Even Charlton’s eyes flashed red. He shoved me away so hard I slammed into the sharp corner of a table. In an instant, pain shot through my waist, and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
Everything blurred. I saw only Charlton scoop Luca into his arms and rush toward the hospital doors. Mariam, frail with weeping, stumbled after them.
People around me looked at me with nothing but disgust and contempt.
“Where’s the doctor’s conscience?”
“What a monster…”
They hurried after Charlton’s car. In the confusion, someone pressed a scrap of paper into my palm.
I clutched my waist with both hands, trembling from the pain. Before I could catch my breath, one of Mariam’s bodyguards grabbed me and hauled me toward the exit.
I shoved the paper into my bra.
The corridor outside the operating room went silent as the doors closed, cutting off the world.
Mariam leaned weakly against Charlton’s chest, sobbing until her tears fell like spring rain. He held her, his brow knitted tight.
There they stood—locked in each other’s arms—performing a scene for everyone: a devoted couple, bereft of their child.
I pressed my back against the cold wall and let a bitter, ironic smile tug at my lips.
This is ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous!
Everyone was calling me a cruel mother, accusing me of killing a child.
Yet Mariam, to frame me, had coaxed her own son into drinking milk laced with something.
The so-called motherly love in her eyes was nothing more than a weapon.
What was even more absurd was how badly Charlton’s clumsy lies had already unraveled. That child was clearly Mariam’s blood!
A suffocating ache swelled in my chest. I suddenly remembered a scene from five years ago—the day I had accidentally seen Mariam forcibly kiss Charlton.
Around the corner of the corridor, under the cold white lights, Mariam had stood on tiptoe, gripping Charlton’s sleeve as she kissed him.
He said he rejected her, but his body was rigid and he did not pull away. His gaze flickered, and he even leaned in slightly, as if accepting her intimacy.
At the time, my blood boiled, but I forced myself to swallow my anger.
For the sake of my child, I did not want to tear our marriage apart.
I also knew that Mariam, though merely an assisting doctor, was the hospital director’s daughter. We could not afford to offend them.