Chapter 5

She was in the middle of drafting a personal statement as to why she wanted to pursue medicine when Grace knocked softly on her door one afternoon in her seventh month, her expression carefully arranged.

“Daniela,” she said. “We have a visitor.”

“A visitor? Who? Daniela frowned, setting the laptop aside, one hand instinctively bracing against the small of her back as she rose. "Do I know them?"

The words died in her throat the moment she stepped into the sitting room and saw who was perched on her sofa, legs crossed, lips curved into a smile mocking at her.

Ashley Blair, Daniela came to know her name through a gossip magazine; she was an heiress, though their company was not doing so well. She and her brother relied on the projects given to Marco to survive, as they were his childhood friends. They were the only friends. Ashley had always been glued to Marco before his marriage as his plus one in many social events, but Marco had married her, and after that Ashley had gone abroad for her studies. She had returned recently and was always seen partying with him and her brother Lucas Blair.

The woman from the study, the one who had leaned into Marco with a familiarity that had shattered something in Daniela's chest weeks ago, and now she was sitting now in her villa, in her home, looking utterly, infuriatingly at ease.

“Well,” Ashley said, her gaze sweeping over Daniela's swollen belly with distaste. “Look at you. You are glowing.”

Daniela's hands curled at her sides, her heart hammering with a fury she hadn't known she still had the strength to feel.

“What are you doing here? I don’t think we have ever met. If you want to meet, call him. Why are you looking for me?”

Ashley's smile only widened. “I think you already know, sweetheart. I just came to see how much longer I have to wait.”

Daniela turned away, one hand pressed to her lower back, willing to engage with her, but it hurt after she knew that Marco had told her everything. “I have nothing to say to you..."

“Ignoring me won't change anything,” Ashley said, getting up from the sofa with an, unbothered grace that made Daniela's skin crawl. “I just thought you deserved to know the truth, since everyone else seems so intent on keeping you in the dark.”

“I don't want to hear anything you have to say; just leave.”

“Marco loves me,” Ashley said, each word deliberate, aimed at her like a blade. “He's loved me for years, long before you ever walked into his life with your little physiotherapy tricks and seduced him.” She stepped closer, lifting her head, studying her the way a predator studies its prey. “But I can't carry a child. My body won't allow it. So Marco, the practical, caring Marco, found another way. He decided to spare me the pain of childbirth. That's what you are, Daniela, a surrogate with a wedding ring, nothing more. Eventually everything will be mine, even your children.”

Daniela's stomach twisted; the words were like a knife pierced in her heart. She thought of the study, of Ashley leaning into Marco with that same easy familiarity, and some small, exhausted part of her wondered if it might even be true. But she refused to let this woman see her break.

“If that's what you believe,” Daniela said, her voice trembling but her chin lifted, “then you have your answer. Why are you still here?”

Something flickered across Ashley's face—irritation, maybe, at not getting the reaction she had come for—and then her smile turned cruel in a way that made the air in the living room gloomy.

“Because I wanted to tell you in person that once those babies are born,” Ashley said, slow and deliberate, savoring every syllable, “I will be the one raising them. I will be the one they call mother. And you, you will just be the woman who carried them, the whore who didn't want them enough to fight for them. That's the story I will tell them, Daniela. That their real mother abandoned them the moment they were born."

The world went white at the edges.

It wasn't the accusation of being called a whore; she could have swallowed that and let it slide off her like water, but it was the rest of it. “Abandoned them, didn't want them.” The very thing she feared most, the nightmare that had been clawing at her in the dark for weeks now spoken aloud by this woman's smug, satisfied mouth as though it were already fact, already written into her children's future.

Something in Daniela broke.

Her hand moved before her mind caught up to it, and the crack of her palm against Ashley's cheek echoed through the room like a gunshot, her anger finally finding an outlet after weeks of forced, suffocating silence.

“Don't you dare,” Daniela's voice tore out of her, raw and shaking. “Don't you ever think of doing that, or I will make you regret it.”

But Ashley recovered faster than her swollen cheek; holding onto her reddened cheek, she shoved Daniela back, hard, both hands slamming into her shoulders with a vicious push, and the world tilted violently as Daniela's feet lost the floor beneath her.

She hit the ground before she even registered anything.

Pain exploded through her, radiating from her hip up through her spine, but it was the sensation low in her belly, a deep, wrenching, agonizing pain that ripped a scream from her throat.

"No—no, no…” Her hands flew to her stomach, and even through the fabric of her dress she could feel something warm and wet spreading beneath her. “Someone help me! Please, somebody help!”

Ashley stood over her, and for one horrifying second, her expression wasn't fear or regret; it was satisfaction, cold and smug, as if this was precisely the outcome she'd hoped for all along.

“HELP! “Somebody help! Daniela’s scream, raw with terror, shattered the villa. "Please, my babies—someone help me..."

Footsteps thundered down the hallway. Grace burst into the room first, her face draining of color the instant she saw Daniela crumpled on the floor, blood soaking through her dress and pooling beneath her.

“Daniela,” Grace's hand flew to her mouth before she dropped to her knees beside her, ignoring her own frail joints, ignoring everything except the terror written across Daniela's face. “Someone call an ambulance now!” she screamed toward the maids crowding the doorway, her voice cracking with a panic Daniela had never heard from her before. “Right now, move it.”

"It hurts,” Daniela sobbed, clutching at Grace's sleeve with fear. "Grace, it hurts so much, please, the babies, I can't lose them, please save them…”

“You won't; I won’t let anything happen to both of you.” Grace said fiercely, pressing a trembling hand to Daniela's cheek, though her eyes, wet and terrified, betrayed how little control she truly had over that promise. “Do you hear me? You will not lose them. Stay with me, Daniela. Stay awake. Help is coming, Daniela.”

Somewhere behind them, Ashley had gone very quiet, very still, but Daniela did not even notice her; she could not see or even feel anything except the agonising, tearing pain radiating from her core and the warm, sickening spread of blood beneath her and a desperate urge to scream.

“Please," she whispered, to God, to Grace, as the room began to blur and tilt at the edges. “Please, don’t take my babies. Please, lord, have mercy on them.”

The ambulance came outside the villa flashing its emergency lights, Grace's hand gripping hers so tightly it hurt, a paramedic's voice calling out numbers that meant nothing and everything. By the time they wheeled her into the ER, Daniela's vision was fading, but her hands still pressed protectively over the small, precious weight of her stomach.

The doctor emerged after what felt like seconds and centuries, his expression grim, and the words he spoke seemed to come from very far away, underwater, unreal.

“She's hemorrhaging. We need to operate immediately; both the mother's life and the children's lives are at risk.”