Chapter 1 - The Red HeelMy husband opened my private hospital-room door and caught Isabella standing over me with one red heel pressed against my body while I lay on the marble floor, both arms wrapped around my seven-month pregnant belly.
For three seconds, nobody moved.
I could not breathe.
The edge of the bed had caught my hip when I fell, and a sharp pain traveled through my back as my fingers instinctively shielded my stomach.
“KHLOE!”
Marcus’s voice exploded through the room.
Isabella’s heel snapped away from my body.
She stumbled backward and stared at him.
Her face went white.
Then, almost impossibly fast, she changed.
Her lips trembled.
Tears filled her eyes.
She lifted both hands toward her chest as if she had just witnessed a tragedy.
“She fell,” Isabella whispered. “Marcus, she fell. I was just trying to help her.”
Marcus looked at me.
Then at Isabella.
Then at the red heel beside my hip.
His jaw tightened.
“Help her?”
“I swear,” Isabella said. “I heard her scream. I ran in. She was already on the floor.”
I tried to speak, but pain locked my lungs.
Marcus dropped beside me.
“Khloe, look at me.”
I gripped his wrist.
“She pushed me.”
Isabella gasped.
“That’s a lie!”
Marcus slowly turned toward her.
“Don’t.”
“Marcus, listen to me.”
“DON’T YOU DARE LIE TO ME!”
His palm struck her cheek.
The sound cracked through the room.
Isabella stumbled sideways into the table.
Silence followed.
Her hand slowly rose to her cheek.
For one strange second, I thought she might cry.
Instead, something changed in her eyes.
The tears disappeared.
Her gaze moved upward.
Toward the corner of the ceiling.
A tiny red light blinked.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
A security camera.
Isabella stopped breathing.
Marcus followed her gaze.
His face changed.
“What?”
The camera was mounted above the air vent, almost invisible behind the decorative molding.
I had noticed it two days earlier.
I had asked the hospital technician to confirm it was recording continuously.
Isabella knew.
And the terror on her face told me one thing.
The camera had captured something she desperately needed us not to see.
Marcus helped me onto the bed.
“I’m calling security.”
Isabella backed toward the door.
“No.”
Marcus looked at her.
“No?”
Her expression collapsed again.
“I mean... you don’t understand.”
“Then explain.”
She swallowed.
“I came here because someone called me.”
“Who?”
She said nothing.
“Who called you, Isabella?”
Her eyes flicked toward me.
That look was not anger.
It was fear.
Pure fear.
Then she whispered four words.
“You have no idea.”
Security arrived minutes later.
A guard took Isabella’s phone.
Another officer reviewed the camera system.
The room became crowded.
Doctors checked my stomach.
The baby’s heartbeat was strong.
But I could not stop shaking.
Marcus stayed beside me, holding my hand.
His thumb moved across my knuckles.
“I’m here.”
I looked at him.
There was blood on his hand from where I had scratched him when I fell.
“Marcus.”
“What?”
“I want the recording.”
He nodded.
“Of course.”
A hospital technician opened the archived footage.
The timestamp began thirty-seven minutes before Marcus entered.
Isabella appeared in the hallway.
Alone.
She stopped outside my door.
She looked both ways.
Then she entered.
The footage switched to the ceiling camera inside my room.
Isabella closed the door.
She did not rush toward me.
She stood beside the bed.
And for nearly ten seconds, she simply stared at me.
Then she smiled.
Not the trembling smile she had shown Marcus.
A cold, almost satisfied smile.
Marcus leaned closer to the screen.
“What the hell...?”
Isabella walked toward my IV stand.
She opened her handbag.
My stomach dropped.
Inside the bag was a small glass vial.
Isabella twisted the cap off.
She looked over her shoulder.
Then she reached toward my IV line.
Marcus stared at the footage in disbelief.
“No.”
I whispered, “Keep watching.”
Isabella injected something into the line.
Then she placed the vial back inside her purse.
She walked toward my bed.
And before she ever touched me, her phone rang.
Isabella answered.
We could hear the recording through the monitor speakers.
Her voice was low.
“I did it.”
A man answered from the other end.
His voice was distorted by the recording.
“Is she going to survive?”
Isabella looked at my sleeping body.
“I don't care about her.”
There was a pause.
The man spoke again.
“And the baby?”
Isabella smiled.
“That is exactly why I'm here.”
Marcus froze.
The recording continued.
“Once the baby is born,” Isabella said, “Marcus will never look at Khloe the same way again.”
I turned toward my husband.
His face had gone completely still.
Then Isabella said the words that changed everything.
“She still doesn't know the baby isn't his.”
The screen suddenly went black.
The technician looked up.
“The file is corrupted after that point.”
Nobody spoke.
Marcus stared at me.
I stared back.
Seven months pregnant.
My husband beside me.
And a sentence hanging in the air like a loaded gun.
The baby isn't his.
Then the hospital technician suddenly whispered,
“Wait.”
He pointed at the monitor.
“There’s another file.”
The second recording had a different timestamp.
It started three hours earlier.
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And the first person seen entering my room was not Isabella.
It was Marcus’s mother.
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