Chapter 2

The clinic was cold and impersonal. Dr. Chen sat across from me, his face etched with concern. He had celebrated my miracle pregnancy with me only days ago. Now he was faced with my grief.

"Olivia, are you sure about this?" he asked gently. "You've been through so much to get here. We don't have to make this decision today."

"I'm sure," I said, my voice a dead thing. "There's nothing to think about."

I couldn't tell him the truth. I couldn't say that my husband, the man who had supposedly avenged me, was having a baby with the very woman who had tried to kill me. That my miracle was a lie.

He saw the haunted look in my eyes and didn't push. He just nodded sadly and explained the procedure.

As the anesthesia began to take hold, my mind drifted. I fell into a nightmare woven from five years of deceit.

I was back in the hospital after the crash. I was crying, not just from the pain, but from the loss of a future I had always dreamed of. Ethan was holding my hand, whispering promises. But in my dream, his phone lit up on the nightstand. A text from Willow. 'I miss you. When can I see you?' He typed back under the cover of the blanket. 'Soon. I'm handling it.'

The dream shifted. I was at home, struggling through painful physical therapy, learning to walk again. Ethan would come home late, smelling of a perfume that wasn't mine.

"Long day at the office," he'd say, kissing my forehead. "Closing a big deal."

In my dream, I saw the "office." It was a luxury penthouse across town. Willow was there, waiting for him with a smile, her arms wrapping around his neck. The "big deal" was their secret life.

Another shift. We were trying everything to conceive, despite the odds. Monthly injections, invasive procedures, endless appointments with Dr. Chen. Each negative test felt like a small death. I would cry in Ethan's arms, and he would hold me, telling me it was okay, that he loved me no matter what.

But in the dream, I saw him leaving my side after I'd fallen into an exhausted, grief-stricken sleep. He would go to his car and call her.

"Any news?" Willow's voice, hopeful.

"Not yet," Ethan would say, his voice soft with a tenderness he reserved only for her. "But the doctors are optimistic. Our baby will be perfect."

He wasn't talking about a baby with me. He was talking about the surrogate they had hired, a plan they had set in motion years ago. While I was injecting myself with hormones, hoping for a miracle, he was already building a family with her.

The dream showed me Willow's life. Freed from prison by Ethan's lawyers who argued "procedural errors," she was living in luxury. Designer clothes, expensive dinners, exotic vacations. He had given her everything. Her online novel was a sanitized, romanticized version of their affair, painting her as a victim and him as her savior. It was a bestseller. She was a star.

I was his secret shame. His barren, broken wife.

I woke up with a strangled sob, the pillow soaked with my tears. The procedure was over. The emptiness inside me was no longer just emotional. It was a physical, aching void.

A nurse came in, her expression soft with pity.

"It's done, honey. You can rest now."

"The... the tissue," I stammered, my throat raw. "I want it."

She looked confused. "I'm sorry?"

"The products of conception," I said, using the cold, clinical term. "I want them preserved. Can you do that? Put it in a specimen jar."

Dr. Chen came in, overhearing me. He looked at me, his eyes full of a deep, sorrowful understanding. He must have thought I was mad with grief. Maybe I was.

"Olivia..."

"Please," I begged. "It's mine. I want it."

He nodded slowly. "We can do that."

I left the clinic with a small, discreet box. Inside was a jar. A tiny, heartbreaking monument to a love that never was. It was a gift. A parting gift for my husband.

I drove back to the house on the coast. Our house. The smart home that was supposed to be my sanctuary was now my prison.

I walked through the rooms, a ghost in my own life. I started deleting things. I went to Ethan's social media and untagged myself from every loving post, every photo of us smiling. I went into the smart home's system and reset everything to the factory defaults. The lavender lights, the curated playlists, my personal settings-all gone.

I packed a bag. Just the essentials. My phone buzzed relentlessly. It was a news feed. Willow had just posted a new photo on her Instagram. It was her and Ethan, his hand on her belly, their faces alight with joy. The caption read: "Counting down the days until we meet our little boy. Feeling so blessed with my amazing husband, Mr. H."

The world was celebrating their love story.

A wave of dizziness washed over me. The physical and emotional toll of the day crashed down at once. My legs gave out, and I crumpled to the floor, my vision tunneling to black.

I vaguely remember fumbling for my phone, my fingers too weak to dial 911. I dialed the only other number I knew by heart. Ethan's.

It rang once, twice.

Then a woman's voice answered. Willow's.

"Hello?" she said, her voice dripping with smugness. "Ethan's a little busy right now. Can I take a message for him?"

The line was filled with the sound of her laughter.

I dropped the phone. The last thing I heard before I passed out was her mocking tone. In that moment of darkness, a single, hard thought formed in my mind.

I will not die like this. I will survive. And I will stand on my own.