“Monica, I was so blind…”

The voice on the other end of the line was trembling, broken by violent, ugly sobs.

I stopped walking. The night air outside the Ridge estate was freezing, biting through my thin coat, but I couldn't feel it. I stood on the gravel driveway, my single suitcase resting by my feet, the revelation of my husband's faked death still suffocating my lungs.

I looked at the caller ID again. Mother.

For twenty-five years, my mother’s calls only ever meant one of two things: a demand for me to accommodate my adopted sister, or a cold lecture on how I was failing to be a proper daughter. She was always composed, always elegant.

But tonight, she sounded terrified.

"Mom?" I asked, my voice flat.

"I'm so sorry, my baby," she choked out, her voice cracking with a raw, desperate panic I had never heard before. "I'm so, so sorry."

"What are you talking about?"

"Jessica," my mother gasped, her words spilling out in a frantic rush. "I caught her. I went into her room to leave a gift for her engagement, and I found the papers in her desk. She forged the family will, Monica. She left everything to herself. And my pills… my heart medication…"

She broke off into a violent fit of coughing.

"Mom, get out of the house. Call the police right now."

"She swapped them," my mother cried, the regret tearing through her voice like shattered glass. "I spent my whole life loving a monster. I gave her everything. I pushed you away. My real daughter. I'm so sorry, Monica. Please forgive me."

"Mom, listen to me—"

"Run, Monica," she screamed, her voice suddenly pitching upward in sheer terror. "Run, she's trying to—"

A sickening, heavy thud echoed through the speaker.

Then, a sharp, piercing scream.

And finally, dead silence.

"Mom? Mom!"

I screamed into the phone, but the line was dead.

I dropped my suitcase on the gravel. I got into my car, slammed the door, and pressed my foot hard onto the gas pedal.

The drive to the Hollden estate was a blur of blurred streetlights and screeching tires. My heart hammered against my ribs in a frantic, painful rhythm.

I'm so sorry, my baby.

Those were the words I had waited my entire life to hear. The validation that I wasn't invisible. That I was loved. That my mother finally saw me.

The heavy oak front door was slightly ajar.

I pushed it open, stepping into the grand foyer. The massive crystal chandelier cast a cold, indifferent light over the pristine marble floors. The house was eerily quiet.

And then I saw her.

My mother was lying at the bottom of the grand sweeping staircase.

Her elegant silk nightgown was soaked in a dark, rapidly spreading pool of crimson. Her head was twisted at an unnatural angle, her limbs splayed awkwardly across the polished stone.

I dropped to my knees beside her.

"Mom," I whispered, my hands shaking violently as I hovered over her broken body.

She was still breathing. Shallow, wet, rattling gasps that shook her fragile chest.

"You're faster than I expected."

The voice drifted down from above, light, sweet, and entirely unbothered.

I slowly lifted my head.

Jessica was standing at the very top of the stairs. Not a single hair was out of place. In her right hand, she casually twirled my mother's phone, tapping it against her manicured nails.

She looked down at the bleeding woman who had raised her, pampered her, and loved her more than her own flesh and blood.

Jessica smiled. A chilling, empty smirk.

"She was getting too nosy," Jessica sighed, pouting her lips as if complaining about a spilled glass of wine. "I only needed her to hold on until next month. Once Jackson and I were officially married, the Hollden estate and the Ridge fortune would merge perfectly. But the stupid old woman just had to go snooping where she didn't belong."

My hand slipped into my coat pocket.

My fingers found my own phone. Without looking, relying purely on muscle memory, I pressed the side button sequence to start a voice recording.

"You pushed her," I said.

"Oh, please. She tripped," Jessica laughed softly, descending two steps. "She was dizzy. Probably because I swapped her blood pressure meds with sugar pills weeks ago. It was so easy, Monica. It’s pathetic how easy it is to manipulate people who love you."

She tilted her head, looking at me with pure, unadulterated malice.

"She loved me so much, Monica. She gave me everything that was supposed to be yours. And now, she's giving me her life. Just like your husband gave me his."

I stared at the monster wearing my sister's face.

She had taken my husband. She had taken my life. And now, she was taking my mother.

A weak, trembling hand brushed against my knee.

I looked down.

My mother’s eyes were half-open, clouded with pain and an agonizing, bottomless regret. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, staining the pale marble.

I leaned down, pressing my forehead against hers.

"I'm here," I whispered.

Her fingers weakly curled into the fabric of my coat. She didn't look up at Jessica. She only looked at me. The daughter she had ignored for twenty-five years.

"Monica..." she breathed, the sound barely a rasp.

"Don't speak. Save your strength. The ambulance is coming."

"I'm... sorry..."

A single tear slipped from her eye, cutting a clean path through the blood on her cheek.

"My... beautiful... girl..."

Her hand went limp.

The faint rise and fall of her chest stopped completely.

The grand foyer fell into a deafening silence.

I lost my mother at the exact moment she finally saw me. The exact moment she finally loved me.

I knelt there on the cold marble, my knees soaked in her blood. The baby in my womb was quiet. The heart in my chest went quiet, too.

Combined with my husband's betrayal, I was now completely, utterly alone in the world.

Above me, Jessica let out a bored sigh.

"Well. That's that," she said, turning her back. "You should probably call an ambulance, Monica. Tell them it was a tragic accident. I'm going back to bed."

“It’s pathetic how easy it is to manipulate people who love you.”

Jessica’s recorded voice echoed in the dead, heavy silence of the study.

I looked up from the phone, my eyes locking onto the man sitting behind the massive mahogany desk.

I knew he was Jackson. I knew he had faked his death in that yacht explosion, stolen his dead twin brother's identity, and orchestrated my entire living nightmare. But in my desperate, bleeding heart, I clung to one final, pathetic shred of hope.

We had been together for ten years. Ten years of shared meals, whispered secrets, and a life built side-by-side. I remembered the way he used to hold me when I was sick, brushing the hair from my forehead.

I remembered the way he promised he would always protect me from my family's coldness, swearing I would never be second best again.

Surely, that man wasn't entirely gone. Surely, the man I loved couldn't look at the undeniable proof of my mother's murder and let the killer walk free.

I dropped to my knees on the thick Persian carpet.

"Please," I begged, my voice cracking, tears threatening to spill. "Jackson... I know it's you. I don't care about the fake death. I don't care about the money, or the divorce, or even that you want her instead of me. Just help me. She killed my mother. You heard her."

He didn't flinch at his real name. He didn't show a single ounce of shock, guilt, or remorse.

He just stared at me. And in his eyes, I saw nothing but utter, chilling disgust.

He stood up slowly, walked around the desk, and stopped in front of me. He reached down and plucked the phone from my shaking fingers.

"You're hysterical, Monica," he said, his voice as flat and cold as a tombstone.

Before I could comprehend his movement, he turned to the crystal water pitcher resting on his desk. He picked up a half-full glass of water and, without breaking eye contact with me, dropped my phone straight into it.

"No!" I lunged forward, but he shoved me back by my shoulder.

I watched in horror as the screen flickered, short-circuited, and died beneath the water. The only evidence of my mother's murder. The only justice I had left. Gone in a single second.

"Your mother was a crazy old woman who lost her footing," Jackson said coldly, adjusting his expensive cuffs. "She slipped. The police already ruled it a tragic accident. I will not have you in my house slandering Jessica to cover up your own grief."

I stared at him, the betrayal slicing through me so deeply I couldn't breathe. "She confessed... You heard her..."

"I heard nothing but a grieving daughter's fabricated audio," he sneered, looking down at me like I was trash on his shoe.

Before I could speak, the heavy oak doors of the study swung open.

Jessica stood there, clutching her chest. The moment she saw me on the floor, her eyes widened in mock terror. She let out a breathless, dramatic gasp, her knees buckling slightly as she shrank back against the doorframe.

"Daniel!" she cried out, tears instantly pooling in her wide, innocent eyes. "Keep her away from me! She—she tried to attack me in the hallway! She blames me for Mom's death!"

She stumbled forward and collapsed into Jackson's arms, burying her face in his chest, her shoulders shaking with violent, fake sobs.

Jackson wrapped his arms around her immediately. His face softened into the gentle, fiercely protective look that used to belong entirely to me. He stroked her hair, pressing a kiss to her temple.

Then, his eyes snapped back to me, turning back to ice.

"Apologize to her," he demanded.

I froze. The blood of my mother was still dried into the fabric of my pants, stiff and dark against my knees. "What?"

"Get on your knees and apologize to your sister," he ordered, his voice echoing off the wood-paneled walls. "You terrified her. You accused her of the unthinkable."

"She killed my mother!" I screamed, my voice tearing my throat raw. "I will never apologize to a murderer!"

"You have no power here, Monica," he said, his tone dropping to a dangerous, lethal whisper. "The Hollden estate is currently frozen pending the investigation. I control the funds. I control the funeral arrangements. If you don't get on your knees and beg Jessica for forgiveness right now, I will have your mother's body thrown into a pauper's grave."

"An unmarked, mass plot," he continued ruthlessly. "No headstone. No funeral. No dignity. She will rot in the dirt with the nameless, and you will never know where she is buried."

I looked at Jackson. The man I had loved for a decade. The father of the child growing inside me. He wasn't just a cheat or a liar. He was a monster.

I looked at Jessica. She was peeking over his shoulder, a triumphant, wicked smirk playing on her lips while she continued to fake her quiet sobs.

My legs gave out completely.

The fight drained out of my body, replaced by a crushing, suffocating despair. I couldn't let my mother be thrown away like trash. I couldn't let her final rest be a desecration. She had paid for her mistakes with her life. She deserved a grave.

Slowly, agonizingly, I lowered myself to the floor.

The carpet scratched against my knees. The same knees stained with my mother's blood.

I wrapped my arms around my stomach, trying to protect the tiny life inside me from the sheer evil in this room.

"I'm... sorry," I choked out, staring at the floor, my spirit shattering into dust.

"Louder," Jackson snapped. "And look at her."

I lifted my head. My vision was blurred with tears, but I could clearly see the absolute victory in my sister's eyes. She had taken my parents, my husband, my life, and now, my dignity.

"I'm sorry, Jessica," I sobbed, the words tasting like ash and bile in my mouth.

"That's better," Jackson said coldly, turning his back on me to comfort the murderer in his arms. "Now get out of my sight."

"Jackson is dead. Don't use a bastard child to guilt me into hurting Jessica."

The slap echoed sharply off the sterile white walls of the hospital corridor. I stumbled back, my frail body colliding with the cold metal of a medical cart.

I slowly raised my hand to my cheek, staring at the man standing in front of me.

Just an hour ago, back at the estate, Jessica had suddenly collapsed onto the drawing-room sofa, clutching her stomach and putting on a flawless performance of agony.

She claimed the "stress" of my "attack" had caused her stomach ulcer to rupture. She wailed that she was bleeding internally, that she felt faint, that she was dying.

It was a lie. But Jackson hadn't hesitated. He had scooped her up in his arms, his face pale with genuine panic. And then, he had turned his lethal glare on me.

My blood type was a rare, perfect match for Jessica. I had been her personal blood bank since we were children.

When the nurses had tried to prep me for the draw, the sheer terror of losing the only piece of my family I had left finally broke through my frozen numbness. I had tried to stop him. I had grabbed his tailored sleeve, my eyes wide with desperate, pleading panic.

“I can’t! I'm pregnant with your—”

"And I will not let you use some bastard child from your dead husband to avoid your responsibility. You caused this. You will fix it."

"Mr. Ridge," the attending nurse interrupted, her voice trembling slightly as she looked at my pale, sunken face. "She's severely malnourished. Her blood pressure is dangerously low. Drawing the amount Miss Hollden is requesting could put her into hypovolemic shock. Especially if she is pregnant—"

"Draw it," Jackson commanded, not even glancing in my direction. "My fiancée needs it. Take whatever she needs."

I didn't fight anymore.

I stared blankly at the ceiling tiles as the thick needle pierced the fragile vein in my arm.

The machine beside me began to hum. I watched the dark red liquid travel through the clear plastic tubing, leaving my body to fill the collection bag.

It was the blood that was supposed to be nourishing my baby. It was my life force, being siphoned away to fuel the woman who had murdered my mother.

Minutes bled into hours. The bag filled, heavy and dark.

My vision began to blur at the edges. A freezing, bone-deep cold seeped into my extremities. My fingers went numb, and a loud, rhythmic rushing sound filled my ears.

Suddenly, the door to the adjacent VIP suite flew open. Another nurse rushed out, looking frantic.

"Mr. Ridge! Miss Hollden is crying. The IV needle pinched her vein when she moved, and she's very distressed."

"Jessica," he breathed.

He didn't even look at me. He didn't check the monitor to see that my heart rate was plummeting. He just turned on his heel and sprinted into her room, desperate to soothe a minor needle prick on the woman who had destroyed my life.

The attending nurse finally stopped the machine, looking at me with deep, pitying sorrow. She bandaged my arm and whispered that I needed to rest, that I shouldn't stand up yet. But she was quickly called away to assist with Jessica's "emergency."

I was left completely alone in the sterile, freezing room.

I needed to get out. I couldn't breathe the same air as them anymore.

I pushed myself up from the chair. The room violently tilted. Black spots danced across my vision, and my legs felt like they were made of lead. I stumbled out of the room, bracing my hand against the freezing corridor wall to keep from collapsing.

I made it halfway down the empty, echoing hallway.

And then, it happened.

A sharp, tearing cramp ripped through my lower abdomen.

It was a pain so sudden and so violent that it knocked the breath straight out of my lungs. I gasped, my knees buckling instantly. I hit the cold linoleum floor hard, my hands instinctively flying to my stomach.

"No," I whispered into the empty hallway. "No, please. Not you too. Please."

Another cramp hit, sharper and deeper than the last. It felt like my very insides were being clawed out.

I curled into a tight ball on the floor, shivering uncontrollably. The blinding fluorescent lights above me flickered, buzzing like a swarm of angry hornets.

Then, I felt the wet, terrifying warmth.

It slipped down my thighs, soaking into the fabric of my skirt.

I slowly pulled my trembling hand away from my legs and held it up to the harsh hospital light.

My fingers were coated in bright, fresh blood.

Not the blood they had stolen for Jessica. This was different. This was the end of my final reason to live.

I pressed my bloody hands against my face. I didn't scream. I didn't cry for help. The nurses were all in the VIP suite, comforting Jessica over a bruised vein. Jackson was holding her hand, kissing her tears away.

And I was lying on the cold, dirty floor of a hospital hallway, bleeding out the only piece of my heart I had left.

I closed my eyes, the freezing void inside me finally swallowing me whole.