Chapter 1

As the building crumbled around us, my husband, a paramedic, held the only oxygen mask.

He gave it to his high school sweetheart, not to me, his wife who was struggling to breathe.

Pinned under a beam, I gasped that I was pregnant. He told me to stop being dramatic and left me to die, taking our son with him. My own son agreed, telling his father I always "bounce back."

I lost our baby, alone in a hospital room, while they fussed over her "anxiety attack" across the hall. They had chosen her, leaving me and our child in the rubble without a second thought.

When he finally confronted me, it wasn't to apologize, but to demand I stop my "games." So I gave him exactly what he and our son had wished for.

"I'm divorcing you," I said calmly. "And you can have Jax. I no longer want to be his mother."

Chapter 1

Alisa POV:

My husband handed the oxygen mask to his high school sweetheart, Bria, not to me, the mother of his child, as the building around us crumbled. The dust choked me, burning my lungs with every shallow breath. I watched him, my heart hammering a frantic, irregular rhythm against my ribs, fully aware that this was the end.

It was Jax' s seventh birthday. We had planned a small party at home, just us. Jonas, my husband, had surprised me earlier that morning.

"Bria' s coming over," he' d said, his voice flat. "Jax insisted. She' s bringing the cake."

My stomach churned. It always did when Bria' s name entered our household like an unwelcome draft.

"Jonas, it' s our son' s birthday. Just us, remember?" I tried to keep my voice even, but a tremor escaped. My heart condition flared with stress, a constant, unwelcome reminder of my fragility.

He sighed, a long-suffering sound that always made me feel like an unreasonable burden. "Alisa, don' t start. Jax loves Bria. She' s like an aunt to him. What' s the harm?"

The harm? The harm was in her constant presence, her manipulative tears, the way she subtly undermined my authority as a mother, and how Jonas always, always sided with her. The harm was the gaping hole she tore in our family.

"She' s not family, Jonas," I retorted, my voice rising despite my best efforts. "She' s your ex-girlfriend who decided to suddenly reappear in our lives a year ago. She' s destabilizing everything."

Before he could answer, the world convulsed. A deafening roar swallowed our words, followed by a violent tremor that threw me against the wall. The building groaned, a tortured sound of metal and concrete tearing apart. A gas explosion. The thought flashed through my mind just before the ceiling above us disintegrated. Dust, thick and acrid, filled the air, instantly coating everything in a suffocating shroud.

A sharp pain lanced through my side as something heavy struck me. I cried out, my breath catching. The dust was a physical weight, pressing on my chest, aggravating my already struggling heart. My vision blurred.

"Jax!" I screamed, pushing through the haze. He was smaller, more vulnerable. Instinct took over. I threw my body over his, shielding him from the falling debris, feeling sharp edges graze my back and arms. The impact knocked the wind out of me.

My heart pounded furiously, a desperate bird trapped in a cage. Each beat sent a jolt of pain through me, radiating from my chest. I could feel the familiar constriction, the terrifying tightening that signaled an attack.

Then, a flicker of light, a silhouette in the swirling dust. Jonas. My paramedic husband. He was here. Hope, sharp and desperate, pierced through the pain. He would know what to do. He always did, for others.

He knelt, his face grim, his eyes scanning the carnage. He saw me, pinned beneath a fallen beam, Jax squirming free beside me. But then his gaze shifted, locking onto Bria, who was dramatically clutching her chest, tears streaming down her face, coughing theatrically.

"Jonas! My chest! I can' t breathe!" Bria wailed, her voice surprisingly clear through the chaos.

Jax, now free from beneath me, scrambled to his feet. He pointed a small, trembling finger at Bria. "Daddy! Aunt Bria! She needs help!"

Jonas had a portable oxygen tank strapped to his back. The only one. My eyes pleaded with him, my mouth opening, struggling for air. I needed it. My heart. My baby.

He hesitated for a fraction of a second, his eyes meeting mine. In that moment, I saw a flicker of something, perhaps guilt, perhaps recognition of my silent plea. But it vanished quickly, replaced by a hardened resolve.

He moved towards Bria, wrenching the oxygen mask from his tank. He pressed it gently to her face, his hands steady, his gaze filled with a concern I hadn't seen directed at me in years.

I watched him go, a bitter, humorless smile twisting my lips. Bria, the perpetual victim, always received his attention. Always.

A raw, ragged cough tore through me, sending spasms of pain through my chest. My vision swam. Consciousness was a flickering candle in a hurricane. I was losing air. My oxygen was running out. And if Jonas left, I would be truly alone. My heart, already so weak, couldn't take much more. I had to tell him.

"Jonas!" I gasped, the word barely a whisper, swallowed by the groaning building. "I' m... pregnant..."

He paused, his back to me, already helping Bria to her feet. He didn't turn. He didn't acknowledge my words.

"She' s fine, Alisa," he called over his shoulder, his voice dismissive, already moving away. "Bria' s much more fragile. You always bounce back."

Jax was clinging to his father' s leg, his small hand gripping Jonas' s uniform. "Daddy, is Aunt Bria okay? Mommy always gets strong really fast." His words, so innocent, twisted the knife in my gut.

I closed my eyes, a wave of despair washing over me. He was abandoning me. My husband, the man who vowed to protect me, was walking away, taking my son with him, leaving me to die.

The tremor in the building grew, a chilling reminder of my imminent demise. I heard Jonas issuing orders, his voice fading as he herded Bria and Jax towards a presumably safer exit. Jax kept asking, "Is Aunt Bria okay? Is she hurt?" His concern was solely for her, for the woman who wasn't his mother, for the woman who had stolen his father's attention.

A profound, suffocating grief settled over me. It wasn't just the physical pain, the burning lungs, the failing heart. It was the crushing weight of betrayal, the stark realization that I meant nothing to them. I was truly alone.

My mind, in its desperate attempt to find a foothold, replayed the morning' s argument, the one that had led to this moment. Jax' s birthday.

"Mom, I want Bria to bring the cake!" Jax had yelled, stomping his foot. "Yours are always boring! Bria makes the best cakes!"

I had tried to reason with him, to explain that I loved baking for him, that it was a special tradition.

"Why do you always have to ruin everything for me?" he' d shrieked, his face scrunched in a mask of pure fury. "I wish you weren' t my mom! I wish Aunt Bria was my mom! She' s way cooler! I wish you would just disappear!"

His words, sharp and venomous, had sliced through me. I remembered flinching, the familiar ache in my chest intensifying. Jonas, of course, had been silent, merely watching the scene unfold, his disapproval a palpable weight in the room.

Years of this. Years of being the villain, the strict one, the uncool one. Years of Bria' s sugar-coated sabotage, offering Jax sweets I forbade, buying him toys I deemed inappropriate, always the "fun" one. Jonas had never intervened, never defended me. He simply let it happen. Our family, if you could even call it that, had been a slow, agonizing decay.

Despite his cruel words, despite the anger that still simmered from his outburst, when the building shook, my first, only thought was to protect him. I had thrown myself over him, feeling the sharp, agonizing impact.

"Are you okay, Jax?" I' d coughed, my voice thick with dust, my body screaming in protest.

He had pushed me away, scrambling to Bria' s side. "Aunt Bria!" he' d cried, ignoring me completely. His small, ungrateful hands reached not for me, but for her.

And now, Jonas was echoing his words. "Bria' s much more fragile."

Fragile. My heart condition. My pregnancy. None of it mattered. Bria, the master manipulator, had won again.

The dust swirled, obscuring my vision. My breath hitched. My world was shrinking, suffocating. They were gone. All of them.

My eyes burned with unshed tears, but I was too weak to cry. The betrayal was absolute, a cold, hard stone in my chest, weighing me down. They had chosen her. Over me. Over their own blood.

The last thing I heard before the darkness started to claim me was Jonas' s voice, distant now, but clear: "Bria, are you feeling better? Just hold on, we' re almost out." He sounded genuinely worried, a stark contrast to the indifference he' d shown me.

My world dissolved into darkness, leaving me alone in the rubble, a casualty of a love that was never truly mine.