"I came home early to surprise my pregnant wife, only to find her bleeding in the dark. Then she whispered who had been inside."

Lily lay curled on the edge of the mattress, her breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps. The backward silk nightgown—a detail that his poisoned mind had initially misconstrued as a sign of guilt—now served as a glaring testament to a violent struggle. Someone had forced her into it, or she had been dragged and disoriented. Her skin was the color of ash, and the bruises wrapping around her slender wrists bloomed in dark, angry shades of purple and blue.

"Lily," Adam choked out, dropping to his knees beside the bed. His hands hovered over her, shaking so violently he was afraid to touch her, terrified that he might break what little life she had left. "Oh god, Lily, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I hesitated."

For sixty long seconds when he had first walked in, jealousy and his mother’s toxic whispers had paralyzed him. He had let suspicion cloud his duty, letting a monstrous seed of doubt plant itself in his mind while his wife bled in the dark. That minute of hesitation would haunt him for the rest of his days.

Lily’s eyelids fluttered open, her gaze glassy and weak. When she saw him, a tear carved a clean path through the film of sweat on her cheek.

"Adam..." she whispered, her voice a dry, agonizing rasp.

"Don't talk, sweetheart, I'm calling an ambulance right now," Adam stammered, frantically reaching into his pocket for his phone.

Her cold, blood-stained fingers suddenly shot out with surprising strength, gripping his wrist. Her grip was tight, desperate, and laden with a warning that froze the marrow in his bones.

"Don't call your mother..."

Adam stopped, his phone slipping from his trembling fingers to land softly on the blood-spattered carpet. "What?" he breathed, the name of the woman who had raised him tasting like ash on his tongue.

"She... she was here," Lily gasped, her chest heaving as fresh tears spilled over her lashes. "She said... the baby would ruin everything."

The room tilted violently. Memories of his mother, Eleanor Carter, flashed through Adam’s mind—her smooth, elegant smiles, her polite social gatherings in the Gold Coast, and the venomous words she had dropped over dinner weeks prior: Women have secrets, Adam. Make sure you aren’t being played for a fool. Eleanor had never approved of Lily, a librarian from a modest background who possessed no elite family crest or corporate pedigree. Eleanor viewed her as a placeholder, an inconvenient detour from the corporate dynastic match she had planned for her only son.

"Lily, who did this?" Adam demanded, his voice cracking as the full weight of the horror settled over him. "Who was in this house?"

Lily closed her eyes, a shudder wracking her frame as she gathered what little air remained in her lungs. She tightened her hand over her round, trembling belly, shielding their unborn child even in her unconscious state of agony.