

Sandra went into thought and Maeve felt like she was considering her words. She could even swear that she saw remorse flash in Sandra’s eyes.

Within a blink, laughter echoed through the room again. Sandra laughed till her eyes dripped with tears.

“What a drama queen!” She addressed Maeve before turning to Dylan, “Babe, she’s preaching to me that she has been good.” Turning to Maeve again, she said, “After taking everything from me, you are still playing the victim. You took everything I ever wanted. As long as your family were there, you made me feel like a piece of trash and I'm tired of it.”

“Everything is all about Maeve. The family business is in your name. Every asset is yours. You never had to work for it. You were born to enjoy life while mine turned the other way,” Sandra sneered at her.

Maeve’s words were stuck in her throat, just as she kept enduring the pain, knowing that help would never find her. Sandra’s laughter once again felt like bullets to her heart, as she revealed,

“Besides, we got lots of help and all those people have to be paid. Like Doctor Flint, Mercy Jay, Gabriel Scott’s secretary, Nancy, Vincent Thomas, your bodyguard, hey, the list is endless.”

There was commotion outside at the moment and Dylan rushed down to the peephole.

“Gracious God, Gabriel Scott is here!” He announced. Maeve’s heart leaped with hope but not until she heard,

“He is stupidly good at martial arts by the way he is kicking the asses of the guards but how wonderful of him walking into our trap?”

Even Sandra was confused at this part of the plan. “Babe, what are you talking about?” She asked Dylan.

Dylan smirked evilly, “Someone has got to pay for this crime.”

“But we can’t stop now,” Sandra moped. Dylan laughed and called the cops on the phone. After making a report in a serious tone, he laughed again and said,

“Never! Gabriel would be the one to be arrested. There is no trace of the poison, everything has been wiped from the cameras as we arranged, and the police would get here to arrest him for her death,” Dylan explained his final escape idea and Sandra kissed him on the lips for coming up with such brilliant last minute plan before they pushed the heavily pregnant Maeve down the stairs.

With her scream which boomed lifelessly through the room before she hit the bottom of the stairs, Dylan and Sandra ran through the back door, at the same time the front door came tumbling down.

Gabriel’s eyes were as red as the liquid in which the woman lay unconscious on the floor. He was accompanied by his personal doctor since he never trusted Maeve’s family doctor.

His doctor checked Maeve’s pulse, saying defeatedly, “She won’t be able to make it.”

“But she’s not gone. Do something,” Gabriel roared at the doctor, lifting the bloody Maeve into his arms.

“Unless we get her to the hospital but it will be too late,” the doctor took a step back and spoke.

Maeve opened her eyes weakly and looked at Gabriel for the last time, blood dripping on the floor from between her thighs.

His eyes were murderous, pained, and filled with regret. She wanted to tell him to leave her because of the cops on the way but was already drifting into unconsciousness, Gabriel’s voice ringing faintly in her mind,

“I’m sorry Maeve but I got here too late. Please don’t leave me. I know that you don’t love me but I can live with it. I just can’t live without you. Come back to me, please. I will kill whoever did this to you but please come back,” he sobbed in the crook of her neck.

Maeve wished she could fulfill his wish. She wanted to speak but no word came out. She was filled with so much regret, wishing she could turn back the hands of time and correct her wrongs.

Like she would love him to the point of madness and dot on him like no other. Only if she had a second chance.

She heard him groan in pain, accompanied by police sirens, and felt his hot tears on her face, before she gave up the ghost. If only, she had a second chance…