Her husband knew their unborn son was in distress—yet when his lieutenant begged him to come home, Lucian looked at his mistress and whispered, “Not yet.”

"We have uterine rupture!" Dr. Katherine shouted, her hands deep in the surgical field. "Suction! More suction! Give me two units of packed red blood cells stat!"

The air in Operating Room 4 was thick with the copper stench of hemorrhage. The continuous blare of the telemetry monitor echoed off the tiled walls, an unrelenting scream of clinical panic.

"Blood pressure is falling—sixty over thirty!" the anesthesiologist called out, pumping manual ventilation into Serena’s lungs. "We are losing maternal pulse!"

"Get the baby out first! Clamp and cut!"

With a swift, practiced motion, Dr. Katherine delivered the infant.

The room fell into a horrifying, suffocating silence.

There was no cry. No whimper.

The child was limp, his skin an unnatural, bruised purple, covered in vernix and blood.

"Pediatric resuscitation team, now!" Katherine handed the tiny, fragile body to the waiting NICU specialists across the room.

A team of four nurses and a neonatologist descended upon the small warming tray.

"No spontaneous respiration. Heart rate under forty. Starting neonatal CPR. One, two, three, breathe..."

Outside the frosted glass doors, Elena was on her knees on the linoleum floor, her forehead pressed against the cold wall. She could hear the alarms inside. She could hear the muffled shouts of doctors shouting dosages, the rhythmic clicking of defibrillator paddles charging.

Her phone rang in her pocket.

Elena pulled it out with shaking, blood-stained fingers.

The caller ID displayed: *Lucian.*

She stared at the name. The man who had inherited a financial dynasty, who commanded armies of lawyers and security details, who had bought Serena diamonds the size of robin eggs while leaving her soul to starve in an empty mansion.

Elena swiped accept, held the phone to her ear, and didn't speak.

"Elena!" Lucian’s voice came through the line, breathless, wild, frantic. "Where are they? How is Serena? Put Katherine on the phone!"

Elena listened to the sound of his ragged breathing. Then she held the phone out toward the operating room doors, letting the mechanical howl of the flatlining monitor scream directly into the microphone.

"Listen to that, Lucian," Elena whispered, her voice venomous and raw with grief. "That’s the sound of your family dying while you tuck your whore into bed."