Chapter 2 - Before the Door Opened
The video screen was crystal clear.
The timestamp in the lower right corner read 11:14 AM—exactly twelve minutes before Marcus had opened the door.
In the video, I was sitting up in my hospital bed, an IV line in my arm, drinking a glass of water while reading a book on infant care. The room was peaceful, bathed in warm morning sunlight.
Suddenly, the private suite door clicked open.
Isabella stepped inside. She wasn't wearing her usual polished, sophisticated smile. Her face was twisted with a bitter, unhinged fury. In her left hand, she carried a heavy manila envelope; in her right, she held a small glass syringe filled with a clear, amber fluid.
The audio on the recording was crisp and horrifyingly distinct.
"What are you doing here, Isabella?" my recorded voice asked, setting the book down, my posture instantly stiffening. "Marcus told you to stay away from me."
"Marcus is a fool," Isabella’s recorded voice sneered as she walked up to the side of my bed, locking the door behind her with a soft click. "He thinks he can buy my silence with a five-million-dollar buyout. He thinks he can throw me away after three years of managing his corporate accounts just because you got yourself knocked up with his heir."
"Leave, Isabella," I said in the video, reaching for the nurse call button on the nightstand.
Before my fingers could touch the button, Isabella lunged forward. She grabbed my wrist, twisting it painfully until I gasped, throwing the call remote across the marble floor.
"Look at this, Khloe," Isabella hissed, tossing the manila envelope onto my lap. "Do you know what's inside here? It's the complete toxicology log from your late mother's medical hospice six years ago."
My recorded self froze in the video, my face going paper-white. "What are you talking about?"
"Your mother didn't die of liver failure, you stupid girl," Isabella laughed—a cold, sickening sound that echoed through the hospital room. "I swapped her daily vitamin IVs with potassium chloride over a period of four months while I was working as Arthur Coleman's financial secretary. I cleared her out so Marcus’s father could seize your family's real estate portfolio before you turned twenty-one."
In the present moment, standing inside Suite 408, Marcus let out a sound that didn't sound human. He stared at the screen, his face turning an terrifying shade of dark red, his body shaking so violently the control panel rattled.
"She... she killed my mother..." I sobbed from the stretcher near the doorway, the truth hitting my chest like a shattered mirror. "She murdered my mother..."
On the video screen, the nightmare escalated.
My recorded self had tried to scramble out of bed, screaming for help. But Isabella grabbed my hair, pulling me off the mattress. I crashed heavily onto the marble floor, landing on my side, desperately curling my legs up to shield my pregnant stomach.
"And now," Isabella’s recorded voice whispered as she pulled the glass syringe from her coat, "you're going to have a sudden, tragic cardiac arrest right before Marcus gets here. The doctor will call it pregnancy complications. And Marcus will come back to me, broken and alone."
In the video, I fought with everything I had. I grabbed her leg, biting her arm, knocking the syringe out of her hand. The syringe shattered against the bedpost, its amber contents spilling uselessly across the rug.
Enraged, Isabella raised her right leg—wearing a four-inch red stiletto heel—and brought the sharp heel down directly onto my ribs, pinning me to the floor while I screamed in absolute agony, wrapping both arms around my baby.
And that was the exact second the door swung open, and Marcus walked in.
The video ended.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Marcus slowly turned around from the control panel. He didn't yell. He didn't scream. His eyes were completely hollow, devoid of any human emotion, filled only with a dark, apocalyptic rage that made the air in the room freeze.
He reached into his suit jacket, pulled out his personal phone, and dialed a three-digit extension.
"Captain Vance," Marcus said, his voice flat, icy, and terrifyingly calm. "Bring four armed officers to Suite 408 immediately. Tell them to bring heavy iron restraints. We have a confession to a double homicide attempt and an unsolved murder."
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Isabella collapsed onto her knees on the bloody marble floor, sobbing hysterically, reaching toward his boots. "Marcus! Please! I loved you! I did it all for you! His father forced me—"
Marcus didn't even look down at her. He stepped over her outstretched hands as if she were a piece of trash, walked straight out of the room, and followed my stretcher down the hall.
