1 Nine months pregnant, and the woman my husband, Cameron, had always idealized slipped me an abortion pill. The contractions tore through me, a searing agony, but he told me to just hold on. Because she—Sara—was supposedly in labor, too. To keep me from "stealing her thunder," he had his housekeeper tie me upside down to a large cat tree in the corner of the room. "I heard that if the blood rushes to your head, it can delay labor," he said, his voice cold and distant. "Even if you are about to give birth, you will wait. Sera's child must be born first. I promised her our family would recognize her baby as the firstborn heir." The drug-induced cramps were a vicious, twisting fire in my gut. I tumbled from the cat tree, landing in a heap on the floor, and crawled toward him, begging him to take me to a hospital. He drove his foot into my stomach. "Sara is the kindest person I know. She would never drug you," he spat, his face a mask of fury. "But you, you venomous bitch, I bet you're the one who slipped something into her food to make her go into premature labor!" His voice dripped with contempt. "You're this far along anyway. What difference could a little pill possibly make?" Later, after he had seen Sara settled and comfortable in her private hospital suite, he called home. He asked his assistant if I was still "throwing a tantrum." The assistant’s voice trembled. "Sir… Mrs. Thorne and the baby… they're in the morgue." The combination of the induced labor and the constant, throbbing pain of the contractions was overwhelming. My head swam from the lack of oxygen, the world turning grey at the edges as I dangled upside down. Bitter fluid rose in my throat, and with a wretched gasp, I fell, bringing the entire cat tree crashing down with me. I tried to curl around my belly, to shield our child, but a warm gush of liquid soaked through my clothes and pooled on the floor beneath me. My water had broken. I could feel the baby struggling inside me, a desperate, frantic push to be born. "Martha!" I screamed, my voice raw. "Martha, please, get me to a hospital! I'm not going to make it!" The housekeeper, Martha, strolled over, casually cracking sunflower seeds between her teeth. She wrinkled her nose in disgust at the mess on the floor. "Honestly, what's all this drama for?" she sneered. "Mr. Thorne isn't even here to see it. You could die on this floor right now and no one would care. He put me here to watch you, you know. To stop you from constantly competing with Miss Sera. You should really learn your place." She pinched her nose, grabbed me by the arms, and began to haul me back into an inverted position against the frame. A sudden, terrifying surge of blood flowed from between my legs. She slapped me hard across the face, then pulled out her phone. Cameron, having just finished arranging a team of specialists for Sara, answered with an impatient bark. "Give birth? Don't be ridiculous. If her baby comes out before Sera's, you can forget about your salary this year." Martha shot me a triumphant smirk. As if to twist the knife, she added, "But Sir, she's bleeding." I collapsed again, and the pained groan that escaped my lips must have given Cameron a moment's pause. "Alright, let her down for now. I'll…" He was cut off by a sweet, delicate voice in the background. "Cameron, darling, the pain is gone. I don't think I'm going to have the baby just yet." It was Sara. "You know how it is with pregnancy, especially in the last month. You always think it's time. A little bleeding is perfectly normal. Didn't the doctor just say I probably have a while longer?" We were both nine months along, our due dates just days apart. Neither of us should have been in labor. But she had drugged me. She was the reason for these violent, premature contractions. Cameron, of course, believed her lies. His voice turned to ice once more. "Hospital? Forget it. You watch her. No one is to help her until I get back. She's always trying to one-up Sera, even down to who gives birth first. It’s pathetic." He hung up. Martha looked at me, her eyes glinting with malicious glee. "See? I told you. The master only has eyes for Miss Sera. He couldn't care less if you live or die." She glanced at her phone, a cruel smile spreading across her face. "Oh, and Miss Sera was so thoughtful. She was worried you'd be lonely, so she sent over her favorite pet to keep you company." She held up a small, ventilated box. Inside, perched on a piece of bark, was a gleaming black spider with a blood-red hourglass on its abdomen. A black widow. 2 I watched in horror as the enormous spider crawled out of the box. Before I could even beg, Martha had bolted from the room, slamming the door behind her. Drawn by the metallic scent of blood, the spider scuttled toward me. I tried to scramble away, but my limbs were still tangled with the ropes binding me to the cat tree, and the agony in my belly was paralyzing. It crawled onto my calf, its tiny legs a million needles against my skin. A wave of revulsion washed over me. Forgetting the pain, forgetting everything but a primal need to survive, I tried to crush it. It seemed to sense my intent. In a flash, it leaped from my leg onto my swollen belly. A searing, venomous pain, like a hundred burning needles, plunged into me. A single, piercing scream was torn from my throat, and then… nothing. My strength was gone. My eyelids grew heavy. Through the darkening haze, I thought I saw Death himself, beckoning to me with a skeletal hand. Then, the door burst open and Martha reappeared, muttering curses under her breath. Seeing me motionless on the floor, a flicker of panic crossed her face. She shook me violently. "Hey! Hey!" The jolt brought me back. With the last ounce of my strength, I gasped, "The spider… it bit me. The baby will die." Her grip on my hair loosened, only for her to slam my face against the floorboards. "You really are a pathological liar! I almost thought you were actually dead!" As I stared up at her, my vision blurring, her expression shifted from fear to a kind of ecstatic cruelty. "You shameless whore. You knew Mr. Thorne loved Miss Sera, but you still tried to trap him with a baby. I've been sick of watching you for months! Look at the disgusting state of you. No man would ever want to touch you!" After her tirade, she remembered the spider. "Where is Miss Sera's precious pet? Hand it over, now!" She searched the room, but kept a careful distance from me. Her eyes landed on a dark, thick clot of blood on the floor, and she mistook it for the spider's crushed body. Her face contorted with rage. She kicked me, hard, right in the stomach. "You have a death wish, you stupid bitch! You killed Miss Sera's favorite pet! How can you be so toxic?" she shrieked. "No wonder Mr. Thorne hates you! You can stay here and rot. Keep her pet company in hell!" She made a quick phone call, her voice sycophantic, full of "yes, ma'am" and "of course." Before leaving, she walked over to the thermostat and cranked the air conditioning down to its lowest setting. "A final instruction from Miss Sera," she said with a chilling smile. "Her pet prefers a cold, damp environment. You two can enjoy it together." The cold seeped into my bones. Shivering uncontrollably, I felt my consciousness slipping away into the black tide of pain. In the distance, I thought I heard a baby crying. My hands were bound so tightly I couldn't even dream of holding him. It was Cameron who had insisted we keep the child, the product of a drunken, reckless night. He had once pressed his ear to my belly, his face filled with wonder as he felt the baby's heartbeat. How had our dream of a family of three ended like this? Oh, my sweet baby, I thought, a final tear tracing a path through the grime on my cheek. In your next life, find a family that will love you. Don't follow a mother like me into so much suffering. My own heartbeat was slowing, fading into a dull, distant drum. But then, the door creaked open again. The man who entered gasped when he saw me lying in a pool of blood and filth. I summoned a faint, desperate sound—a plea for help. He flinched back, his face pale with alarm. "I… I'm just a delivery guy. Mr. Thorne sent me to watch a… a Ms. Elara cook for his wife… Please don't make this difficult for me." My numb heart clenched with a fresh wave of pain. My husband didn't believe I was in labor, and instead sent a stranger to make sure his dying wife cooked a meal for his mistress, the one surrounded by a legion of doctors. Even our very identities had been swapped in the eyes of the world. The bitter irony threatened to choke me. "I am Elara," I whispered, my voice barely a thread of sound. "Please… take me to a hospital." He stared at me, his eyes wide with terror and indecision. Finally, he fumbled for his phone. "Mr. Thorne? I'm at your house… but the woman you mentioned, Elara… she's tied to a cat tree and she's covered in blood. I think… I think she's dying. Should I take her to the hospital?" Cameron’s cold laugh crackled through the phone. "She's quite the actress, isn't she? She'll do anything to get out of cooking for Sera." 3 His voice hardened with conviction. "Don't you dare take her to a hospital. The housekeeper said she covered herself in chicken blood. You tell her, if she wants my forgiveness, she'll get up and start cooking right now. Otherwise, I'm not coming home tonight." The delivery guy tried to argue, but Cameron had already hung up. He knelt beside me, his brow furrowed. He looked from my pale face to the dark, spreading pool of blood. It was clearly not from a chicken. After a moment of intense internal struggle, he began to untie the ropes. "I don't know what you did to make Mr. Thorne so angry," he muttered, his hands shaking. "But this is wrong. I can't just leave a pregnant woman to die." He called for an ambulance. For a fleeting second, my heart dared to hope. But the paramedic's words sent a new wave of ice through my veins. "If we don't get the antivenom into you in the next ten minutes, you're not going to make it." The specific antivenom was incredibly rare. Getting it from anywhere else in the country was impossible. But after they entered my information into their system, the paramedic’s face lit up with sudden recognition. "Wait, you're Mrs. Thorne! Cameron Thorne's wife? That changes things! His family’s private hospital is sure to have it!" He immediately dialed Cameron's number. "Mr. Thorne, your wife has been bitten by a black widow spider. Her condition is critical. We know your hospital received a shipment of the specific antivenom from overseas last year. You should still have some in stock, right?" Cameron exploded. "Elara, have you lost your mind? What black widow? The spider Sera has is a harmless species! Not only did you kill her pet, now you've hired an accomplice to lie for you?" I tried to shake my head, to scream the truth, but I had no voice left. The hospital had that antivenom because Sara had been bitten by her "harmless" pet once before. Cameron, frantic with worry, had spared no expense to procure it. He just didn't know that she kept the venomous creature for one purpose: to use it on me. The paramedic tried to reason with him. "Sir, we are real paramedics. Your wife is six centimeters dilated. She's about to give birth. If she doesn't get this antivenom within ten minutes, we will lose them both." "Then let them die!" Cameron snarled. "She's always crying wolf, threatening to die over every little thing, and she's still here, isn't she? She's just being dramatic. It's my own child. Don't you think I'd know when it's supposed to be born? Stop calling me with this disgusting nonsense!" He hung up. In the background, I could hear Sara's cloying voice, asking him to go buy her a slice of cake. The paramedic looked at me with pity. "We'll take you to the Thorne private hospital anyway," he decided. "The doctors there… they can't just refuse to treat you." But I should have known better. To keep Sara happy and her environment "peaceful," Cameron had given a standing order: the hospital was not to admit any new maternity patients. Our ambulance was stopped at the gates, barred from entry. Through the window, I saw Cameron walking out, a cake box in his hand, talking on his phone. "That's right. Sera needs quiet. I don't care who they are or how much they offer, we're not admitting anyone else." I lay on the gurney, a fish gasping for air on a dry dock. Our eyes met. His driver, standing by the car, did a double-take. I no longer had the strength to speak, to even move. The driver hurried over to Cameron. "Sir," he said, pointing toward the ambulance. "That woman they just brought in… I think it's your wife." Cameron glanced over. All he saw was a filthy, wretched woman, her face half-hidden by hair matted with blood and grime. He turned away in disgust. "Don't be ridiculous. That shrew would never have the nerve to show up here." "But sir, even if it's not her," the driver pleaded carefully, "she's in a terrible state. Maybe we should just let them in?" Cameron shot the driver a look that could kill. "It sounds like you don't want your job anymore. Is any woman's life more important than Sera's happiness? Even if it is Elara, she deserves it!" His final look was one of utter indifference, as if he were looking at a piece of roadkill. He turned his back on me and spoke tenderly into his phone. "Sera, my love, I got the cake you wanted. I'll be right up." The last ember of hope inside me died. Even at the gates of salvation, Cameron was the one to bar the door. But I refused to let this be the end. I wasn't ready to die. I borrowed the paramedic's phone and dialed a number I hadn't dared to call in years. "Uncle Marcus," I sobbed into the phone, my voice a broken whisper. "I was wrong. I was so wrong. Please… save me and my baby…"
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