One: THE DAY EVERYTHING ENDED

VIDEL...

“No. Please. I don’t want to abort my baby. Let me go.”

The words tore out of me before I realized I was screaming. My throat burned instantly, my voice ripping apart as if it was being dragged from my chest. I tried to twist away, but hands clamped down on my arms, strong and unforgiving. Panic flooded me as I struggled harder, my nails scraping uselessly against fabric.

I could not breathe. My heart pounded so violently it made my head spin. Everything felt too fast and too loud, and at the same time terrifyingly distant. The room smelled of disinfectant, clean and cold and wrong.

“Please,” I cried again, my voice shaking. “Please stop.”

No one answered.

I lifted my head desperately, tears blurring my vision, and that was when I saw him.

Eric stood a short distance away, tall and composed, his face completely calm. Too calm. As if nothing unusual was happening. As if I was not being held down against my will. As if this was not the moment our lives were supposed to change forever. The doctor stood beside him, already wearing gloves, already preparing a syringe.

My chest tightened painfully.

“Eric,” I whispered, my voice breaking. “You cannot do this. This is your child.”

The words felt heavy and sacred when I said them. I clung to them like a lifeline, foolishly believing they might reach him. I searched his face desperately for hesitation, fear, regret. Anything.

What I found was disgust.

His lips curled slightly, his eyes hardening as he looked at me. “Do not ever call it that,” he said coldly. “A woman like you has no right to carry my blood.”

The pain of his words cut deeper than any physical wound.

This was my husband. The man I was legally bound to. The man I had loved quietly, loyally, even when his world never truly accepted me. The man who now stood there unmoved while everything inside me shattered and who would soon discard me as easily as he destroyed our child.

The doctor stepped forward. “We are proceeding.”

“No!” I screamed.

My body reacted on instinct. I thrashed wildly, terror taking over completely. I had always been afraid of injections. Even as a child, needles made my hands shake. Now the syringe in the doctor’s hand felt like a weapon aimed straight at my soul.

“Hold her still,” the doctor said impatiently.

The grip on my arms tightened painfully as I was forced back onto the narrow bed. The surface was cold beneath me, seeping through my clothes. My chest rose and fell violently as sobs tore out of me.

“This is illegal,” I cried. “I did not consent. You cannot do this.”

The doctor did not look at me. “It will be over quickly.”

Rage burst through my fear. “You will pay for this,” I screamed. “Every one of you will pay.”

I turned my head toward Eric, desperation overwhelming everything else. “Please,” I begged him. “I know you do not love me. But do not do this. Please. It is innocent.”

He did not answer. Neither did he move nor stop them.

The needle came closer.

“No!”

Pain shot through my arm, sharp and immediate. The world blurred as the ceiling lights stretched and twisted. My strength drained away, my screams fading into weak, broken sobs. My limbs grew heavy and unresponsive, my thoughts slipping no matter how hard I tried to hold on.

The last thing I saw before everything went dark was Eric’s face. Calm. Detached. As if nothing of importance was happening.

....

When I woke up, the room was silent.

For a moment, I did not know where I was. My body felt heavy, numb, wrong. Then memory crashed back all at once, crushing the air from my lungs. My hand shook as I slowly moved it down to my stomach.

Flat. Empty.

A broken sound tore from my throat. Tears flooded my eyes and soaked into the pillow beneath my head as my body shook uncontrollably. It was over. My baby was gone.

I cried until my throat hurt and my head pounded. When the tears finally stopped, it was not because the pain had eased, but because there was nothing left inside me. I got up on unsteady legs and walked out. No one stopped me. I left the hospital.

Outside, the world moved on as if nothing had happened. Cars passed. People laughed. Life continued. I stepped onto the road without looking.A horn blared violently.

“Are you crazy?” a woman screamed from her car. “Get out of the road!” I didn’t respond. I crossed anyway.

Angry voices followed. Curses. Annoyed stares. None of it mattered.

I moved like a ghost until I finally hailed a taxi.

“Walker Estate,” I said quietly. I didn’t belong there anymore, but I needed my things. Whatever remained of my life, I wanted to take it and leave. Completely.

The taxi moved through the city in silence, the hum of the engine and the rhythm of the road the only things keeping me grounded. I stared out the window, watching buildings blur past, when my mind drifted unwillingly to the past.

Three years ago, I saved my husband’s life.

There was blood everywhere that night. Tires screamed against the asphalt. Voices collided in panic. I remember dropping to my knees without thinking, my hands trembling as I pressed them against his wound, begging him not to close his eyes. Begging him to stay.

I stayed at the hospital long after the doctors said he was stable. Days blurred together. Plastic chairs dug into my back. Meals came from vending machines. I spoke to him in whispers when the machines beeped softly, even when I didn’t know if he could hear me at all.

Someone noticed.

His grandfather.

The old man watched me with a gaze I couldn’t read at first until gratitude settled into it. Authority followed. Then something final, something decided.

That was how everything began.

Not with love.

With obligation.

I had loved Eric even before the accident. Quietly. Foolishly. From a distance that never quite closed. So when his grandfather insisted on the marriage,when Eric finally stood in front of me and asked, I said yes, even though I knew his heart wasn’t mine.

I told myself love could grow. I told myself time would soften him. I told myself patience would be enough.

I was wrong.

I never won his heart.

Only his body, name and the title of wife that meant nothing to him.

When I discovered I was pregnant, hope betrayed me one last time. I thought just for a moment that this might change something. That this child might turn obligation into choice.

So I waited for him.

But when Eric came home that day, it wasn’t to build a future.

He came to end it.

His grandfather was dead. The man who had bound us together was gone. And with him vanished the last reason Eric had ever had to tolerate me.

Our marriage had never been a union.

It was a sentence.

And that day, he decided I had served my purpose.

.....

The iron gates of the Walker Estate opened as I approached. The guard glanced at me, his expression unreadable, and stepped aside without a word.

I walked straight in.

The house was quiet. Too quiet.

As I entered the living room, I saw her.

Gretta Walker, Eric’s mother, sat on the couch, legs crossed, phone in hand, chewing gum slowly. Her makeup was heavy, flawless, deliberate. She looked comfortable. Unconcerned. Like nothing terrible had happened today.

She didn’t look up immediately.

“I thought you’d stay longer at the hospital,” she said coolly, eyes still on her screen. “Or did they finally let you go?”

I stopped a few feet away.

I stared at her, my hands curling slowly into fists.

This woman had never once pretended to accept me from the day I stepped into the Walker family. She had broken me slowly over the years. And when my baby was taken from me, she had approved it.

“Mrs. Walker,” I said quietly, my voice steady despite everything burning inside me, “don’t you have a heart? Watching your son force me to abort your own grandchild… and supporting it?”

That finally made her look up.

Her gaze swept over me, cold and unimpressed. A slow sneer curved her lips.

“Grandchild?” she scoffed. “As long as it came from a woman like you, it was nothing but an embarrassment. An abomination. Someone from your background has no right to carry a Walker heir.”

Something collapsed inside my chest, silently, completely.

I didn’t argue. I didn’t cry.

I looked at her for one last second, then turned away.

Without another word, I walked past the living room and headed for the stairs.

My steps were steady as I climbed upward, even though everything inside me felt hollow.

The hallway was quiet when I reached the bedroom door.

I paused.

There were voices inside. Low. Intimate. A woman’s soft laugh.

My hand tightened around the door handle before I could stop myself.

I pushed the door open.

The sound cut off instantly.

Eric was on the bed.

Bare-chested, relaxed, one arm resting against the headboard. A woman lay against him, her head on his chest, sheets pulled up just enough to cover what they should.

The woman looked at me first.

She didn’t look surprised. Or embarrassed. Her eyes swept over me slowly, deliberately, before her lips curved upward. Not a smile of greeting. A smile of victory.

Something sharp twisted inside my chest.

I sneered inwardly.

I wasn’t even gone yet, and I had already been replaced.

Eric’s expression didn’t change. No guilt. No tension. Just mild acknowledgment.

“You’re back,” he said calmly. “Good.”

He shifted slightly, dislodging her just enough to reach for something on the chair beside the bed. A thin file.

He flicked it toward me.

It hit the floor near my feet. Papers spilled slightly from the folder.

Divorce papers.

“Let’s not waste any more time, Videl,” he said. “Sign those and leave.”