Chapter 2 - The Flowers from SerenaSerena arrived the next morning carrying white roses.
She entered the hospital room in a cream winter coat, her face arranged into perfect grief. She placed the bouquet beside Elena’s IV stand and rushed toward the bed.
“Oh, Elena.”
Elena watched her carefully.
Serena smelled of jasmine and cedar.
The same perfume had lingered inside Victor’s car before the drive to the cliff.
Serena bent to embrace her.
Elena flinched deliberately.
“My shoulder.”
“I’m sorry.” Serena stepped back. “Victor said you don’t remember much.”
“Pieces.”
Serena’s eyes searched her face.
“What kind of pieces?”
“Snow. Wind. Victor shouting.”
The heart monitor accelerated.
Serena glanced at it.
“Trauma creates false memories. You shouldn’t force anything.”
Adrian stood near the door, silent and imposing.
Serena had always been comfortable around him. She managed charity events for Cross Alpine Holdings and knew every member of his executive circle.
Today she could barely meet his eyes.
Victor entered moments later.
His gaze moved from Serena to the flowers.
Something passed between them.
Small.
Fast.
But Elena saw it.
Victor sat beside the bed.
“Serena has been helping with everything.”
“Everything?” Elena asked.
“The insurance paperwork. The police. Your medical authorization.”
Serena touched Victor’s shoulder as though comforting him.
Her hand remained there too long.
Adrian stepped between them and the bed.
“My attorney is handling Elena’s affairs.”
Victor stood.
“I’m her husband.”
“And she is conscious.”
“Barely.”
Elena closed her eyes before anger betrayed her.
A hospital technician entered to check the IV pump. As she moved the flowers, the glass vase made a faint metallic sound.
The technician frowned.
“There’s something inside.”
Security opened the vase under observation.
Beneath the rose stems lay a small medical vial and an injector without a needle cap.
The vial contained potassium chloride.
In a high enough dose, it could stop Elena’s heart.
Serena staggered backward.
“I didn’t put that there.”
Victor stared at her.
“You brought the bouquet.”
“The florist delivered it to my hotel.”
Adrian immediately ordered both of them removed from the room.
Victor protested until two security officers approached.
Serena looked at Elena.
“You know I would never hurt you.”
Elena whispered, “Do I?”
After they left, Evelyn Shaw, Adrian’s attorney, arrived with a forensic accountant.
The insurance policy had been created eighteen months earlier. Elena’s electronic signature appeared on every page.
She had never seen it.
The policy included a Family Catastrophe Rider. If Elena and her first biological child died in the same event, Victor received fifty million dollars immediately and temporary control of Elena’s shares in Cross Alpine Holdings.
“If only I died?” Elena asked.
“Your shares returned to Adrian’s trust,” Evelyn explained. “Victor received five million.”
“And if the baby died with me?”
“Everything went to him.”
The policy required prenatal genetic confirmation.
Someone had submitted Elena’s hospital records and the baby’s DNA screening.
The authorization came from Serena’s company account.
Serena had organized Elena’s prenatal appointments.
She had access to every test.
A nurse returned with Elena’s phone, recovered by mountain rescue. The screen was cracked, but the device still functioned.
One application had been opened repeatedly the night before the fall.
The insurance portal.
At 7:14 p.m., Elena’s phone approved the claim.
At that moment, Elena had been unconscious in Victor’s car.
The phone’s biometric log showed a facial scan.
Someone had held it in front of her drugged face.
Then Adrian received a call from hospital security.
Serena had left the building.
Victor remained in the lobby with police.
The cameras showed Serena entering the parking garage, removing her cream coat, and climbing into a black SUV.
The driver was Dr. Malcolm Hargrove, Elena’s obstetrician.
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The physician who had signed the unborn child’s death report.
👉 Serena brought a lethal drug into Elena’s room, then fled with the doctor who had falsely certified her unborn baby’s death.
