Chapter 4

The hospital was a blur of antiseptic smells and quiet, urgent footsteps. It felt chillingly familiar, yet completely different. In my first life, I had stormed this place like a conquering general, my firm's name a battering ram that opened every door. I had demanded the chief of surgery, gotten the best operating room, and ensured a team of specialists was waiting. My aggressive intervention, born of love and fear, had inadvertently saved Jenny's life, allowing their frame-up to proceed.

This time, I did nothing.

I was just another worried husband in the waiting room, letting the hospital's standard procedures run their course. Ryan paced nervously, shooting me venomous looks, muttering about how I'd "wasted precious time." I ignored him, my face buried in my hands, playing the part of a man paralyzed by shock.

An hour crawled by. Then another. Finally, a surgeon in blue scrubs, a man I didn't recognize, walked into the waiting room. His face was grim, his shoulders slumped with fatigue. He looked at me, then at Ryan.

"Mr. Scott?"

I stood up, my legs feeling heavy. "Yes. How is she? How is my wife?"

The surgeon's eyes were filled with a genuine, professional sympathy that I knew was real this time. "Mr. Scott, we did everything we could."

He paused, and in that silence, I felt the cold, hard finality of it.

"The fall caused a severe placental abruption. The internal bleeding was... extensive. We lost her on the operating table. And the baby... I'm so sorry. There was nothing we could do to save either of them."

Ryan let out a choked sob, a performance so convincing it could have won an award. He sank into a chair, his head in his hands, his body shaking.

But I just stood there, staring at the surgeon. In my first life, these words were a lie, a script for a play in which I was the villain. Now, they were the truth. Jenny was dead. Our child was gone. My inaction, my calculated withdrawal of the very help that had saved her before, had resulted in her actual death.

A strange, hollow feeling settled in my gut. It wasn't grief. It wasn't sorrow. It was the chilling, quiet understanding of a price paid. A necessary sacrifice. To destroy them, I had to let the one person I once loved die. There was no going back. The first part of my revenge was complete, sealed by a death certificate that was, this time, horrifyingly real. I had sabotaged their plan by letting it succeed in the most permanent way possible.