I spent my wedding night alone because my husband’s grandmother said every groom in their family had to sleep beside “the matriarch” before joining his bride. My husband told me not to make a scene. By morning, I was done being polite. I opened the door and found him unconscious beside her, with an unfamiliar stain on the sheet and a tiny puncture mark on his arm. That was when the story stopped looking like a disgusting tradition and started looking like something much darker.

I stared at the defaced ultrasound photo, my blood running completely cold in my veins.

Arthur and Eleanor were not just threatening me; they were hunting me.

Leo pulled me away from the bed, warning me that the security teams were sweeping the floors.

We bolted back to the stairwell, our footsteps echoing loudly in the deserted hospital.

I asked Leo where they could have possibly taken a paralyzed man in such a short amount of time.

Leo pulled a cheap, plastic burner phone from his pocket and frantically typed a long string of numbers.

He explained that before he was banished, he had secretly planted GPS trackers on all the family's private ambulances.

The phone beeped loudly, displaying a bright red dot moving rapidly on a digital map.

The dot was heading deep into the isolated, heavily forested mountains north of the city.

Leo told me they were taking Julian to the Blackwood Clinic, a fully illegal, off-the-grid medical facility owned by a family shell corporation.

We rushed back through the underground tunnel and jumped into Leo’s hidden truck.

The drive into the dark, imposing mountains was terrifyingly treacherous and silent.

I gripped the black ledger in my hands, preparing myself for whatever horrors awaited us at the clinic.

Suddenly, the cheap burner phone in Leo’s cup holder lit up with a text message.

Leo glanced down at the bright screen, and the color completely drained from his heavily scarred face.

He slammed on the brakes, causing the truck to violently skid to a halt on the dirt road.

I asked him what was wrong, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs.

Leo looked at me with an expression of pure, unadulterated terror.

He whispered that the text was from an inside contact he still had at the clinic.

Eleanor was not planning to wait a year to harvest my blood and my child.

Her genetic decay had aggressively accelerated over the last twenty-four hours.

Leo read the terrifying text message aloud in the dark cabin of the truck.

It said that Eleanor was dying tonight, and the surgical team had been ordered to extract the child immediately.

I placed a protective hand over my stomach, completely paralyzed by the horrific reality.

When my newborn 'passed away,' my mother-in-law leaned in and said

My Husband Left Me Alone in My Car While I Was in Labor

“You’re Dead When We Get Home,” He Snapped

Then, the sound of heavy tires crunching on gravel echoed from the dark woods behind us.

Two massive, armored SUVs with their headlights completely turned off blocked our only path of retreat.

Chapter 6 - The Burner Phone