I lay in the pool of my own blood and the wreckage of my unborn child. The grief should have paralyzed me. The physical shock should have knocked me unconscious.
But something else was happening.
The Thorne bloodline was waking up.
But David had just killed my child.
The fire wasn’t suppressed anymore. It was an inferno.
I stopped crying. I wiped the tears from my face with a bloody hand.
I looked up at David. He was standing there, hands on his hips, radiating arrogance.
“Listen to me,” David sneered, squatting down next to me so our faces were level.
“I am a lawyer. A damn good one. I know the judges in this county. I play golf with the Sheriff. If you try to tell anyone about this, I will destroy you.”
He poked me in the chest.
“It’s your word against ours. My mother will testify you slipped. Mark… Mark didn’t see anything, did you Mark?”
Mark, standing in the doorway, looked terrified. “I… I didn’t see anything.”
“See?” David smiled, a cruel, shark-like grin. “You have no witnesses. I will have you committed, Anna.
I will say you are mentally unstable. Post-partum psychosis before the birth.
I will lock you away in a facility where no one will ever hear you scream. You will never win against me. I know the statutes. I know the loopholes.”
I looked at him. I really looked at him. I saw the cheap suit. The desperate ambition. The smallness of his soul.
“You’re right, David,” I said. My voice was quiet, but it didn’t tremble. “You know the statutes.”
I pulled myself up to a sitting position, leaning against the cabinets.
“But you don’t know who wrote them.”
David frowned. “What are you babbling about? The blood loss making you delusional?”
“Give me your phone,” I said.
“What?”
“Give me your phone,” I repeated. “Call my father.”
David laughed. It was a manic, incredulous sound. He stood up and looked at his mother. “Did you hear that? She wants to call her daddy. The retired clerk in Florida. What’s he going to do? Write me a stern letter?”
“Call him,” I said. “Put it on speaker.”
David shook his head, pulling his brand-new iPhone 15 Pro out of his pocket. “Fine. Let’s call him. Let’s tell him his daughter is a clumsy, hysterical mess who can’t even keep a pregnancy.”
He unlocked the phone. “What’s the number?”
I recited it from memory. It wasn’t a Florida area code. It was a D.C. area code. A specific prefix used only by high-level government officials.
David paused as he typed it. “202? That’s D.C.”
“Just dial, David.”
He hit call. He put it on speaker, holding it out mockingly.
The phone rang once. Twice.
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