Vince's POV

“The babies are safe in the nursery. Stop using them to manipulate me,” Luisa hissed.

Still, I begged her over and over to give them back. They needed emergency care. Every second mattered.

But she pulled her hand away in disgust, shaking me off like I was nothing.

“Drop the act,” she snapped. “As long as you behave, I won’t hurt those two little bastards. Oh, and tomorrow at the press conference, you’re going to admit publicly that you’re infertile. That you’re the one who’s useless. That’s why I had to have Toby with Albion. Then, you’ll transfer every single one of your shares and assets to him and his son. From now on, your only job is to serve them. Obediently.”

Then she threatened, “But if you try anything sneaky again, if you so much as touch a hair on that child’s head, I won’t just deal with you and your brats. Your dying father in that VIP hospital bed won’t make it, either.”

My eyes widened in disbelief. I stared at her like I was looking at a stranger.

“Luisa… has your conscience been eaten by dogs?! My father’s in a coma because he saved your life! And now you’re using his life to threaten me?”

She sighed in annoyance. “Look, as long as you do your job, take care of Albion and Toby, keep them happy, I won’t touch him.”

With that, she looped her arm through Albion’s and walked away, saying sweetly, “Albion, thank you for bringing me such a perfect heir. I need to give you a proper reward.”

Blood poured from my body as I lay there begging the guards at the press conference to please take me to a hospital. I also begged them to return my babies.

That was when my mother-in-law arrived. Her face went pale the moment she saw the blood all over the venue and me lying there with both my legs broken, soaked in red.

“Get him to the hospital now!” she screamed. “Where are my grandchildren?! If anything happens to those babies, I swear none of you will get away with it!”

Finally, they rushed me and the twins to the hospital.

But there were no doctors.

Not a single one.

My mother-in-law, furious, demanded to know where all the medical staff had gone.

The nurses hesitated, then one of them explained, clearly distressed, “Ma’am, Miss Luisa has called every doctor in the city to her villa by the river. Mr. Chavez scraped his finger while giving blood, and she was afraid it might get infected, so she ordered all doctors to stay on-site just in case. Right now, there are no doctors available anywhere in the city.”

My mother-in-law lost it. She started calling every number she could think of.

“This is insane!” she cried. “Her husband and babies are dying, and she pulls every doctor away just to fuss over a third party and some illegitimate child?!”

Ten calls later, Luisa finally picked up, irritated.

“What do you want now?” she said flatly. “Is Vince throwing a tantrum again and using you as backup?”

My mother-in-law shouted into the phone, trembling with rage, “Vince is bleeding out! He’s already passed out! And the babies’ heartbeats have stopped! If they don’t get emergency treatment right now, they’re going to die! And you—you sent every doctor away?! Do you want to kill your husband and your children?!”

Yet, Luisa only laughed coldly. “He put you up to this, didn’t he? Please. He just got slapped a few times. That’s not ‘bleeding out.’ And the babies? I saw them with my own eyes when they were sent to the nursery. They were perfectly fine. What, now they’re suddenly dying? At least try to lie believably. Whatever, I don’t have time for this. I need to take newborn photos with Albion and our son. He wants doctors? Fine. I’ll send someone.”

My mother-in-law hung up and grabbed my hand tightly. “Don’t be scared, Vince. The doctors are coming. Just hold on, okay?”

I held the babies close to my chest, feeling their life slipping away.

And in that moment, I remembered the last lifetime how my children never even opened their eyes, never made a single sound before Luisa smashed them to death with her own hands.

Shaking uncontrollably, I clutched my mother-in-law’s hand and whispered through bloodstained lips, “Mom, three years ago, my father fell into a coma saving Luisa. You promised me... you said you’d treat me like your own son. And if Luisa ever turned against me... you said you’d help me divorce her.”

Vince's POV

“I’m begging you,” I said, my voice trembling. “Please let me divorce her. I swear, I won’t stand in the way of her first love’s son becoming the heir. I just want my children to grow up safely.”

My mother-in-law was already in tears, nodding over and over. “I know… At first, we only agreed to adopt you as a godson to repay your father for saving my life. That’s all I ever promised. But it was Luisa who fell for you. She was the one who confessed. She was the one who insisted on marrying you. She loved you so much… So, how did it turn into this?”

Her voice cracked with anger. “I know it now. It’s all that bastard Albion’s fault. If he hadn’t come back out of nowhere, none of this would’ve happened.”

I let out a bitter laugh. Yeah. How did things get this twisted?

That girl, who once stood at her coming-of-age ceremony blushing and vowing to love me for life, who said if she ever betrayed me, she deserved to be torn to pieces, was now the one tearing me apart for another man.

“Please… Mom,” I whispered hoarsely, gritting each word.

Hearing the last bit of breath in my plea, my mother-in-law finally nodded.

“Alright! When you two got married, I made her sign a divorce agreement just in case things ever went south between you. I’ll go home and get it expedited right away. Tomorrow, I’ll announce publicly that your children are my only heirs. As for that ungrateful daughter of mine and that illegitimate child, I’ll cut them off completely.”

She left immediately after that to handle it all.

As such, I was left lying in a hospital bed, the pain in my body and my heart crashing down on me like a tidal wave. I couldn’t stop crying out.

Her assistant, on the other hand, stayed behind, anxiously glancing toward the door, waiting for the doctors Luisa promised to send.

Finally, someone arrived.

But it wasn’t a doctor.

It was just a delivery guy.

He froze when he saw the blood-soaked emergency room, then quickly handed over a small bag and slipped a bandage out.

“Miss Luisa said it’s just a flesh wound,” he mumbled. “Nothing life-threatening. She said to stop bothering her on her wedding night.”

The assistant’s eyes filled with rage as she threw the bag across the room.

“Sir, I’m taking you to a hospital in another city. Hold on. Please, just hang in there.”

I screamed and writhed in pain, then everything went black.

When I woke up again, a bucket of ice-cold water was splashed over my body, shocking me awake.

Standing over me was Luisa with her face twisted in disgust.

“Drop the act,” she sneered. “You know I’m announcing Albion’s son as my heir tomorrow, and yet you still ran off to another city for treatment! What, hoping everyone would think Albion’s abusing you?”

Behind her, Albion stood holding the child in his arms, putting on a show of innocence and hurt.

“Mr. Carr,” he said gently, “I know you hate me. But if you want revenge, take it out on me. Why did you have to involve Luisa's mother and try to take my child away? The assistant was yelling right before she got dragged off, said your mother-in-law went back to file papers to adopt my child and I didn’t deserve to be the heir’s father.”

I opened my mouth, but no words came out. My throat burned. All I could do was shake my head in desperation, tears in my eyes.

“I… didn’t. Luisa… please, bring the doctors back. The babies… they won’t hold on much longer…”

“You’re lying again!” she snapped, frowning impatiently. “My mom left the hospital in such a rush and she took a lawyer to work overnight. You think I don’t know you’re behind this? You think stealing Albion’s kid will magically make you the heir’s father? Aren’t your two brats already born safe and sound? What more do you want? Faking their deaths now to win sympathy? Just to fight over the heir position? You’re disgusting!”

Vince's POV

Pain tore through every inch of my body. The blood on my skin had long dried, sticking to me like glue and reeking of rot.

Because of that, Albion gagged and covered his nose, looking as though he might vomit. “Mr. Carr, you know I can’t stand the smell of blood. You refused to clean yourself up on purpose, didn’t you? Just to make me faint?”

Hearing that, Luisa shot me a look of pure disgust. “Look at you. You smell like a corpse and you look insane. You’re a total embarrassment.”

She waved her hand, and the bodyguards started dumping buckets of cold water over me again and again until I turned pale and my body trembled uncontrollably from the cold. Only then did she tell them to stop.

But Albion wasn’t done playing the victim.

“Mr. Carr,” he whimpered, “please… don’t take my son away. If you’re really going to steal him from me, then I’ll just jump out this window!”

He then staggered toward the ledge, putting on a show, and Luisa immediately rushed to hold him back.

Finally, she snapped.

She spun around and kicked my hand away from where I was clinging to his pant leg. Leaning down, her voice dropped cold and sharp, “You think talking my mom into backing you makes you worthy of being the heir’s father? Think again. You’re never going to take what belongs to Albion and his child. I’ve already had the old estate locked up. I don’t care what you’re plotting. It’s over.”

“Also,” she hissed, “I’ve warned you how many times. Don’t touch Albion or his child. But you never listen. So now I have no choice but to use more permanent methods.”

After that, she turned to the guards and barked, “He pushed Albion to the brink. He needs to pay the price. Go pull the oxygen tube from his father. Then throw this trash off the building.”

“No!” I screamed, my voice ripping through my throat. “Luisa, are you insane?! That’s my father! He saved your life!”

She scoffed. “So what? He only did that to get my favor. So that you'd marry into a wealthy family and your child with me could inherit my family fortune. Well, congratulations. You got what you wanted. I married into your world. I carried your children. But your babies… they just weren’t fast enough. They were born after Albion’s son returned. I’ve paid my debt. I don’t owe your family a damn thing anymore.”

“Do it!” she ordered the guards.

I lunged at the guards in a frenzy, trying to stop them. But they beat me down hard, ripping my clothes in the process.

My dried wounds tore open, blood gushing out like a dam had burst, soaking the floor in seconds.

I curled up on the ground, screaming in agony.

Luisa stepped forward, ready to drag me again, but then she suddenly froze.

Her eyes landed on something that had fallen from my shredded clothes—a crumpled ICU emergency notice, the kind issued during a newborn’s critical rescue.

Seeing that, her face went pale.

She dropped to her knees beside me and grabbed my shoulders, then turned to Albion and the guards, her voice panicked and sharp.

“What is this?! I told you to bring him to the press conference not to beat him half to death! Who did this?! And this medical notice, where did it come from?! Albion, you said you hired a professional to care for the babies. You said they were fine!”

Albion’s face twitched. But within seconds, he forced a look of shock and quickly pulled out his phone.

“I swear, I didn’t know anything about this. The babies were perfectly fine when I left. I—I knew Mr. Carr might try to frame me, so I asked the nanny to record a video. Here, look.”

He handed over his phone. On the screen was a grainy, poorly edited video of a baby who was clearly over a month old.

The footage was so fake that it was laughable.

The guards, relieved to have something to latch onto, immediately jumped in.

“We would never lay a hand on Mr. Carr. He probably faked this himself—maybe used special effects makeup to trick you, worried you'd punish him for what happened to your boy toys earlier.”