Another contraction hit, harder this time, threatening to tear me in half.
But as the pain crested, something deep inside my chest snapped. The terrified, grieving widow who was desperately seeking comfort from the people who shared her husband’s blood died right there in the rain. I looked at Vivian’s veiled face, and then at Derek, who was already mentally dividing up Samuel’s assets.
I didn’t scream. I didn’t beg. I absorbed their cruelty, packing it into a dense, freezing core within my heart. I nodded once, a slow, mechanical motion. I turned my back on Samuel’s grave, turned my back on his family, and walked alone toward the towering iron gates of the cemetery.
Twenty minutes later, I sat in the back of a cold, smelling-of-stale-smoke taxi cab. My black dress was soaked with freezing rain and amniotic fluid. I bit my lower lip until I tasted the sharp, metallic tang of my own blood, doing everything in my power to keep from screaming as the contractions battered my spine.
I looked out the window at the glowing red sign of the hospital approaching in the distance. I placed a trembling, protective hand over my swollen belly. In the quiet darkness of that cab, I made a silent, terrifying vow to my unborn son. The family who had left us in the mud to protect their image was going to drown in it.
Chapter 2: The Birth of a Kingdom
At 2:17 a.m., under the harsh, sterile glow of the hospital’s surgical lights, my son, Elias, was born.
There was no husband to hold my hand. There were no joyful grandparents waiting in the hallway with balloons. There was no one to cut the cord or take the first photograph. There was only the rhythmic, steady hum of the hospital monitors and the exhausted, panting breath tearing through my lungs.
