My Husband Let His Mistress Kill Our Baby

The stairs gleamed like a frozen river.

I stood at the top of the main staircase, the box of family albums digging into my hip. Mrs. Brooks had sent word through a maid: "Everly must prove her dedication to this family's legacy." Amber had been the one to suggest I retrieve these particular albums from the attic—decades of Brooks history, she'd said, that needed cataloging for the upcoming family foundation gala.

The box weighed at least thirty pounds. My joints screamed in protest as I adjusted my grip, the familiar grinding ache flaring hot in my elbows. Three weeks since the gala. Two days since I'd lost Caden's trust completely, his belief in Amber's poison stronger than any truth I could speak.

The baby was still my secret. The only thing they hadn't taken from me yet.

I took the first step down. The polished marble was slick as glass beneath my flats. Where were the runners? The antique rugs that had lined these stairs since the house was built?

"They're being replaced," a maid had told me earlier, her eyes sliding away. "Mrs. Amber's orders."

Another step. The albums shifted in the box, throwing off my balance. I tightened my grip, but my fingers were stiff, the joints swollen and unreliable. The physical therapist I'd begged Caden to let me see had been dismissed. "Unnecessary expenses for phantom pains," he'd said.

Movement flickered in my peripheral vision. I glanced up.

Amber stood in the second-floor gallery, half-hidden behind a marble column. Our eyes met. She didn't smile. She just watched, her face utterly still, as if she were observing an experiment.

My foot slipped.

The world tilted. The box flew from my hands, albums exploding across the stairs in a cascade of leather and yellowed photographs. My body pitched forward, gravity dragging me down toward the unforgiving marble below. I saw it all in crystalline slow-motion—the sharp edge of each step, the thirty-foot drop to the foyer floor, the way my death would look like an accident.

My hand shot out, pure instinct. My fingers closed around the iron railing.

The momentum wrenched my shoulder from its socket with a wet pop that I felt more than heard. A scream tore from my throat as my body swung, dangling from one arm, my feet scrambling for purchase on the slick stairs. Pain detonated through my shoulder, white-hot and absolute.

I hung there, gasping, my vision sparking with black spots.

Footsteps. Slow, measured. Amber descended from the gallery, picking her way around the scattered albums. She stopped three steps above me, looking down. This close, I could see the disappointment in her eyes.

"That was close," she said softly. "You should be more careful, Everly. In your condition."

My blood turned to ice. "What?"

"I can always tell." She crouched down, her voice dropping to a whisper only I could hear. "The way you touch your stomach when you think no one's looking. The prenatal vitamins. Did you really think you could hide it?"

"Stay away from me."

"Oh, sweetie." She reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, the gesture grotesque in its gentleness. "I don't need to do anything. You're doing all the work yourself."

She stood and walked away, leaving me hanging from the railing, my shoulder screaming, my secret no longer my own.

***

The garden party was Amber's masterpiece.

Two hundred guests. White tents billowing in the spring breeze. Tables draped in silk, centerpieces bursting with peonies and roses. And me, in a pale yellow dress that hid nothing of how thin I'd become, tasked with the physical setup because Amber had convinced Mrs. Brooks it would be "therapeutic for Everly's melancholy."

I'd been moving floral arrangements for three hours. Each iron trellis weighed forty pounds. Each stone planter required dragging across uneven lawn. My shoulder—still healing, the dislocation reduced but tender—throbbed with every movement. The cramping in my abdomen had started an hour ago, low and insistent.

I pressed a hand to my stomach, willing it to stop.

"Everly!" Caden's voice cut across the lawn. He stood near the house with a cluster of business associates, his expression thunderous. "The arch is crooked. Fix it."

I looked at the wrought-iron arch, eight feet tall and anchored in concrete bases. "Caden, I need help—"

"Amber does twice this work without complaining." He turned back to his guests, dismissing me.

I stared at his back, something cracking open in my chest. Not my heart. That had broken weeks ago. This was deeper. The foundation of who I'd believed him to be, finally crumbling to dust.

I bent to lift the arch's base.

Hands closed over mine. Large, warm, careful.

"Let me."

I looked up into dark eyes I half-remembered. The security guard—no, the head of the detail. Blaze something. He wore a black suit, an earpiece, the bearing of someone who'd seen violence and learned to move through the world with quiet authority.

"I can do it," I said, but my voice cracked.

"I know you can." He didn't let go. "But you don't have to."

Together, we lifted the arch, adjusting it until it sat straight. His hands were steady where mine shook. When we set it down, he didn't step back immediately.

"You're Everly," he said quietly. "You probably don't remember me."

Something stirred in my memory. A winter night, years ago. A thin teenager outside a soup kitchen, his eyes too old for his face. I'd given him my coat and twenty dollars, the only cash in my wallet.

"Blaze," I whispered.

He nodded. "I never forgot."

The cramping intensified, sharp enough to steal my breath. I doubled over, my hand clutching my stomach.

"Mrs. Brooks?" His hand hovered near my elbow, not touching but ready to catch me. "What's wrong?"

"I'm fine." I straightened, forcing a smile. "Thank you for your help."

I walked away before he could see the tears, before he could see the way my legs trembled, before he could see that I was anything other than the perfect Brooks wife, performing her duties with grace.

The cramping followed me inside.

***

I made it to the hallway outside Caden's study before my legs gave out.

The pain was a living thing now, clawing through my abdomen, radiating down my thighs. I collapsed against the wall, sliding down until I sat on the cold marble floor. Warmth spread between my legs—wet, wrong.

I looked down. Blood soaked through my yellow dress, spreading like spilled wine.

"Caden!" I screamed, pounding on his study door. "Caden, please!"

The door was soundproof. Custom-installed last month so he could take calls without interruption. Through the frosted glass panel, I could see two silhouettes—Caden at his desk, Amber perched on the edge, leaning close, her hand on his shoulder.

I screamed until my voice broke. I pounded until my fists bled.

They didn't hear me.

The hallway started to blur. The pain crested, unbearable, and I felt something inside me tear loose. Not physically. Deeper than that. The last thread of hope I'd been clutching, the belief that this baby would save us, that love could survive this much cruelty.

It snapped.

Footsteps, finally. A maid's shriek. Hands pulling at me, voices shouting for an ambulance.

As they lifted me onto the stretcher, I turned my head. Through the study's glass panel, I saw Amber look up. Our eyes met.

She smiled.