Chapter 3

The five-year pact was nearing its end, just a few months away. I was seven months pregnant.

I had created a small, hidden memorial for my unborn child in a secluded part of the garden – a tiny pair of booties I' d knitted, an ultrasound picture. It was my secret sanctuary.

One afternoon, I was there, whispering to my baby, when Ethan found me.

His face was thunderous.

"What is this?" he demanded, his voice sharp, gesturing to the little items.

Before I could answer, he grabbed my arm. "Isabelle is ill. She collapsed. She says you've been harassing her, wishing her harm."

"What? No, Ethan, I haven't..."

"Don't lie to me, Ava!" he snarled. "She said you've been acting erratically. She' s terrified of you."

Later, I learned Isabelle had orchestrated another "mishap."

She had apparently ingested a large quantity of a common herbal supplement, one she knew I occasionally took for sleep, and then "collapsed," claiming I had tried to poison her.

She wasn't even pregnant, though she had hinted to Ethan that she might be, to further stoke his possessiveness and her own value.

Ethan, blinded by his belief in Isabelle' s victimhood and his ingrained distrust of me, believed her instantly.

He dragged me back to the house, his rage a terrifying force.

He saw my memorial not as a mother's love, but as proof of my "morbid obsession" and "instability."

"You are unfit to be a mother," he seethed, his eyes cold. "You are a danger."

That night, he called his private doctor.

He held me down while the doctor administered an injection.

"This is for your own good, Ava," Ethan said, his voice chillingly calm. "And for the good of any potential Blackwood."

The cramps started a few hours later, brutal and unforgiving.

I lost my child, a little boy.

Ethan blamed my "instability." He said I had brought it on myself.

The light in me, the fragile hope I' d nurtured, was extinguished.