I could not scream anymore. Eighteen hours of labor in Mercy West Medical Center in Chicago had wrung my voice dry. My throat felt like sandpaper. My vision floated in and out like a glitching screen, but I still saw the door open.
My husband, Bennett Armitage, stepped in with the self-satisfied air of a man who believed the world parted for him. He was dressed like he had come from a gala instead of a delivery room. A young woman clung to his arm, wearing a white mink coat and shoes with red soles that clicked on the tiles. She looked me up and down like I was something rotting in the sun. Behind them, moving with an elegance that reminded me of a lioness before the strike, came Vivienne Armitage, Bennett’s mother.
Vivienne pulled a thick envelope from her designer bag. She gave it to her son with a smile that never reached her eyes. I heard her whisper to him, her voice sharp as a scalpel.
“Do it now while she is weak. Do not let her use the infant to bargain.”
Bennett approached my bed. He did not spare even a glance for the tiny creature sleeping in the clear plastic bassinet beside me. Our daughter breathed softly, only minutes old. Instead, Bennett looked directly at me with a mixture of disgust and forced pity.
He dropped papers on my abdomen, right on top of the thin hospital blanket.
“Sign. You finally got what you wanted. A child to chain me. But it is over. Sign and be done.”
I stared at him, unable to form sound. Tears blurred the edges of my vision. My daughter had been alive for eight minutes and I was already being told I would lose her.
I heard Vivienne’s voice like venom.
“This girl was never one of us. Bennett did a charitable act marrying you. You were born in struggle with no pedigree or connections. An orphan with nothing. Now that the Armitage name has a blood heir, you are irrelevant.”
Two private security guards in black suits waited at the door. They were poised like predators. I understood: if I resisted, they would drag me out.
My chest tightened with terror. “Please. I just gave birth. I need time. I need to hold her.” My voice cracked.
The woman in the fur coat scoffed. “You should be grateful. We will raise her properly. She will grow up in actual society, not in some rundown apartment.”
Vivienne waved a hand. “You will sign or we will take her anyway. Your signature just saves us the trouble.”