Chapter 3 - The Dark Contract
I stood frozen as the security guards aggressively pinned David against the hospital wall.
The metal clipboard he had been holding clattered loudly against the linoleum floor.
"Get your hands off me!" David shouted, struggling violently against their grip.
The lead guard ignored him and kicked the dropped clipboard across the room.
"We ran his credentials after the nursing staff noticed discrepancies in his visitation logs," the guard explained to me.
"His real name is Marcus Vance, and he's a known broker for a black-market infant trafficking ring."
The room seemed to tilt sideways as the sheer weight of the revelation crashed over me.
I spun around to look at Sophie, whose pale face had just drained of all remaining color.
"Sophie, did you know about this?" I asked, my voice barely more than an incredulous whisper.
"No," she gasped, clutching her rounded stomach protectively.
"He told me he ran a boutique adoption agency for affluent families who wanted to help mothers in crisis."
The lead guard pulled a pair of heavy steel handcuffs from his utility belt.
"He targets vulnerable, terminally ill pregnant women and manipulates them into signing over power of attorney," the guard continued.
"Once he has legal control, he manages their medical care to ensure the baby is delivered as quickly as possible."
I felt a surge of pure, unadulterated rage burn through my veins.
I lunged forward, grabbing Marcus by the collar of his expensive suit.
"What did you give her?" I roared, shaking him so hard his glasses flew off his face.
Marcus just offered a bloody, arrogant smirk.
"I gave her exactly what she signed up for," he spat back.
At that exact moment, Sophie let out a blood-curdling scream that shattered the tension in the room.
I dropped Marcus and rushed to her bedside, my hands hovering helplessly over her trembling body.
She was curled into a tight ball, clutching her chest as the heart monitors on the wall began to blare wildly.
"My chest!" she cried out, her lips turning a terrifying shade of blue.
A team of doctors and nurses flooded into the room, physically pushing me out of the way.
"Her blood pressure is completely bottoming out!" a nurse shouted over the deafening alarms.
The head doctor grabbed a syringe and injected something directly into Sophie's IV line.
"The synthetic drugs that man gave her weren't treating her heart failure at all," the doctor yelled to his team.
"They were designed to rapidly induce early labor while masking her cardiac symptoms."
I watched in absolute horror as my ex-wife convulsed violently on the bed.
"She's going into full cardiac arrest!" the nurse screamed.
The doctor ripped open Sophie's patient gown and placed the defibrillator paddles squarely on her chest.
"Clear!" he shouted, sending a massive jolt of electricity through her frail body.
Her back arched off the mattress, but the monitor continued to emit a single, terrifying, continuous tone.
She was slipping away right in front of my eyes.
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Then, the doctor looked up at me with absolute sheer panic in his eyes.
"The shock didn't work, and the baby's heart rate just dropped to zero."
