Betrayal

Chapter Two

Alina

# Nothing Left to Save

…and I saw.

I saw what my mind refused to accept.

What my eyes tried to erase by blinking, as if it were a mirage. A hallucination. Some cruel side effect of pregnancy or lack of sleep.

But the image didn’t disappear.

It sharpened.

Brightened.

Became more detailed with every second.

Russell.

My Russell.

The father of my children.

The man I had spent twelve years with. The man I trusted more than I trusted myself.

He was standing by his enormous desk—the very desk where he met important patients, signed documents, planned surgeries so delicate that a single millimeter could mean life or death.

And sitting on that desk, her legs parted, was her.

Olivia Bennett.

Twenty-eight years old. Neurologist. A striking brunette with a carved little body she always showed off in fitted professional dresses. I had seen her hundreds of times at hospital events, colleagues’ birthday parties, medical conferences. Always polite. Always professional.

Always with that smile.

Sweet as poison.

Her arms were around my husband’s neck.

His hands were on her thighs.

Their mouths were fused together.

Not in a quick kiss. Not accidental. Not some ridiculous we-tripped-and-our-lips-touched mistake.

No.

It was a long, deep, hungry kiss between people who had done this before.

People who knew the taste of each other.

People who—

The thermos slipped from my hands.

The crash split the room.

Metal hit the hardwood floor and rolled, impossibly loud in the dead silence of the office. The lid popped off. Hot tea splashed across my legs, but I didn’t feel the burn.

I didn’t feel anything.

Only emptiness.

Icy, all-consuming emptiness spreading from the center of my chest, freezing everything it touched.

They broke apart.

Russell turned.

Our eyes met.

His face…

God, his face.

I will never forget that expression as long as I live.

Shock. Horror. Guilt written in capital letters across every line, every crease. He opened his mouth, trying to say something, but no sound came out. He just stood there, white as a sheet, with lipstick smeared across his mouth.

Olivia’s lipstick.

Olivia looked at me differently.

There was no shock in her eyes.

No fear.

There was triumph.

Cold, calculated triumph. The triumph of a predator who had caught her prey and was now displaying it to the other woman.

Slowly, she slid off the desk. Smoothed her skirt. Ran a hand over her hair.

And smiled.

She smiled at me.

And that smile said everything.

I won.

He’s mine.

You lost.

The world I had built out of trust and love collapsed into ash under a gaze I would never forget. In that moment, I understood that betrayal wasn’t just a word.

It was physical pain.

It turned you inside out.

It burned away everything alive.

“Alina…” Russell’s voice cut through the silence. Hoarse. Pleading. “Alina, it’s not—”

He never finished.

Because I had already turned away.

Because the air had vanished from my lungs, and I had to get out of there.

Immediately.

Now.

Or I would suffocate.

Or fall.

Or go insane right there in that sterile hallway that smelled like expensive coffee and disinfectant.

I ran.

As much as a woman eight months pregnant can run, with a heavy belly dragging her down and making every movement clumsy.

I ran down the hallway, past half-open office doors, past startled nurses, past all that polished pretending.

All that beautiful, sterile lying.

“Alina! Alina, stop!” Russell shouted somewhere behind me.

I didn’t look back.

“Wait!” Olivia called.

Mocking?

Or did I imagine that?

I didn’t stop.

My hands found the elevator button on their own. I pressed it. Once. Twice. Three times. My fingers shook so badly they felt like they belonged to someone else.

The elevator didn’t come.

I turned.

Russell burst out of his office, buttoning his shirt as he ran. He came toward me with one arm outstretched, as if he could reach across the twenty yards between us and pull the world back into place.

“Alina, please. Let me explain. It’s not what you think.”

Not what I think?

Not what I think?

A laugh tore out of my throat.

Hysterical. Broken. Foreign.

I heard it and frightened myself.

“Don’t come near me,” I hissed. My voice wouldn’t obey me. It cracked into something close to a scream. “Don’t you dare come near me.”

Pain struck without warning.

Sharp. Blinding.

As if someone had driven a knife low into my belly and begun twisting it, tearing me open from the inside.

I gasped and grabbed the wall, trying to stay on my feet.

A contraction.

No.

Not now.

Not here.

“Alina!” Russell lunged toward me, but I jerked back, pressing myself against the cold wall.

“Don’t touch me!” I screamed. “Don’t you dare touch me!”

The elevator finally arrived.

The doors opened with a soft chime that sounded, absurdly, like bells at a funeral.

I practically fell inside. Found the button for the lobby. Pressed it. Pressed it again, begging the doors to close faster.

Russell stood in the hallway with his hand still out.

His face was twisted with desperation. His lips moved silently.

Maybe forgive me.

Maybe wait.

Maybe something else.

I didn’t care.

The doors closed.

Silence.

I leaned against the mirrored wall and stared at my reflection.

I didn’t recognize myself.

Pale face. Wide, wild eyes filled with a kind of pain no one should have to look at. Trembling lips. Tears running down my cheeks, though I didn’t remember starting to cry.

Eight months pregnant.

Huge belly under an unzipped down coat.

Messy hair.

Mascara streaked under my eyes.

I looked insane.

Maybe I was.

Maybe all of this was a dream.

A nightmare.

A stupid, vicious nightmare I would wake from any second now in my warm bed beside Russell, and he would pull me close and tell me everything was all right. That it was only a bad dream.

Another wave of pain rolled through me, and I moaned, sliding down the mirrored wall.

The contractions were getting stronger.

This was wrong.

Too early.

I still had a month.

I still had a month.

The elevator stopped on the first floor. The doors opened.

The lobby was full of people—patients, doctors, nurses.

Everyone turned to look at the pregnant woman sitting on the floor of the elevator, sobbing.

“Do you need help?” a man in a white coat asked, stepping forward with one hand extended.

“No.” I pushed his hand away and forced myself upright. “I’m… I’m fine.”

I stepped out of the elevator and crossed the lobby with dozens of eyes on me.

Sympathetic.

Curious.

Indifferent.

The security guard asked me something, but I walked past him without hearing a word.

Then I was outside.

The cold hit my face and burned my lungs.

Fifteen degrees.

My coat hung open, and the wind cut straight through me, but I barely felt it.

It was colder inside.

So much colder.

This wasn’t a blow.

It was a crucifixion.

I had been nailed to the cross of his betrayal, and the nails were being driven in slowly. Carefully. So I would feel every second of pain.

Every moment of agony.

A cab.

I needed a cab.

I raised my hand. A yellow car pulled up beside the curb. The driver, a man in his fifties with a tired face, looked at me with immediate concern.

“Ma’am, are you sure you need a cab? Should I call an ambulance?”

“Hospital,” I rasped, climbing into the back seat. “County General. Labor and delivery. Fast.”

“You in labor?” He twisted around, alarmed.

“Drive!” I screamed.

He flinched, nodded, and hit the gas.

The car pulled away.

Riverbend slid past the window—lights, storefronts, happy faces, people carrying gift bags. The city was getting ready for Valentine’s Day.

And I was dying.

Not physically.

Though the pain in my belly kept growing stronger, coming in waves, each one worse than the last.

No.

I was dying somewhere else.

Inside.

In the place where trust lives.

Where love lives.

Where faith in people lives.

All of it had burned.

To the ground.

Scorched into ash and emptiness.

Twelve years.

For twelve years, I had built that world.

Our world.

Brick by brick.

Day by day.

Night by night.

I bore his children. I waited for him through surgeries. I ironed his shirts. I cooked his favorite meals. I believed every word he said.

Every.

Single.

Word.

Running late at work.

Work.

A complicated patient.

A patient.

A consult.

A consult.

But really—it was her.

Olivia.

With her cold eyes and victorious smile.

How many times?

How many times, while I made dinner, put the children to bed, stroked my pregnant belly, had he been with her?

I felt turned inside out.

Not from nausea.

From hatred.

It was so hot, so consuming, I could taste it on my tongue.

Metallic.

Bitter.

The taste of betrayal.

“Ma’am, you okay back there? Hang on, we’re almost there,” the driver said, his voice shaking.

I didn’t answer.

I couldn’t.

Another contraction crashed over me, and I groaned, gripping the seat. Something warm ran down my legs.

Water?

Blood?

I didn’t know.

I didn’t want to know.

The baby.

My baby.

Our baby.

The child who was supposed to be the crown of our love. The symbol of our happy family.

That baby was fighting for life now, and I…

I had brought him here.

Into this pain.

Into this despair.

Into this hell.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, stroking my belly with a trembling hand. “I’m so sorry, baby…”

My throat closed.

I couldn’t speak.

Couldn’t breathe.

Goose bumps crawled along my spine. My body arched under the next contraction. My bones felt as if they were being twisted from the inside. My mouth was so dry that every breath burned.

The car braked hard.

“We’re here!” the driver shouted. “Hospital!”

He jumped out, threw open my door, and held out his hand.

“Come on. Let me help you.”

I tried to stand, but my legs buckled.

He caught me under the arm and half-carried me toward the entrance. Automatic doors opened. Warm air. The smell of medicine. White walls.

“Help!” the driver shouted. “She’s in labor!”

People in scrubs. A gurney. Hands lifting me. Wheels rolling.

Bright ceiling lights flashed above me again and again.

Voices.

Questions.

“What’s your name?”

“How far along are you?”

“When did the contractions start?”

“Any medical conditions?”

I answered mechanically, barely understanding what I was saying. My mind ran on autopilot while my body tore itself apart.

They brought me into a delivery room and transferred me onto a bed. A doctor, a woman in her forties with a tired but kind face, leaned over me and checked my pulse.

“Alina, can you hear me?”

I nodded.

“You’re in preterm labor. You’re thirty-five weeks along. It’s early, but the baby is viable. We’re going to do everything we can, okay?”

Viable.

Everything we can.

Okay.

Words that were supposed to comfort me.

I felt nothing.

Only emptiness.

Icy.

Dead.

“Should we call your husband?” a nurse asked, pulling my phone from the pocket of my coat.

“No!” I grabbed her wrist so hard she cried out. “No. Don’t call anyone. No one.”

“But—”

“I said no one.”

They exchanged a look.

I saw the confusion in their eyes.

The concern.

The pity.

I didn’t care.

Russell would not walk into this room.

He would not touch my hand.

He would not see the birth of our child.

Our child?

No.

Not ours anymore.

Mine.

Only mine.

The next contraction hit with brutal force, and I screamed.

From pain.

From despair.

From the hatred boiling inside me, tearing me apart.

Somewhere deep in my mind, a thought flickered:

Maybe this is right.

Maybe this is punishment.

For my blindness.

For my stupidity.

For not seeing, not feeling, not understanding.

We had been like a glass ornament full of light and promises.

Now that ornament lay shattered into pieces, and the shards were cutting me from the inside, leaving nothing alive.

“Push,” the doctor ordered. “Again. Push for me. One more time.”

I pushed.

With the last of my strength.

Not for myself.

For the baby.

For that tiny, innocent creature who was not to blame for having a traitor for a father and a blind fool for a mother.

The pain reached its peak.

I felt myself tearing. Felt life draining out of me.

But I didn’t give up.

I fought.

For him.

For my last hope.

And then—

silence.

Deafening.

Dead.

Absolute.

I heard my own breathing.

Fast. Ragged.

I heard the doctors’ voices.

Low.

Urgent.

But I didn’t hear the one thing I needed.

The baby’s cry.

“Why isn’t he crying?” I whispered. “Why is he quiet?”

The doctor didn’t answer.

She was bent over something—over him?—with her back to me. Every muscle in her body looked tense. Her hands moved fast.

Too fast.

“Why isn’t he crying?” I screamed, trying to lift myself up. “Give him to me! Give me my baby!”

A nurse pressed me gently but firmly back onto the bed.

“Stay down. The doctors are doing everything they can.”

Everything they can.

I would remember those words forever.

Because they meant only one thing.

Something had gone wrong.

Something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.

Time stretched.

Seconds became minutes.

Minutes became eternity.

I lay on that cold bed, in that white room, under those merciless lights, and felt myself dying.

For real this time.

Not my body.

My soul.

Then the doctor turned around.

And I saw her face.

And I understood everything.