Chapter 4

Kalea White POV:

For my child, I would do anything. My pride, my dignity-they were ashes in the face of the fire consuming me.

"Anything," I sobbed, the word barely audible.

Chelsey' s smile widened. "Good," she said, applying more pressure with her heel. I whimpered as another wave of agony washed over me. "I want you to bark like the dog you are. And I want you to tell us what you are."

Tears streamed down my face, mixing with the blood on my chin. My body was a universe of pain, but my mind was clear on one thing: I had to save my son.

I took a ragged breath. "Woof," the sound was pathetic, a broken croak. "Woof, woof."

"And what are you?" Chelsey demanded, her voice sharp.

"I'm a filthy whore," I whispered, the words tasting like poison and glass. "I am a dirty, lying bitch."

The triumphant glint in her eyes was terrifying. She leaned down, her face close to mine. "You know, I once knelt to you, Kalea. Right here in this very hall. I begged you not to tell Kaden I'd tried to seduce him. You looked down at me with such pity, such disgust." She laughed, a short, sharp sound. "It feels so much better from this side, doesn't it?"

I remembered that day. I hadn't refused her out of pity. I'd refused because Kaden, blinded by his infatuation, wouldn't have believed me. He would have accused me of being a jealous fiancée.

"I've done what you asked," I gasped, the pain in my stomach intensifying, becoming a constant, burning cramp. "Please... call an ambulance. Something's wrong."

My plea was met with a brutal impact. Kaden's foot slammed into my back, driving the air from my lungs and pressing my stomach harder against Chelsey' s heel.

"Shameless," he spat. "You'll even humiliate yourself for that bastard. You really will do anything to keep it, won't you?"

I was pinned, trapped between their two-pronged assault. I could feel a warm, sticky wetness spreading beneath me.

"You promised," I rasped, looking at Chelsey. "You promised you'd let him go."

She simply smiled. "I promised I'd let him go. I never said anything about getting rid of it."

The clever, cruel twist of her words was a final, devastating blow. They had never intended to let my baby live.

"You used my brother's name," Kaden snarled, his voice thick with rage. "You tried to use that bastard to steal what is rightfully mine."

He drew his leg back.

This time, I saw it coming. I knew what was about to happen. My body tensed, a useless defense against the inevitable.

His foot connected with my belly. Not a stomp, but a full, powerful kick.

The world exploded in a supernova of white-hot pain.

And then... nothing.

The frantic fluttering inside me stopped.

The tiny, reassuring movements I had come to cherish, the gentle kicks that told me he was there, that he was alive... they were gone.

A silence fell over my womb. A cold, dead silence that was more terrifying than any scream.

An emptiness so vast and absolute opened up inside me that it swallowed the pain, the fear, everything. In its place, something new and terrible began to grow. A cold, hard seed of hatred.

My tears stopped. My pleading ceased.

I looked up at them, my vision strangely clear. I saw them not as people, but as monsters. And I knew, with a certainty that chilled my soul, what I had to do.

"You will pay for this," I said, my voice no longer a whisper, but a low, guttural promise. "Angus will make you suffer in ways you can't even imagine. And I will be there to watch."

Chelsey scoffed. "Still haven't learned your lesson, have you?"

"Go get the rope from the garage," Kaden said to her, his eyes fixed on me. "We're going to teach her what happens to people who don't know their place."

Chelsey' s face lit up with a sick, eager excitement. She hurried away, her heels clicking a death knell on the marble.

I tried to scramble backward, to drag my broken body away from them, but it was no use. I was trapped.

They tied my hands and feet with a rough, scratchy rope. Then, Kaden began to drag me by the feet, out of the foyer, across the pristine living room. My head bumped along the floor, my body leaving a long, dark smear of blood on the white silk rug.

The cool night air hit my face as he dragged me onto the patio. The chlorine scent of the swimming pool filled my nostrils.

With a final, contemptuous grunt, he kicked my bound body into the deep end.

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