Chapter 2 - THE UNSEEN WITNESS
"Marcus..." I rasped, clutching his sleeve with my bloodless fingers. "The baby... check the monitor..."
Marcus snapped back to reality. He grabbed the emergency call button attached to the wall and slammed his thumb down five times in rapid succession. Within ten seconds, the hallway erupted in frantic shouting, and two nurses alongside my attending obstetrician, Dr. Aris, burst into the room.
"Get her back on the bed! Carefully!" Dr. Aris barked, signaling the orderlies.
As four pair of hands gently lifted my body off the cold marble, Isabella backed away toward the door, her eyes fixed on the blinking red light above the vent. Her hands were shaking violently now—not from the slap, but from a deep, primal panic.
She knew what was on that memory drive.
Before Marcus opened that door, Isabella hadn't just stood over me with her heel. Ten minutes earlier, while I was drifting in and out of a heavy, post-medication sleep, Isabella had walked into my room carrying a small black syringe.
She had injected a clear fluid directly into my IV bag—the very fluid that had triggered the violent, tearing spasms in my womb minutes later.
When I had woken up gasping for air, clutching my stomach, I had tumbled off the tall hospital bed, begging her to call a nurse. That was when Isabella had smiled, walked over, and placed her red heel against my side to keep me pinned to the floor until the drug finished its job.
She had thought this suite was dark. She had thought the VIP wing was private, off-grid, and unmonitored—just as her contact in hospital administration had promised her.
She was wrong.
"Khloe's heart rate is spiking! Fetal distress!" Nurse Elena shouted, hooking up an ultrasound probe to my exposed belly. The sharp, erratic thumping of my baby's heartbeat filled the room—fast, weak, and struggling.
Marcus stood by the side of the bed, gripping my hand so tightly his knuckles turned white. His face was a mixture of intense guilt and rage.
"Isabella," Marcus said, his voice dropping into a low, terrifying tone without turning his head. "Don't you move an inch."
Isabella swallowed hard, her hand hovering over the door handle. "Marcus, I... I need to get the Chief of Staff. I'm going to get help—"
"I said stay right there," Marcus growled, turning his head slowly to glare at her. "If you step out into that hallway before the police arrive, I will have my security team lock down this entire floor."
Isabella froze. Her eyes darted back up to the camera in the corner.
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She knew she had maybe three minutes before someone pulled that footage. If Marcus saw the syringe—if he saw her standing over my IV bag with a vial of synthetic oxytocin designed to induce a fatal placental abruption—she wouldn't just lose her career at Mercer Global.
She would be facing attempted double homicide.
