VENGEANCE AS CRUEL AS HIS LOVE

~ Jennifer ~

I felt a sharp pain In my head while I was still half asleep at about 5 a.m in the morning. I struggled to wake up only to find Stanley, my husband. standing beside my bed pulling my hair so hard.

“Wake up, you lazy woman! It’s morning; you were supposed to make me breakfast, and you are still sleeping like a bag of salt.”

The blows from Stanley were a regular punctuation in the sentences of our marriage: a slap for a cold dinner, a shove for a mumbled reply, a backhand for looking at him a second too long. So when a rough hand grabbed my hair and wrenched my head from the pillow, my first emotion wasn't surprise but a weary, bone-deep resignation. Another day, another transgression I hadn't even known I’d committed.

“A liability!” he continued. “You think I go out to break my back every day so you can lie in bed like a queen? And what the hell is this, Jennifer?” he said, shaking the little stick as if the answers would fall out.

He was holding something: a small, rectangular piece of white plastic. My eyes still blurry with sleep, focused on it. It was the pregnancy test. The one with two bold, red lines I’d stared at for an hour yesterday, a secret smile playing on my lips before cold terror snuffed it out.

I had forgotten to hide them. I’d tucked the test in my wardrobe, behind a stack of sweaters, intending to retrieve it today. I was supposed to find another way, a gentler way, a safer way to tell him. Maybe over his favorite meal, with soft music playing. A foolish, romantic fantasy. There was no safe way with Stanley.

“What the hell is in these test result? he screamed.

“Stanley, I can explain…”

“You allowed this to happen!” he shouted, the sound tearing through the quiet morning. He dropped the test, and his hand was back in my hair, pulling, yanking me half out of the bed. “I warned you! I warned you to be careful! Pregnant, How inconvenient."

"Inconvenient? I stood up and force his hand away from my hair. And I screamed back in tears “Stanley, it's our child."

"Our child?" He took a step forward. "There is no 'our' in this, Jennifer. There is me, and there is you. And this… this is a complication. My timeline for the European expansion is this year. I cannot have you swollen and emotional, unable to host, becoming a… distraction."

Tears pricked my eyes, but I willed them away. Crying was a victory for him. "It's not a distraction. It's a baby. Your heir.”

He slammed the tumbler down on the marble floor; the sound echoed like a gunshot. "I decide what my legacy is! Not you! Not some… accidental pregnancy. You will get rid of it. We’ll schedule the procedure discreetly in Switzerland."

"No." The word was a whisper, but it was the most powerful thing I’d ever said to him.

His eyes widened in genuine shock. I had never directly refused him before. His hand shot out and gripped my upper arm, his fingers digging into the flesh. "What did you say to me?"

"I said no," I repeated. "I'm keeping my baby."

"Your baby?" he asked in an uncomfortable manner. "You have nothing that is yours! This apartment, the clothes on your back, the food you eat; it's all mine! You are mine!"

He shoved me, and I stumbled back, my hip connecting sharply with the edge of our luxurious mirror. A gasp of pain escaped me.

"Please, Stanley," I pleaded, my hand making a covering over my stomach, a useless shield.

"Don't you 'please' me," he spat, advancing again. "You will do as you're told. You will get back in line."

He grabbed me again, and I twisted away, a surge of adrenaline giving me immediate speed. It was the wrong move. His face transformed into something truly monstrous. He didn't just slap me this time. He squeezed his fist into a rounded shape, and with a brutal, professional punch, he drove it into my side.

The air left my lungs in a rush. I crumpled to the cold, hard floor, curling up in pain, which was lower and deeper. A hot, sickening cramp made its way into my abdomen.

"Get up," he commanded. "Stop being dramatic."

But I couldn't. The world was tilting, narrowing to a point of excruciating agony in my core. A wet warmth spread between my legs. I looked down, and the world stopped. The back of my white pyjamas was stained a deep, terrible red color.

"No," I whispered the word like a prayer and a curse. "No, no, no."

Stanley followed my gaze. For a single, horrifying second, I saw a flicker of something in his eyes, not remorse, but the startled calculation of a man assessing damages.

"See what you made me do?" he said, his voice flat. "Clean yourself up. I'll call Dr. Evans. He’s discreet."

Stanley stepped over the growing pool of blood, pulling out his phone, already distancing himself from the horror scene. "David," he said, "There's been an accident at the house. Jennifer fell. She's had a miscarriage. There's a lot of blood. Send your team. And get Dr. Evans here. Now.”

My life crumpled before me. As I lay on the floor in a pool of my own blo*d and lost future, the taste of blood in my mouth was like a bitter pill I had never tasted. As the door clicked shut, something in me broke not into smaller pieces, but into something harder and sharper.

The pain was still there, piercing into my head like a cold snake coiled in my stomach, but it was now joined by a new, fierce emotion: a burning, all-consuming hatred. But it wasn't in my spirit; it was the last chain holding me captive. The love I’d once foolishly harbored, the fear, the hope, it all drained away with the life of my child, leaving behind a cold, hard, empty vessel, ready to be filled with purpose: “Revenge.”