And the ocean swallowed me.
Then everything went dark.
At first, there was emptiness.
I couldn’t feel the hospital bed beneath me. I couldn’t sense the weight of my arms or legs. Even the burning pain that should have filled my lungs—lungs that had swallowed seawater instead of air—was absent. My body lay motionless, hollow, as if abandoned. Yet my mind floated somewhere in between, neither fully asleep nor awake, drifting in a fog of half-awareness.
That was when voices seeped through the darkness.
“Sir, we can’t take any more blood.” The doctor’s voice trembled with urgency. “She nearly drowned. Her lungs were flooded. Her body is already failing. If we continue, she won’t survive—especially when she’s carrying your child.”
Pregnant?
The word echoed violently in my head, snapping something awake inside me. No. That couldn’t be right. I had never suspected it—not once. My body had always been unpredictable, my cycle unreliable. And Dominic and I were careful. Always. Protection. Precautions. I never allowed myself to hope for a child because hope required certainty—and we didn’t even have marriage.
Then I heard him.
Dominic’s voice sliced through the room, cold and merciless.