The world went dark for a moment. When it returned, the pain in my back was gone, replaced by a devastating, tearing sensation in my womb.
“Ahhh!” I screamed, pulling my knees to my chest.
“Get up!” Sylvia stood over me like a vulture. “Stop the theatrics! You barely touched the floor!”
Then I felt it—a warm, terrifying rush of fluid. It soaked through my clothes and pooled beneath me on the white floor.
I looked down. Against the pristine tile, a dark, crimson stain was spreading with horrifying speed.
“The baby…” I whispered, the realization hitting me like a physical blow.
David and Mark rushed into the room.
“What’s going on?” David demanded, looking more annoyed than concerned. “I heard a noise.”
“She tripped,” Sylvia lied instantly. “The girl is clumsy. And look at this—she’s made a mess of my floor!”
David stared at the blood. He didn’t rush to my side. He didn’t call for help. He simply scowled.
“For God’s sake, Anna,” David groaned. “Must everything be a production? Mark, I’m sorry. She’s… she’s having a crisis.”
Mark looked horrified. “David, she’s bleeding a lot. We need an ambulance.”
“No!” David snapped. “No sirens. I’m on the partner track; I don’t need the police or paramedics at my door for a domestic mishap.”
He looked down at me. “Get up, Anna. Clean this up. If you’re still bleeding in an hour, I’ll take you to a clinic.”
“A clinic?” I choked out through the pain. “David… I’m losing our child. Call 911!”
“I said get up!” David roared.
He grabbed my arm and hauled me upward. Another wave of blood hit the floor. The pain was blinding. In that moment, I saw him for what he truly was. He didn’t care about me or the child. I was just an accessory that had become inconvenient.
I reached into my pocket, my fingers trembling as I found my phone.
“I’m calling the police,” I sobbed.
David’s face went dark with malice. “Give me that!”
He ripped the phone from my hand and threw it with full force across the room. It shattered against the wall into a hundred pieces.
“You aren’t calling anyone,” David hissed, looming over me. “You will be silent. You will stop this bleeding. And you will apologize to my mother for ruining our dinner.”
As I lay in the wreckage of my life, something inside me shifted. The physical agony was still there, but a cold, hard clarity began to take over.
The Thorne blood was asserting itself. I came from a line of giants—men who held the scales of justice in their hands. I had tried to hide that fire to be the wife David wanted, but that woman was dead now.
I stopped crying. I wiped the blood from my mouth and looked up at my husband. He was standing there with his hands on his hips, looking down at me with utter contempt.
“Listen to me,” David sneered, crouching down so we were eye-to-eye. “I am a powerful attorney. I know every judge in this jurisdiction. I know the Sheriff. If you try to speak a word of this, I will ruin you.”
He jabbed a finger at my shoulder.
“It’s your word against ours. My mother will say you fell. Mark… well, Mark knows which way the wind blows, don’t you, Mark?”
Mark, trembling in the corner, nodded weakly. “I didn’t see anything.”
“See?” David gave a sharp, predatory grin. “You have nothing. I’ll have you committed, Anna. I’ll claim you’ve had a mental breakdown. I will lock you away where no one will ever find you. You can’t beat me. I know every law and every loophole.”
I looked at his cheap suit and his small, ambitious eyes.
“You’re right, David,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “You know the laws.”
I pushed myself up, using the cabinets for leverage.
“But you have no idea who wrote them.”
David’s brow furrowed. “What are you talking about? Has the blood loss made you crazy?”
“Give me your phone,” I said.
“What?”
“Give me your phone,” I repeated. “Call my father.”
David laughed, a harsh, mocking sound. He looked at Sylvia. “Did you hear that? She wants to call the ‘clerk’ in Florida. What’s he going to do, sue me for emotional distress?”
“Call him,” I said. “Put it on speaker.”
David shrugged, pulling his phone from his pocket. “Fine. Let’s call him. Let’s tell him his daughter is a failure.”
He opened the keypad. “What’s the number?”
I gave him the digits. It wasn’t a Florida number. It was a restricted D.C. line. David hesitated as he entered the area code. “202? That’s Washington.”
“Just dial, David.”
He pressed the button and held the phone out mockingly.
The call didn’t go to an assistant. It didn’t ring long.
“Identify yourself,” a voice commanded.
It wasn’t a greeting; it was an order. The voice was heavy with the weight of absolute authority.
David blinked, his confidence wavering. “Uh… hello? Is this Mr. Thorne?”
“I said identify yourself,” the voice repeated, even colder. “You are on a secure federal line. Who is this?”
David swallowed hard. “This is David Miller. I’m Anna’s husband. Look, your daughter has had a bit of an accident, and—”
“Anna?” The voice shifted instantly. The professional mask dropped, replaced by the raw fear of a father. “Where is my daughter? Put her on.”
“She’s right here,” David said, rolling his eyes at Sylvia. “Making a scene because she fell.”
He shoved the phone toward me.
“Daddy?” I whispered, my voice breaking.
“Anna? Why are you calling from this number? What’s happened?”
“Daddy…” I broke down. “They hurt me. David and Sylvia. She pushed me, Daddy. I’m bleeding… I think I lost the baby.”
The silence on the other end was deafening. It was the silence before a storm that levels cities.
David looked at me, confused. “Why are you telling him that? He’s a clerk.”
