Chapter 2
The call had come while Daniel was still in Dubai.
His mother’s voice had been perfectly broken.
Too perfectly, he realized now.
“Elena didn’t make it,” she had said.
Daniel had dropped the phone once before picking it up again.
“What?”
“There were complications. The baby… Daniel, I’m so sorry.”
After that, the world turned to airport terminals, emergency tickets, unanswered calls, and the sickening stretch of hours between countries.
He tried calling Elena’s phone.
No answer.
Her hospital.
No clear information.
His mother said everything had happened too fast.
Marcus said Daniel needed to trust the family.
Trust.
That word now tasted poisonous.
When Daniel reached the mansion, the coffin was already in the living room.
Not a funeral home.
Not a chapel.
His mother claimed Elena had wanted privacy.
Marcus stood by the fireplace with a whiskey glass, eyes red but dry.
A police officer had been called because Daniel had shouted at the funeral director over the phone and demanded to see his wife before anything was sealed.
His mother called it hysteria.
Marcus called it shock.
Daniel called it instinct.
Now, as he stood over Elena and felt the faint pulse beneath his fingers, instinct had become evidence.
The officer’s radio crackled.
Daniel did not look away from Elena.
“Stay with me,” he whispered. “I’m here. I’m here.”
Her eyelids did not open.
Her lips did not move.
But her belly shifted faintly beneath the cloth.
The baby.
Alive enough to move.
Elena alive enough to breathe.
Daniel’s mother took one step back.
Marcus stared at the doorway the officer had blocked.
And the mansion, which had been prepared for mourning, began filling with a different kind of silence.
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The silence of people realizing the dead woman was not dead.
Read the full story 👉 Every detail Daniel had been told about Elena’s death began falling apart the moment he found her pulse.
