Chapter 2

Scattered across the floor were bottles of folic acid and brand-new baby clothes.

Last night, I'd secretly called my mother to tell her I was pregnant. She'd been so thrilled that she'd skipped her ER shift this morning and rushed straight over.

"Mom, please—save my baby!"

I didn't know where the strength came from, but I wrenched myself free from the servants and stumbled toward the front door, desperately grabbing Mom's arm.

Seeing me pale, tear-stained, and utterly disheveled, my mother gasped sharply.

Instinctively, she yanked me behind her and held me tight, her face hard as she turned toward my in-laws in the grand hall.

"Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne," she said coldly. "My daughter didn't come into this house to be treated like a criminal. You'd better explain what the hell is going on here. Now."

Leaning against her steady back, I felt my taut nerves finally begin to loosen.

Mom had raised me alone all my life, pouring everything into giving me the best. I knew she would always stand by me, no matter what.

And as an OB-GYN with decades of experience, she only believed in science.

With her here, these lunatics wouldn't be able to hurt my child over some withered plant.

But facing my mother's furious demand, Conrad didn't even lift his eyes.

He simply tapped his cane and raised his chin slightly toward the coffee table.

"See for yourself, Hilary."

My mother frowned and followed his gaze.

When she saw the Crimson Orchid—now a blackened, rotting mass reeking of decay—I felt her protective grip on my arm freeze.

"Mom, don't listen to them!" I scrambled to pick up the amniocentesis report from the floor and shoved it into her hands. "Look at the numbers! The report is clear—the baby's perfectly healthy, no genetic disorders—"

My voice died.

Because I saw that Mom was staring at the putrid flower, her face bone-white.

She didn't even glance at the report I'd given her. As if touching something contaminated, she slowly opened her hand and let the paper flutter back onto the carpet.

"Mom?" I stared at her in disbelief.

"End it, Claire." My mother turned her head slowly, looking at me with an expression so foreign, so laced with fear, that I barely recognized her.

"The orchid's turned black... You can't keep this baby."

Those words hit me like a sledgehammer, shattering my last hope.

I never imagined that she—the head of obstetrics—would actually believe a rotting flower over medical evidence and force me to abort.

I stared wide-eyed, my voice breaking:

"Mom... what are you saying? You're a doctor! The ultrasound, the heartbeat—everything's perfect! Are modern medical reports worth less than some rotting plant?!"

"That's the Crimson Orchid, Claire. When it turns black, there's no way out."

My mother avoided my eyes, staring fixedly at the decaying plant, her voice trembling. "Please, just listen. You can't have this baby."

And beside that fetid pool of rot, Margaret set down her teacup with a derisive snort.

"See? Even your mother knows better than you do."

Margaret's mockery, combined with the stench of that rotting plant, finally snapped the last thread of my sanity.

This cursed flower had already taken my first two babies. Now it had turned my only ally into an accomplice.

"It's this damn thing that's cursed! It should be the one that dies!"

I lost it completely. Eyes blazing, I lunged across the coffee table, reaching for the glass case.

But I didn't even touch the table's edge before two servants grabbed my arms, wrenched them back, and forced me to my knees on the carpet.

"Let me go!" I struggled wildly, turning desperately to my mother. "Mom! Help me!"

She did rush forward—but not to push the servants away.

She dropped to her knees beside me and pressed her hands down hard on my struggling shoulders, tears hot on my skin:

"Claire, stop fighting! Just listen to them! I'm trying to keep you alive!"

The weight on my shoulders shattered my heart completely.

I'd endured the first two abortions alone, strapped to cold operating tables. But at least then, I'd had the thought of home to return to.

This time, my own mother was the one holding me down for the knife.

Ice flooded through me. I stopped looking at her, clutching my belly in despair as tears poured down my face.

No one could help me. From the very beginning, I'd been fighting alone.

Seeing me gradually stop struggling, Margaret retrieved a cloudy syringe from a medical kit nearby.

Looking at that slender needle, survival instinct drove me to one last plea:

"Margaret, please... just let me keep him, and I'll leave. I'll disappear. He's only three months old—whatever they say he is, he's everything to me..."

The vast living room filled with nothing but suffocating silence.

"The orchid's blackened. That means deformity. Better to handle it now—for everyone." Margaret's face was cold as she expelled air from the syringe, her tone flat and clinical.

Conrad nodded silently, leaning on his cane.

Violent terror seized my throat. The stabbing cramps from my previous abortions surged through my body again.

Margaret stepped forward and yanked my head back by the hair. The guards clamped down on my arms as that cold needle drove mercilessly toward my vein—

"BANG—!"

Just as the murky liquid began to push in, the front door exploded inward with a brutal kick.

A roar shattered the deathly silence:

"GET AWAY FROM HER!"

I snapped my eyes open, peering past the brutish guards.

It was my husband. Adrian.