Chapter 6 - THE BABY WAS COMING EIGHT WEEKS EARLY
Trauma nurses are excellent at recognizing emergencies.
We are terrible at accepting when we become one.
“I’m fine.”
Nathan stared at me.
“You are standing in amniotic fluid.”
“I noticed.”
Another contraction started.
This one hurt.
Matthias moved toward me.
I lifted one hand.
“Don’t.”
The pain passed.
Police wanted an ambulance immediately.
I refused the hospital initially because whoever had my medical records knew exactly where I planned to deliver.
Nathan solved the argument.
“We use Greenwich Hospital under police security, not your scheduled facility.”
Within minutes I was in an ambulance.
Matthias tried to climb inside.
I looked at him.
“No.”
His face fell.
“Serena, that’s my daughter.”
“And I need calm.”
For once, he listened.
Nathan rode with me.
At the hospital, medication slowed the contractions.
My daughter’s heartbeat remained strong.
The obstetrician believed we might buy hours, maybe days.
I almost cried with relief.
Then a nurse entered carrying medication.
Something about her bothered me.
Wrong shoes.
Hospital nurses notice shoes.
Her badge said respiratory therapy.
She was carrying an obstetric medication tray.
I looked at Nathan.
“Don’t let her touch the IV.”
The woman froze.
Security moved immediately.
She dropped the tray and ran.
They caught her before the elevator.
The syringe in her pocket did not contain the medication written on the label.
It contained enough sedative to dangerously suppress my breathing.
Someone had followed me to the hospital.
Matthias arrived under police escort twenty minutes later.
When I told him, he went white.
“Who is doing this?”
“That’s what I’d like to know.”
Nathan received confirmation from investigators.
The woman was not hospital staff.
Her name was Camille Ross.
Former employee of a private security firm.
The security firm had worked for Dre Capital.
Matthias stared at the photograph.
“I know her.”
“How?”
“She used to drive my father.”
Conrad again.
Police went back to the estate.
Conrad was gone.
So was his car.
Evelyn insisted she had no idea where her husband went.
Then Fiona called me.
Her voice shook.
“I met my father.”
I sat upright.
“Where?”
“The old greenhouse.”
“Fiona—”
“He told me everything.”
Gregory Vale had discovered Conrad diverting Dre Capital investor money years earlier.
When he threatened to report it, Conrad arranged the boating accident.
Gregory survived and disappeared.
He had spent six years collecting evidence.
“The affair?” I asked.
Fiona was silent.
Then:
“Real.”
At least she did not lie.
“But my father pushed me toward Matthias because he needed access to company records.”
I looked across the room at my husband.
He had been using Fiona.
Fiona had been using him.
Conrad had been using everyone.
Then Fiona said something else.
“Serena, my father says Conrad isn’t the person who ordered the attack on you.”
“Then who did?”
She hesitated.
“He showed me bank transfers.”
The payments to Camille Ross came from a personal account.
Not Conrad’s.
Not Matthias’s.
May you like
Evelyn Dre.
My mother-in-law had hired the woman who walked into my hospital room with a loaded syringe.
