Chapter 4Waking Up to His Rival

For the next four months, I gave an award-winning performance.

Haley assumed a new identity within our social sphere, masquerading as the wife of one of Ethan’s junior research associates. She had the audacity to visit our brownstone for Sunday brunches, looping her arm through mine in the kitchen, giggling and calling me "big sister" while Ethan watched us from the dining room with a look of smug, domestic tranquility. He truly believed he had orchestrated the perfect balance: his devoted foundation on one side, his forbidden romance on the other.

A month later, Haley gave birth to a boy. They named him Toby.

Ethan insisted that I serve as the child’s godmother. He even organized a weekend retreat to an old stone chapel in the Adirondacks to have Toby privately blessed.

I initially intended to decline, but Maisie looked up at me with wide, longing eyes, begging to see the "mountain trees and squirrels." So, I packed our bags.

The morning we set out, the sky was the color of bruised iron. A heavy, suffocating mist clung to the asphalt as Ethan drove his Audi Q7 up the winding mountain pass.

Two hours into the ascent, the sky opened up.

Rain came down in thick, blinding sheets, turning the red clay hillsides into soup. We were navigating a tight switchback when the mountain above us gave an ominous, subterranean groan.

"Ethan, watch out!" I screamed.

A wall of mud, boulders, and splintered pine trees tore loose from the cliffside, crashing onto the highway. The impact hit the front quarter of the Audi, spinning the heavy SUV like a top before rolling it over the embankment.

The world went upside down in a deafening crunch of metal and shattering tempered glass.

When the car settled on its side, the air was choked with white smoke from deployed airbags and the sharp stench of leaking coolant.

Haley was screaming from the middle row. In her arms, two-month-old Toby was covered in blood—a flying jagged shard of the windshield had slashed deeply across his small, delicate torso.

Maisie was trapped in her car seat behind me, crying in breathless terror, blood trickling from a gash on her temple.

Local volunteer firefighters and road crew workers pulled us from the wreckage through the shattered sunroof forty minutes later. They loaded us into the back of a utility truck and rushed us to the nearest county health clinic at the foot of the mountain—a small, drafty brick building with two volunteer nurses and a single general practitioner.

The clinic doctor examined the infant on a metal gurney. Toby’s breathing was shallow and thready, his skin taking on an ashen, greyish cast.

"His femoral vein is nicked, and the laceration on his abdomen won't stop oozing," the doctor said, his hands soaked in crimson. "His pressure is bottoming out. We don't have blood bank reserves here. If we don't start a direct whole-blood transfusion right now, this child goes into irreversible hypovolemic shock."

Haley thrust her trembling, scratched arm toward the nurse. "Take mine! Take my blood, please!"

Ethan caught her wrist, shaking his head frantically. "No! First-degree direct transfusions carry an enormous risk of graft-versus-host disease without irradiated equipment. We can't."

His wild, bloodshot eyes darted around the small exam room—and locked onto Maisie.

Maisie was sitting on my lap, shivering under a scratchy wool blanket, her little face stained with tears and road dust.

"Maisie," Ethan breathed, stepping toward us. "We’ll use Maisie’s blood."

"Ethan, no," the rural doctor warned. "We don't have the typing reagents here. The storm knocked out our cold storage."

"I know their types!" Ethan shouted, his voice cracking with manic desperation. "They're full siblings! They share my lineage, they're both Type A positive. We have no choice—it’s a calculated risk!"

He lunged for Maisie. Maisie shrieked in terror, digging her little fingers into my coat. "Daddy, no! I'm scared! Mommy, don't let him!"

I threw my entire body over my daughter, pressing her against the wall. "Don't you dare touch her, Ethan! Step back!"

"Lauren, an infant is dying!" Ethan shoved me hard against the doorframe, pinning my shoulder with his forearm. "Stop being so fucking vindictive! They’re brother and sister! A sister saving her brother is basic humanity!"

I glared directly into his frantic, dilated pupils.

"They don't share a drop of blood, Ethan," I said, my voice dead, flat, and absolute. "Their blood types do not match. If you pump her blood into that baby, you will kill him."

Ethan scoffed, convinced I was merely acting out a subconscious spite. "Lauren, cut the bullshit! I know he’s mine! Haley is my wife, Toby is my son, and Maisie is his sister! Now let go of her!"

Haley couldn't take it anymore. Driven mad by the sight of her dying baby, she lunged at me like a feral beast, tearing Maisie out of my arms with clawing hands.

"My son is dying!" Haley shrieked, her face contorted in psychotic rage. "Who gives a damn about your brat? Even if we drain every last drop from her veins to save my boy, it's worth it!"

I stared directly into Haley's wild eyes.

"Remember those words," I whispered. "Don't you dare regret them."

Ethan turned his back on my gaze. Without typing or cross-matching, guided only by his arrogant assumption, he grabbed a large-gauge IV kit and forced the needle into Maisie’s small arm.

Maisie let out an ear-piercing scream of agony, her small body thrashing against the exam table until the nurse held her down.

I didn't lunge. I stood in the corner, holding my bruised ribs, my hand inside my coat pocket, feeling the vibration of my phone.

A single notification had come through before the tower died: I’m on the mountain road. Holding a federal convoy. Ten minutes.

I watched the clear plastic tubing fill with bright crimson blood, flowing from my daughter’s arm into a manual transfer bag, and then directly into Toby’s infant catheter.

Within five minutes, the change began.

Toby did not stabilize. Instead, his tiny body arched off the table. A violent, mottled rash spread across his chest. His temperature spiked instantly, his skin turning a burning, feverish yellow. He began to vomit dark, bile-stained fluid, choking on his own ragged gasps.

"What's happening?" Haley screamed, grasping at the doctor's coat. "Why is he turning yellow? Ethan, do something!"

Ethan froze. His clinical detachment shattered as he watched the infant’s lips turn deep purple. "Acute hemolytic reaction... no, that's impossible. They're siblings... the blood types should align..."

Toby took one last, shuddering gasp. His tiny chest went still.

The rural doctor checked for a brachial pulse, closed his eyes, and gently laid a sterile sheet over the infant's face.

"He's gone," the doctor said quietly.

Haley’s scream shredded the silence of the clinic. It wasn't a human sound; it was the howl of a wounded animal, so violent that blood flecked her lips as she convulsed against the floorboards, tearing at her hair.

Ethan stood paralyzed before the gurney, his trembling hands hovering over the white sheet.

"They had the same father..." he mumbled, his voice a broken, hollow whisper. He turned to me, his eyes wide with uncomprehending horror. "Lauren... how could their blood be incompatible? How is that possible?"

I stepped forward, scooped my weak, pale daughter into my arms, and wrapped my coat securely around her shoulders.

"I warned you," I said coldly. "I told you they weren't related. I told you her blood would kill him."

I looked down at the man who had stolen four years of my life.

"Ethan, you were never Maisie’s father."

Ethan stumbled back, his knees hitting the metal frame of the gurney. "What... what did you say?"

At that moment, the heavy double doors of the clinic were thrown open, admitting the sound of torrential rain and spinning red emergency flashers.

A deep, commanding voice cut through the damp air:

"Lauren!"

I turned toward the entrance, my chin lifting.

"Ask him yourself," I whispered. "Maisie’s real father just arrived."