Chapter 2 - The Cracks in the Facade
The silent phone rolled across the silk duvet, landing face-up beside a half-empty bottle of Dom Pérignon. The glowing screen continued to pulse with my final text message, six sharp words piercing the soft golden ambiance of the master bedroom: “Enjoy the family you chose.”
Dominic sat frozen on the edge of the mattress, his face drained of every trace of color. His jaw worked silently as he tried to process the two distinct, crushing sentences Dr. Reed had delivered into his ear.
She lost the baby.
You can never have another child.
Beside him, Paige stretched like a lazy cat, her crimson-painted fingernails trailing across his broad shoulder. She had been giggling moments before, sipping champagne while Victoria paced downstairs, celebrating my abrupt disappearance as if it were a long-overdue victory for the family estate.
"Dominic, honey? What is it?" Paige purred, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness. She reached for the phone, her glossy lips forming a pout. "Is it the hospital again? Did your pathetic little orphan wife finally stop whining and sign whatever release form they sent?"
Dominic didn't answer. His hands began to shake violently. He snatched the phone off the bed before Paige’s long nails could touch it, his eyes glued to my name on the screen.
Pregnant.
For three long years, Victoria had humiliated me at every family gathering, loudly lamenting that I was "defective" because I hadn't yet given the Sterling lineage a grandchild. Dominic had stood by, silent and indifferent, allowing his mother’s venomous comments to slice through me while he secretly scheduled a private fertility assessment at the city’s top clinic to confirm his suspicion that I was the broken one.
The results were in. The diagnosis was absolute. His sperm count was zero, caused by a severe childhood illness he had barely survived. He was entirely, irreversibly sterile.
The child I had been carrying for eight weeks was a statistical miracle. A one-in-a-million chance. My body had achieved the impossible against all odds, carrying his only biological heir.
And his mother had pushed me down a flight of solid marble stairs.
"Dominic!" Paige snapped, her tone shifting from playful to sharp as she noticed his blank stare. "You’re scaring me. Say something. The house is finally ours. Your mother said we can remodel her room tomorrow morning!"
"Get out," Dominic whispered. His voice was barely audible, raspy and dry.
"What?" Paige frowned, throwing back the covers. She was wearing my silk robe, the delicate ivory lace trailing around her ankles. "Dominic, what are you talking about?"
"GET OUT!" he roared, suddenly leaping up from the bed and throwing his crystal glass against the far wall. The glass shattered into a hundred sparkling shards, splattering expensive champagne over the original oil painting Victoria had chosen to replace my mother’s portrait.
Paige shrieked, scrambling backward off the bed and clutching her chest. "Are you insane?! What is wrong with you?"
The noise brought Victoria hurrying up the grand staircase. She burst into the master suite, her silver hair perfectly coiffed, her silk robe billowing around her.
"Dominic, darling, what is going on up here?" Victoria demanded, casting a look of utter disgust at Paige’s messy hair before turning to her son. "We are celebrating tonight! That useless girl finally took the hint and fled like the stray dog she is. You don't need to throw a temper tantrum—"
"She was pregnant, Mother," Dominic choked out, stumbling toward Victoria, his eyes bloodshot and filled with a terrifying mix of grief and horror.
Victoria paused, her expression flicking through confusion before settling into an icy smirk. "Pregnant? Please. She’s lying to guilt you into running back to her. She’s a manipulative little leech who—"
"Dr. Reed called from the hospital!" Dominic screamed, grabbing his mother by her shoulders. His voice shattered the silence of the mansion. "The fall killed our baby! My child, Mother! My only child!"
Victoria’s posture stiffened. "Your... your only child? What nonsense are you talking about? You’re thirty-two years old! You can have ten children with Paige or any respectable woman from our social circle! That girl’s bloodline was weak anyway—"
"I am sterile!" Dominic sobbed, collapsing onto his knees on the Persian rug, clutching his hair. "The tests came back today! I am permanently, completely infertile! That baby... that baby was the only child I will ever have in my life, and you pushed her! You killed my child!"
Victoria took a slow step back, the air suddenly rushing out of her lungs. The color flushed out of her cheeks, leaving her skin looking like cracked plaster. She looked at her son, weeping on the floor like a broken child, and then down at her hands—the hands that had gently nudged my shoulder at the top of the marble staircase when she thought no one was looking.
"No..." Victoria stammered, her voice trembling for the first time in her life. "No, that’s impossible. You're a Sterling! You can't be... it was her fault! She fell! She was clumsy!"
May you like
Paige stood in the corner, holding my silk robe tight around herself, her eyes wide as she realized the grand future she had envisioned—marrying into wealth, bearing the Sterling heir, taking over the mansion—had just disintegrated in front of her eyes.
Before Dominic could lift his head, the heavy oak doors downstairs began to rattle. A loud, rhythmic pounding echoed through the foyer.
