“This is different,” he murmured, his eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that felt, at the time, like profound love. “It’s a $50 million policy. It’s designed strictly to ensure that our baby, and I, are entirely taken care of if… well, if the absolute worst happens during the delivery. The underwriters rushed it through because of your medical charts.”
A cold dread coiled in my gut, entirely separate from the winter draft. Nobody wants to sign a document that puts a dollar amount on their own demise, especially not with a child waiting to take its first breath. But I looked at Carter. I looked at the man who had swept me off my feet, who had promised me a life of warmth and security. I didn’t know then about his mounting, suffocating debts. I didn’t know about the disastrous offshore investments he’d made, or the silent, growing resentment he harbored toward the life we were building. I only saw the loving father-to-be.
“You always think of us, Carter,” I whispered, blinking back a sudden rush of emotional tears.
“Always,” he replied, leaning in to press a lingering kiss against my forehead. “I just need your signature on the bottom of page seven, and initials on page nine.”
My hand trembled slightly as I took the pen. The ink flowed dark and permanent across the dotted line. As I handed the papers back, I missed the subtle, predatory glint that flashed in his dark eyes—the look of a starving wolf staring at a tethered lamb.
The exhaustion of carrying the baby soon pulled me into a deep, dreamless sleep. But hours later, a strange, rhythmic sound woke me. It wasn’t the wind. It was a voice.
I shuffled clumsily out of bed, the floorboards freezing against my bare feet, and crept toward the hallway. The door to Carter’s home office was slightly ajar, a sliver of yellow light spilling onto the rug.
“It’s done,” Carter was murmuring into his phone. All the warm velvet was gone from his voice, replaced by a hollow, metallic coldness that made the hair on my arms stand up. “She signed it. Every single page.”
A pause. Then, a dark, breathless chuckle.
“I know,” he whispered. “Soon, Sienna, we’ll have more money than we ever dreamed of. The debt will be wiped out, and we’ll be free. Just make sure the flight to Switzerland is booked for the end of the month.”
read more in next page
