Chapter 4

I sat back against the sterile pillows, staring blankly at Charles's tailored shirt.

A wild rat?

A dead, wild rat had somehow unscrewed the sturdy, child-proof lid of a sealed indoor dispenser, climbed inside, and neatly woven its own hair around the filter?

Following the poisoning incident, Charles and Constance hovered around me constantly. They monitored my meals, my water, my medication. They acted like perfect, deeply concerned family members walking on eggshells around a fragile, paranoid pregnant woman.

Elodie even tiptoed through the house, whispering so she wouldn't "upset Mommy."

For months, Silas and Lyra behaved like angels. They brought home straight A's. They folded laundry without being asked.

They were waiting. They were waiting for me to become too cumbersome to run, too clumsy to fight back.

By my seventh month, my stomach was massive. My balance was terrible.

And the angels dropped their masks.

Lyra started leaving her sketchbook open on the kitchen island. Page after page featured crudely drawn pregnant women with their stomachs violently slashed open. She hummed a slow, off-key nursery rhyme under her breath whenever I walked past.

"Die, die, Vivienne."

Silas took to peeling apples at the counter while I cooked. He never looked at the fruit. He stared directly at my abdomen, casually gesturing with the sharp paring knife.

But the very second Charles walked into the room, Lyra closed her book. Silas put the knife down.

I couldn't catch them.

Then came the day I drove myself home from my third-trimester ultrasound.

I turned my key in the lock and pushed the solid wooden door open.

The massive oak console table had been dragged directly into the entryway.

Silas and Lyra shoved the table violently forward the second I crossed the threshold. The solid wood slammed into my torso.

I stumbled backward, throwing my hands over my stomach.

Charles's hand clamped onto my shoulder from behind, yanking me out of the doorway. He kicked the console table away, putting his body between me and the kids.

The sharp corner of the table caught his forearm, tearing a deep gash through his shirt sleeve. Blood instantly soaked the fabric.

Charles lunged forward. "What is wrong with you?"

Lyra immediately collapsed onto the floor, bursting into hysterical tears. "Daddy, I'm sorry! We were just moving it to clean!"

Silas shrank against the wall, cowering like a terrified bird, trembling violently.

Charles gripped his bleeding arm. His furious gaze shifted from the weeping children to me, then back again.

He finally realized the pattern.

"They only do this to you, Vivienne," he said slowly, his brow furrowed. "They only attack when they see you."

"We need a professional," I said, keeping my voice utterly devoid of emotion.

The very next morning, we sat in the sterile, high-end office of Dr. Sabrina Thorne, a renowned trauma psychologist.

Dr. Thorne tapped a silver pen against her legal pad. "Foster children who attack their adoptive mothers usually suffer from three latent psychological triggers: territorial threat, severe attachment anxiety, or projecting the abuse of their biological mother."

She leaned forward, her perfectly manicured hands steepled together.

"Given the timeline of their aggression, Vivienne, it’s quite clear. They sense the biological child you are carrying. To them, your 'pureblood' infant is a direct threat to their survival in your home."

I stared at Dr. Thorne’s expressionless face.

The agency had specifically placed Silas and Lyra with us because their evaluations proved they excelled around infants and toddlers. And when we first brought Elodie home as a baby, they had been fiercely protective of her.

Why were they only targeting this baby?

The car ride home was suffocatingly quiet.

As Charles turned onto our street, Constance finally broke her silence from the backseat.

"Don't call me superstitious," she murmured, leaning forward. "But I have friends in Louisiana who consult mediums. They say children who survive severe trauma can see things we can't."

I met her eyes in the rearview mirror.

"Vivienne," Constance asked softly. "Is it possible the child you're carrying... brought something evil into this house?"

"My ultrasounds are perfectly healthy," I snapped.

Constance leaned back into the shadows. "I just think this baby is cursed. It's attracting something truly unholy."

Her words crawled under my skin.

That night, I dreamt I was hemorrhaging on the bathroom floor. The liquid pouring out of me wasn't blood. It was thick, black sludge.

I woke up gasping, my nightgown soaked in a cold sweat.

I reached out to shake Charles. "Charles, wake up."

He didn't move. He was completely dead to the world.

I threw the covers off and walked out of the bedroom, desperate for a glass of cold water.

The hallway was silent. I instinctively checked the guest room lock at the end of the corridor.

The slide bolt was locked tight.

But the gap under the door was completely dark. The usual glow of their nightlight was gone.

Something drew my gaze to the other side of the house.

At the bottom of the basement stairs, a faint, pulsing red light flickered from the storage room.

I pressed my bare feet against the cold hardwood, creeping down the stairs.

I peered through the wooden slats.

My breath caught in my throat. Every hair on my arms stood rigidly upright.

I clamped a hand over my mouth, stumbling backward into the dark stairwell.

I finally understood. I knew exactly why these "traumatized foster children" wanted to murder my baby.