Chapter 2 - THE HEARTBEAT BETWEEN US
The ambulance left the Vance estate at 2:07 p.m.
Carla kept one hand near the fetal monitor while her partner started an intravenous line. Every turn sent pain through my abdomen.
“Her heart rate keeps dropping,” Carla said.
“What does that mean?”
“We need obstetrics waiting.”
“Is she dying?”
“We do not know.”
Honesty frightened me less than Julian’s reassurance ever had.
At St. Catherine’s Medical Center, a trauma and obstetric team surrounded me. My dress was cut away. The bruise on my abdomen had already begun darkening.
Dr. Miriam Patel moved an ultrasound probe across my skin.
Our daughter appeared on the monitor.
Head.
Spine.
Heart.
Small hands pressed near her face.
“She’s alive,” I whispered.
“Yes,” Dr. Patel said. “But the heart tracing is concerning, and there is evidence of placental separation.”
“An abruption?”
“A partial one. Trauma can cause the placenta to pull away from the uterine wall.”
“Can you stop it?”
“We can monitor a stable separation. Your baby is showing repeated distress.”
A nurse removed my broken watch and placed it in a labeled bag.
The minute hand remained frozen at two.
Dr. Patel looked directly at me.
“You are thirty-four weeks and five days. We need to deliver.”
“No induction?”
“Not with this tracing.”
My next breath broke apart.
“I need to speak with Agent Lawson.”
“You have minutes, not hours.”
“I need her to preserve my watch. It recorded everything.”
A nurse called security and the federal team.
Then the operating-room staff arrived.
I signed consent with a shaking hand.
Julian had called our daughter a thing less than ten minutes earlier.
Now strangers were moving with disciplined urgency to save her.
The spinal anesthesia worked quickly. I remained awake behind the surgical curtain while Agent Lawson entered long enough to receive the watch from the nurse.
“Do not let anyone from Vance Aeronautics handle it,” I said.
“We won’t.”
“The encrypted transmitter is inside the clasp.”
Her eyes changed.
“You never told us that.”
“I didn’t know whom to trust after the raid leaked.”
The surgical team began.
Pressure replaced pain.
The room filled with clipped instructions and machine tones.
Then a thin cry cut through everything.
My daughter was born at 2:31 p.m.
She weighed four pounds, twelve ounces.
The neonatal team lifted her briefly above the curtain. Her skin was red, her dark hair flattened against her head, and one tiny fist opened beside her cheek.
“Hi, Iris,” I whispered.
Julian had insisted on the name Victoria if the baby was a girl, after his mother’s family.
I had chosen Iris privately months earlier.
A rainbow after a storm.
The neonatal team took her to intensive care for breathing support and monitoring.
Dr. Patel completed the surgery and confirmed the placental abruption had been expanding.
“If you had arrived much later, the outcome could have been different,” she told me in recovery.
I closed my eyes.
Later did not exist.
Lawson returned after midnight.
A uniformed officer remained outside my room. Julian had been booked on state charges related to assaulting a pregnant spouse while federal prosecutors reviewed his role in the financial case.
Arthur and Beatrice were in federal custody pending initial hearings.
Chloe had been detained, questioned, and transported for a medical evaluation after claiming pregnancy complications.
“Is she pregnant?” I asked.
“Yes. Approximately fourteen weeks.”
The words hurt even though nothing Julian had done could surprise me anymore.
“Boy?”
“A prenatal report in her handbag says male.”
The real heir.
Lawson placed a tablet beside me.
“The authorization bearing your signature opened a shell account called CVC Strategic Holdings.”
“My initials.”
“Yes.”
“Who submitted it?”
“Vance Aeronautics’ chief financial officer, Malcolm Shaw.”
“I never met him alone.”
“The digital certificate attached to the form is genuine.”
“That’s impossible.”
“It was generated using your corporate security token.”
“My token stays in the biometric safe.”
“Someone accessed it on February seventeenth.”
I remembered the date.
“The embryo-transfer procedure.”
“You were sedated for a related examination that morning.”
“Julian stayed at the clinic.”
“Not the whole time.”
Lawson opened a security image from the hallway outside my recovery room.
Beatrice stood beside my handbag.
Her right hand disappeared inside it.
“She took the token,” I said.
“Possibly.”
“Then why return it?”
“To use it without creating an obvious theft.”
Lawson enlarged another image.
Beatrice was not alone.
Chloe stood at the end of the corridor wearing medical scrubs beneath a winter coat.
I stared at her.
“I didn’t know Chloe then.”
“She knew you.”
The photograph’s timestamp was seven months before Julian claimed they had met.
Then Lawson showed me the final frame.
Chloe looked directly at the clinic camera while handing Beatrice a small black device.
May you like
My corporate token.
The mistress had entered my life before my daughter had even been conceived.
