Chapter 4

LYDIA

My heart was pounding relentlessly in my chair as I sat with shaky hands.

Adrian was pacing the hospital hallway like a federal police man on duty.

My parents were standing by the door of the emergency room and whispering in low tones, possibly cursing me out over the incident.

No one spared me a glance.

I inhaled, detecting the despair and the  hospital antiseptic in the air.

When the doctor finally emerged from the emergency room, they moved.

I scrambled to my feet to join my parents and Adrian to surround him.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. 

My heart fell to my feet.

"We did everything we could, but she eventually lost the baby."

I staggered backwards, speechless.

My mother let out a strangled sob as my father put his arm around her. 

Adrian kept staring at the doctor as if he couldn't understand any of his words.

"No," Adrian said. "That can't be right. You have to go and check again."

The doctor shook his head.

"I am really sorry… the trauma from the fall  caused a complete miscarriage even before you had rushed her here but Miss Vanessa will be fine."

The moment the doctor stepped away, Adrian's head slowly turned to me with a feral look in his eyes.

"You killed my child."

"I-I didn't m-mean to," I stammered. 

"You murdered my baby!" He barked as he grabbed me by the shoulders.

"It was an accident Adrian. I just pushed her away a-and s-she fell—"

He interrupted me.

"I want you out of my house tonight. We are getting divorced immediately."

I went wide eyed.

My soul left my body.

I began to shake my head.

"Adrian, please—"

He held up a hand. 

"Don't." 

His voice was low and dangerous. 

"Don't say another word to me. I can't even bear to look at you right now."

He hissed and walked past me towards Vanessa's hospital room.

I tried to follow after him but my father was quick to block my path.

"I think you've done enough damage for one night, Lydia," he told me coldly.

The cry that forced itself up my throat was pure agony, breaking my resolve.

I crumpled into a pile onto the plastic chairs in the hallway.

It was over.

Adrian would never forgive me.

Finally, I was allowed to see Vanessa about three days after the accident.

The moment I walked into her hospital room, she looked away from me.

I swallowed guiltily as I took in her pale and fragile frame on the hospital bed.

"I'm so sorry," I said. 

My voice broke. 

"Vanessa, I am so, so sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen."

She looked up.

Her eyes were lifeless.

The sight struck me deep and I realized I had taken something away from her.

No matter how much I hated her, this was too much for my conscience to bear.

It was an innocent child.

"Get out," she whispered.

"Please," I fell to my knees. "Let me make this right somehow. I'll do anything."

She looked at me then.

"You took my baby away from me Lydia.”

Tears streamed down her face. 

“How can you make anything right?"

The sight of her shaking with her tears nearly tore my heart apart with pain.

I swallowed hard.

"I don't know. But I'll try."

She looked at me.

"I will leave Adrian alone. I'll divorce him and disappear. I will even change my name and you'll never have to see me again." 

I don't know where the words tumbled out from in my own desperation. 

"Just forgive me, please."

Vanessa was quiet for a long moment, just staring at me with those blank orbs.

Then she finally sat up and said, "There is one thing you could do for me."

My eyes lit up at the mention of a possible way of atonement for my sins.

"What is it?" I asked.

She wiped her eyes.

"You know that the company is in trouble, Lydia? There have been some financial discrepancies in the accounts." 

I nodded.

Money had been missing from Adrian's company where we both worked.

Investigation was currently ongoing to trace the money and paper company.

"It was me."

My blood ran cold.

"You?" I asked with a questioning brow.

She nodded.

"I made some mistakes with the money."

My stomach dropped. 

"But if Adrian finds out, he'll destroy our family's business completely."

She began to cry again, covering her face with her palms as her frame shook.

"He is already fuming."

I understood instantly.

Everything happening now was because Adrian had helped out with the company.

If he found out, we were all dead meat.

And maybe even Vanessa would be included because she was no longer pregnant for him.

"What are you asking me to do?"

"Take the fall."

I was aghast, even as the words kept tumbling out of her mouth.

"Say you did it. You're leaving anyway, right? You said you would disappear." 

Her voice was soft, pleading. 

"This way, at least our family won't be ruined too. After everything I've lost, I can't lose that as well."

I should have said no. 

I should have walked out of that hospital room and never looked back. 

But the guilt was eating me alive.

I couldn't keep leaving with this baggage that I was a murderer.

Atonement was needed.

"Yes," I heard myself say. "I'll do it."

Everything happened so fast after that. 

I confessed to the embezzlement charges in her place, hoping for retrenchment.

After all, it was just for Vanessa to return the money and everything would be over.

I would divorce Adrian, get my well deserved alimony and disappear.

Only it hadn't happened like that.

Evidence had appeared out of nowhere for other crimes, pointing straight at me. 

When Adrian had come to see me, he was like a raging volcano, erupting everywhere.

He made a vow that he would make sure I spent the rest of my miserable life rotting behind the bars of a prison cell.

There had been no time for me to refute or even defend myself in all of this.

I didn't even understand why he was so mad when the money was so little.

Until the extent of Vanessa's crimes were staring me in the face like a horror movie.

I realized then that I had admitted to not just theft, but corporate espionage.

I might really go to prison.

Vanessa urged me, begging me to be quiet and she would get me out after.

She promised that she would talk to Adrian after he had calmed down.

And I had been a fool to succumb.

The trial that lasted was less than a week because I couldn't even fight it. 

I pleaded guilty to corporate espionage and was sentenced to five years.

For her.

Vanessa.

But, she never came back and she never kept her promise to free me.

I was abandoned.

The prison was even worse than I had ever imagined, filled with murderous women who looked at me like I was prey. 

I kept my head down and tried to survive since I was unable to reach Vanessa.

Nobody replied to my letters, even Adrian, whom I had written the entire truth to.

At the shower block with soap on my face about a week into my five year sentence, someone grabbed me from behind.

Pain exploded in my side before I could mutter a word—a knife.

The cold metal sliced my skin and dug into my flesh not once, not twice.

Three times. 

Thrice I was stabbed and left, falling to the concrete floor with a thud.

My blood pooled everywhere on the wet floor as I stared at my assailant.

The woman standing over me had cold eyes and a bloody knife in her hands.

I recognized her.

Taylor.

She was the head of the prisoners here, convicted for serial killings.

I tried to move but the sharp pain when I did rendered my limbs instantly useless.

Taylor leaned closer, grinning, her yellowed theory two teeth smiling down at me.

"Hey, Vanessa says to tell you thank you for everything," she said in a calm voice. 

I froze.

Vanessa?

She had sent her to kill me?

Taylor raised the knife one more time and rammed it straight into my neck.

My eyes bulged.

"Also," she whispered as she twisted the weapon deeper. "She was never pregnant."

The impact of the words came down in me way harder than the blade ever could.

If Vanessa had never been pregnant, that means there would have been no miscarriage. 

There was no dead baby, no need for me to take the fall and make atonement.

Soon, it dawned on me.

This was just another one of Vanessa's many lies, just another manipulation. 

She had guilt tripped me into taking the fall for the crimes I didn't commit.

And now, she had sent someone to make sure I never told the truth again.

Dead people couldn't tell secrets.

I instantly tried to speak, to send Vanessa my own message through Taylor.

But blood filled my mouth as my vision began to darken around the edges.

The last thing I thought before everything went pitch black was that I had been such a fool and if I ever got another chance, I would make them all pay.

Then there was nothing.