Chapter 2

The high-voltage prongs of the taser jabbed into Grace's thigh. An electrifying agony exploded through her body, a thousand times worse than the labor pains. Her muscles seized, her back arched, and a scream was ripped from her throat before being choked off by the violent convulsions.

The world went white with pain.

The jolt lasted only a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity. When Collins finally pulled the device away, Grace collapsed, a trembling, twitching heap on the floor. Her heart hammered against her ribs, erratic and wild. The acrid smell of ozone filled the small room.

A new, terrifying sensation spread from the point of contact. A burning numbness that felt deeply wrong.

Her body, already pushed to its limit by the premature labor and blood loss, couldn't cope with the electrical shock. A fresh wave of dizziness washed over her, and the darkness at the edge of her vision started to close in.

"There," Collins said, her voice smug and satisfied through the haze of pain. "That wasn't so bad, was it? Now be a good girl and lie still. It'll all be over soon."

The panel in the door slid shut, plunging Grace back into absolute blackness.

She tried to push herself up, but her limbs refused to obey. The leg that had been tased was almost completely numb, a dead weight attached to her hip. The pain in her abdomen intensified, a constant, grinding torment.

She was dying. She and her son were dying in this black box, and the people who put her here were celebrating the birth of another child.

The sheer injustice of it all burned through the pain. The hate she felt for Brogan, for Collins, for the entire Edwards family, was a poison in her veins. It was a cold, sharp feeling that cut through the fog of her fading consciousness.

But even that powerful hatred was no match for the physical reality of her body shutting down.

She closed her eyes, surrendering to the encroaching darkness. A single, desperate thought echoed in her mind: My son. I'm so sorry. I couldn't protect you.

She slipped into unconsciousness.

It could have been minutes or an hour later when the sound of the panel sliding open again dragged her back to a state of semi-awareness.

"Grace? Hey, get up." It was Collins's voice again, but this time it held a note of impatience, not just cruelty. "Come on, stop playing dead. It's getting boring."

Grace didn't move. She couldn't.

She heard a frustrated sigh. "Ugh, you're pathetic. Did you really bleed all over the floor? That's disgusting."

A faint light from the hallway illuminated Collins's face as she peered in. She seemed to be looking not at Grace, but at something on the floor near her.

"What the...?" Collins muttered. She reached in, not to help, but to retrieve the taser she had dropped. When she pulled it back into the light, she let out a small gasp.

The metal prongs of the device were corroded, pitted and blackened as if they had been dipped in a powerful acid. A few drops of Grace's blood sizzled on the casing, eating away at the plastic.

"My taser! It's ruined!" Collins shrieked, her voice a pitch of fury. "You bitch! This was custom-made! What did you do?"

The absurdity of the question was lost on Grace. All she knew was the throbbing pain and the heavy, cold feeling spreading through her.

Blinded by rage over her damaged toy, Collins's sadism surged anew. "You'll pay for this!" she snarled. She fumbled for something else in her pocket. Grace's blurry vision made out the glint of metal. A small, sharp letter opener.

"Brogan may be done with you, but I'm not," Collins hissed, her face a mask of pure hate. She brandished the letter opener. "He may have wanted to wait, but I think it's time we speed things up."

She lunged through the opening again, the sharp point aimed at Grace's belly.

"I'm going to cut that little monster right out of you!"

The threat, more than the pain, jolted Grace. A primal, maternal terror gave her a final burst of adrenaline. "No!" she screamed, managing to roll her body just enough so the sharp metal point missed her stomach and instead plunged deep into the fleshy part of her arm.

Pain, sharp and clean, erupted in her bicep. Collins yanked the letter opener out with a frustrated curse.

"Stay still, you worthless cow!"

But then she paused, looking at the letter opener. The blade, now coated in Grace's blood, was already starting to discolor, the polished steel turning a dull, mottled grey.

Collins stared at it, a flicker of genuine fear finally entering her eyes. She looked from the corroding blade to Grace's bleeding arm, then back again. This wasn't normal.

She scrambled back from the opening, dropping the ruined letter opener with a clatter in the hallway.

"You're a freak," she whispered, her voice trembling slightly. "A goddamn freak."

She slammed the panel shut, leaving Grace once more in the suffocating dark.

The adrenaline faded, and the pain from her arm joined the cacophony of agony racking her body. The world tilted and swam. In the darkness, her mind began to fracture.

She heard a baby crying. A faint, desperate wail that seemed to come from inside her own head.

Mommy. It hurts.

"I know, my love. I know," Grace sobbed, her hand moving to her stomach, which was now unnervingly still. The frantic movements of her son, his little kicks and turns that she had cherished, had stopped. "Mommy's here. I'm so sorry."

I'm scared, Mommy.

The imaginary voice of her child tore her apart. This was her fault. She had trusted Brogan. She had loved a man who was a monster. She had brought her innocent child into this family of vipers.

"Don't be scared," she whispered, tears streaming down her face, mixing with the blood and sweat on the floor. "It'll be over soon. We'll be together."

A wave of crushing despair washed over her. She had failed her son in the most fundamental way a mother could. She couldn't protect him. She couldn't even give him a chance to take his first breath in the world.

A gut-wrenching, animalistic roar of grief and rage tore from her throat. It was a sound of pure agony, of a mother mourning a child who was still a part of her yet already lost.

"I'M SORRY!" she screamed into the void.

Her body gave one final, violent shudder. The pain in her abdomen, the throbbing in her arm, the numbness in her leg-it all began to fade, replaced by a profound, heavy coldness. Her breathing grew shallow. Her vision, even in the dark, seemed to tunnel.

She was at the edge.

Suddenly, a loud, mechanical grinding sound echoed through the room. It was a sound she had only heard once before.

The panic room door was opening.

A sliver of light cut through the darkness, widening into a blinding rectangle. A figure was silhouetted in the doorway. It wasn't Brogan. It wasn't Collins. It was one of the household security guards, a man named Marcus.

His eyes widened in horror as he took in the scene. The blood on the floor, Grace's pale and mangled form.

"Mrs. Edwards?" he gasped, rushing to her side. "Oh my God. What happened?"

Grace could barely focus on his face. Her lips felt thick and clumsy. "Help... me," she managed to whisper. "The baby..."

Marcus looked panicked. He pulled out his phone, his hands shaking. "Mr. Edwards, sir! It's Marcus. You need to come to the panic room right now! Mrs. Edwards... she's... I think she's dying."

He listened, his face growing pale. "No, sir, this isn't a trick. There's blood everywhere. She's unconscious." Another pause. "Sir, with all due respect, I don't think she's faking this. She needs a doctor immediately!"

Grace watched as the hope drained from Marcus's face, replaced by disbelief and then anger.

"Sir, she's your wife!" he pleaded into the phone.

The connection was cut. Marcus stared at his phone, then back down at Grace, his expression one of utter helplessness.

"He... he hung up on me," Marcus said, his voice strained. "He said you were a liar trying to ruin his nephew's birthday. He said not to touch you."

The final, definitive betrayal. Even a stranger's plea for mercy was not enough.

"But I can't just leave you here," Marcus decided, a look of grim determination on his face. He scooped Grace into his arms. She was terrifyingly light. "The hospital wing in the east wing. It's for staff, but it has emergency equipment. It's better than nothing."

He carried her out of the panic room, running through the silent, opulent hallways of the mansion. Each step sent jolts of pain through Grace's body, but she was barely aware of it. All she felt was a deep, numbing cold.

They burst through the doors of the small, private medical wing. Marcus laid her gently on an examination table.

He started frantically searching for supplies, for a phone to call an outside line, for anything that could help.

But the room was bare.

The shelves were empty. The emergency kits were gone. The landline on the desk was dead.

Brogan, or someone acting on his orders, had stripped it clean.

There was no help to be found. It was another dead end. Another layer of his calculated cruelty.

Grace looked at Marcus's desperate face, and then at the empty room, and she finally understood.

She was never meant to leave that panic room alive.