Chapter 3: The voice behind the door

Amelia’s pov

I didn’t sleep that night.

The man from the terrace stayed in my head, the way he’d looked at me like he already knew something about my life I didn’t, I told myself it was nothing. A business associate, someone Evelyn had met through the company, it didn’t explain the way my stomach had dropped, but I was tired of chasing feelings that led nowhere.

Two days later, I went looking for my reading glasses in Evelyn’s study. She kept a spare pair for me in her desk drawer, ever since the migraines started making it hard to read fine print the house was quiet, most of the staff gone for the evening, Gregory still at the office the way he always was.

I heard voices before I reached the door.

Helena’s voice first, low, controlled, the kind of tone she used when she didn’t want to be overheard. I stopped walking, the study door was open just a crack, light spilling out into the hallway in a thin gold line.

“…she’s still not showing any symptoms. Are you certain the dosage was adjusted?”

“I adjusted it exactly the way Dr. Whitman told me to.” Evelyn’s voice, but different, flatter, none of the warmth she used with me. “It takes time to affect fertility without looking suspicious, if I push it too fast, it raises questions.”

“We don’t have time for subtlety, Evelyn. Gregory is starting to ask why nothing has worked for four years,if he starts looking into the medical records himself…” “He won’t, he trusts Dr. Whitman completely, and Whitman is too scared of losing everything to talk. The falsified reports have held up this long, they’ll hold up a while longer.”

I stood frozen in the hallway, one hand pressed flat against the wall to keep myself steady, my heart slamming so hard I was sure they’d hear it through the door.

“And the miscarriages?” Helena asked.

“Every single one was intentional.” Evelyn’s tone didn’t waver, didn’t crack, like she was discussing a grocery list instead of three dead pregnancies. “The herbal compound Whitman gave me breaks down completely in her system within hours no trace, no proof, nothing a hospital could ever catch. She just thinks her body keeps failing her.”

“Good.” Helena exhaled, something like relief in the sound. “The sooner she believes she’s barren, the sooner Gregory divorces her, and the sooner you can step in as his wife, this family needs an heir, and it needs one from a woman who actually wants to be part of it.”

“I’ve wanted this longer than you know.” Evelyn’s voice softened into something almost hungry. She was always the favorite, the pretty one, the sweet one, the one everyone loved without trying I’m tired of being her shadow

My legs nearly gave out beneath me.

Four years. Four years of doctors telling me my body was failing, four years of Helena’s cruelty, four years of watching my husband pull away a little more with every loss, and it had never been my body at all, it had been my sister’s hands, pouring poison into tea she made with a smile, sitting beside my hospital bed pretending to grieve alongside me.

I pressed my fist against my mouth to keep from making a sound. “What about the surrogacy program?” Helena asked. “If Gregory does eventually agree to it, we need the process controlled from the inside.”

“Already handled. Whitman has a surrogate lined up, someone with no family, no connections, easy to manage, if it comes to that, we’ll make sure the child looks enough like Gregory that no one questions it.”

“And Amelia?”

There was a pause. A long, terrible pause. “By then,” Evelyn said quietly, she won’t be a problem anymore.

I didn’t wait to hear more. I turned and walked as steadily as I could back down the hallway, my hands shaking so badly I had to grip the banister to keep from stumbling on the stairs. In my room, I locked the door and sat on the edge of the bed, staring at my phone, my mind racing through every memory of the last four years, replaying it all with new, horrifying clarity.

The tea, the check-ins, comfort that always seemed to arrive exactly when I was at my lowest. I opened the voice recorder app with trembling fingers and saved a note to myself, a timestamp, a rough summary of everything I’d just heard, in case my memory tried to convince me later that I’d imagined it. Then I sat there in the dark, waiting for my breathing to slow, waiting for the shaking in my hands to stop.

It didn’t stop, if anything, it got worse the longer I sat with it.

I needed proof. Real proof, something undeniable, something I could bring to Gregory that he couldn’t argue his way around. A recording of a private conversation might not be enough on its own, not against a family with enough money to bury anything inconvenient.

I thought of Dr. Whitman. If the falsified records existed anywhere, they existed in his office, if I could get access to my actual medical files, the real ones, compared against what he’d told me for years, that would be evidence no lawyer could dismiss.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand, Gregory.

Working late again. Don’t wait up.

I stared at the message, something cold and clear settling into my chest where the panic had been a moment ago, he didn’t know. Whatever else he was, whatever coldness these past years had carved into him, he genuinely didn’t know what his mother and my sister were doing to me. If he found out, if I could show him the truth with my own eyes and not just my word against theirs, maybe something could still be salvaged, maybe he’d remember who he used to be before this family reshaped him.

I typed a reply, deleted it, typed another.

I need to talk to you tonight. It’s important.

I hit send before I could second-guess it, and grabbed my car keys off the dresser, my hands finally steady with purpose instead of fear, Whitman’s office was twenty minutes away. If I left now, I could be there and back before Evelyn even noticed I was gone.

I made it as far as the garage.

That was when I saw the brake fluid pooling beneath the car, dark and glistening over the overhead light, and someone had already gotten there before me.