"The baby," he choked out, his voice barely above a whisper. "The baby… didn’t make it."
For a moment, I forgot how to breathe.
Tears welled in his eyes, pure devastation etched into his face. His shoulders trembled, his grip tightening on the edge of the bed as if he was holding himself together by a thread.
"I—I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice breaking. "I couldn't… I couldn't do anything."
I woke up to the soft rustling of sheets, my fingers instinctively reaching out, only to grasp the emptiness beside me. Bryant was gone.
In his place stood Nurse Angela, her warm eyes filled with something I couldn't quite decipher. Pity? Concern? I pushed myself up, my voice rasping from disuse. "Where is he?"
She hesitated before shaking her head. "I don’t know."
Something about her expression told me she was lying, but I didn’t press. Maybe I was too drained, too disoriented to care.
Days passed, and I was discharged from the hospital. But instead of returning to the vast halls of the mansion, Bryant had me locked in the basement. It was dark, damp, and windowless, the silence broken only by the occasional footsteps of the guards outside.