Chapter 3: The Broken Thread

Julian dropped my bound wrist instantly, the fury on his face replaced by sheer, cold panic. Without glancing back, he sprinted into the corridor.
I hauled myself up from the settee, my legs buckling beneath the weight of the dull, pulsing ache in my abdomen. I stumbled out onto the landing just in time to see Julian lifting Leo’s limp body into his arms. Teresa scrambled ahead of them, scooping up the keys to the estate vehicle.
I leaned against the banister and reached out a hand toward my son. “Julian… let me come. I can sit with him in the back—”
“Stay where you are!” Julian barked, shoving my shoulder aside as he bolted past. His voice cracked with a mixture of disgust and despair. “Look at yourself! You’re covered in blood and madness. Haven’t you done enough to this boy today?”
The heavy oak front door slammed shut, the echo rattling the glass transom above.
I stood alone in the grand hallway. The silence rushed back in, thick and suffocating. Glancing down, I saw dark spots of my own blood smeared against the lace cuff of my blouse, mingling with the spilled cold broth on the floor.
Julian was right about one thing: I was nothing more than an open wound, bleeding onto everything I touched. I wasn't an artist anymore, nor was I a wife or a mother. The place I had fought so hard to return to had sealed over in my absence, smooth and undisturbed.
I slowly turned back to the room, cleaned my forearm with antiseptic from the vanity kit, and changed into a plain charcoal sweater.
As I reached deep into the pocket of my coat, my fingers brushed against a small, velvet-lined box. Inside was a hand-carved soapstone pendant of a falcon in flight—Leo’s favorite raptor. During a routine check-in call last month, Teresa had casually remarked that the boys in Leo’s primary academy wore handmade keepsakes carved by their parents, and Leo had looked envious after art class.
For four weeks, behind the locked doors of the sanitarium workshop, I had chipped away at the stubborn stone until my knuckles were bruised and my palms blistered.
I closed my fist around the small falcon. Whatever remained of my time, I owed him this final gesture.
I hired a private cab down the winding hillside road to the St. Jude Private Clinic. The concierge recognized my name from the past and directed me up to the fourth-floor pediatric intensive care wing.
When I stepped out of the brass elevator, the corridor was hushed, lit only by soft nightlamps. Before I could reach the nurse’s station, a trembling sob echoed from an alcove behind the frosted glass doors of the consultation room.
“Julian, I can’t go through with this child,” Teresa wept, her voice raw and muffled against someone's chest. “If Elena finds out about the baby… with her mental state, she will burn this family down to the ground.”
I stopped dead in my tracks, my boots anchored to the linoleum.
“And if we hadn't been in that suite three years ago when the fire started,” Teresa’s voice continued, cracked with guilt, “she wouldn't have inhaled the smoke looking for you. The depression, the memory lapses—it was our fault…”
A violent rip tore through the air as Julian shredded the medical document in his hands.
“Enough, Teresa! We have paid for that night every single day for three years!” Julian’s voice rose, hoarse and uncompromising. “I gave her everything modern medicine could offer. I let her drain my patience, my work, and my youth! I love you, Teresa. You are carrying my child, and I will not let you kill it for the sake of a ghost who only knows how to hurt herself.”
The world tilted beneath me.
Three years ago, on the night the studio caught fire, a cryptic concierge booking confirmation had pinged on Julian’s car dashboard. I had driven across the district in a frantic storm, tearing through the hotel lobby, but found only an empty room and the scent of jasmine. In my fevered hysteria, I returned to the studio to search his sketchbooks for proof, only to be swallowed by a blaze that started from an overturned solvent lamp.
Ever since, Teresa had stood by my bed in the burn unit, weeping and insisting I had misread the message, promising to be my rock. When I broke down in tears of gratitude for her loyalty, her eyes had always looked so deeply remorseful.
It hadn't been compassion at all. It had been the calculated penance of a thief.
A wave of nausea crashed over me, followed by an explosion of searing agony in my gut. Trembling with an uncontrollable shudder, I stepped forward to shove the glass door open.
Before I could cross the threshold, a small pair of arms wrapped tightly around my waist from behind, yanking me backward.
My footing gave out, and I crashed onto the cold floor.
A pair of small hands clamped clumsily over my mouth. Leo’s face was pressed close to mine, his eyes wide and dark with desperation.
“Hush, lady! Be quiet!” the boy hissed, tears streaming down his flushed cheeks. “Auntie Teresa told me her only wish for her birthday is to give me a little brother! If you make a scene, Daddy will take her away like they took you! I won't let you ruin my family!”
The poison flared through my veins like molten lead, draining every lingering fragment of strength from my limbs. I could only watch through the glass as Julian gathered Teresa into his arms, kissing her tear-streaked face with a desperate, all-consuming passion.
My vision blurred into dark, wavering shadows, and my head struck the floor.

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