Chapter 4 - The Twist of the "Ex"
The room felt cold despite the hospital thermostat.
“She followed me?” I whispered, my mind racing backward through the fog of that horrific afternoon.
I remembered entering the department store. I remembered buying a few baby clothes, feeling the heavy, exhaustion-laden weight of my third trimester. When I walked toward the elevators, I had felt a prickle of discomfort at the back of my neck, the sensation of being watched. But I had brushed it off as pregnancy paranoia.
“Look at this,” Mark said, pulling up a secured file on his tablet. As a firefighter, he had access to the preliminary investigation files being compiled by the building’s security team.
The video clip showed the mall lobby. There I was, visibly pregnant, holding a small boutique bag. And there, fifty feet behind me, moving through the crowds like a predator in a sundress, was Valerie. She was wearing large sunglasses, her eyes fixed entirely on the back of my head.
When I stepped into the elevator, she quickened her pace, slipping through the closing doors at the very last second.
“Why?” I breathed, my hand trembling as I touched the screen. “Why would she trap herself in an elevator with me?”
“She didn't mean to trap herself,” Mark explained, flipping to a technical diagnostic report. “The elevator had been flagged for a faulty cable sensor earlier that morning. A maintenance warning was posted on the employee bulletin board, but the public didn't know. Valerie has a cousin who works in the building’s facilities department. We think she knew the elevator would stop. She thought it would just stall between floors for a few minutes—long enough to orchestrate a dramatic emergency call to Alex.”
The sheer, psychotic calculation of it made my stomach turn.
“She wanted him to rescue her in front of me,” I realized, the horror wash over me in waves. “She wanted to prove to me that no matter what, no matter if I was pregnant with his child, he would choose her.”
“Exactly,” Mark said. “But she didn't account for the backup generator exploding. She didn't account for a fifteen-minute dramatic stunt turning into a seven-hour deathtrap that almost killed eight people.”
A sharp knock on the door interrupted us. I expected Alex again, or perhaps a lawyer, but instead, the door swung open to reveal a tall, elegant woman in a tailored black suit. Her face was tight with fury, but her eyes softened the moment she looked at me.
“Mrs. Davis? I’m Victoria Sterling. Arthur Sterling’s daughter.”
The District Attorney.
I tried to sit up straighter, but the incision from my C-section throbbed painfully. “Ms. Sterling, I am so sorry about your father. I tried to keep his vitals stable in there, but without oxygen—”
“Stop,” Victoria said, walking quickly to my side and gently taking my hand. “Do not apologize. The paramedics told me everything. They found your notepad. They told me that even while you were suffocating, you used your nursing training to monitor my father’s heart rate and told them exactly what medication he needed the second the doors opened. You saved my father’s life, Lucy.”
May you like
She turned her head, looking out the small window of my room toward the hallway, where the media cameras were flashing outside the hospital lobby.
“And as the District Attorney of this city,” Victoria continued, her voice turning to pure, unadulterated ice, “I am going to make sure the man who left you both in that dark hole never sees the light of day again.”
