Chapter 4

Before my brain could even process the thought, my body reacted.

With a loud crash, I slapped the bowl right out of Victor’s hand.

The boiling hot soup splashed all over the floor, and the ceramic bowl shattered into pieces.

The room fell into a dead silence.

Victor’s hand was scalded red. He flew into a blinding rage.

"Are you fucking insane?!"

Amber immediately started screaming.

"Paige Sterling! What are you doing? Are you trying to murder Chloe's baby?!"

She frantically pulled out tissues to wipe Victor’s hand, her eyes filled with genuine panic and heartbreak.

Chloe was frozen in shock.

"Paige Sterling!"

She threw off her blanket, not even bothering to put on shoes, and lunged out of bed.

"Slap!"

A stinging slap landed squarely across my face.

"You miserable, jealous psycho!"

Chloe pointed at my face, her entire body shaking.

"You’re just jealous because my husband treats me like a queen!"

"Yesterday you cursed my baby, and today you ruin the soup my husband stayed up all night to make!"

"What the hell is wrong with you?!"

Other patients and nurses outside gathered around the open door.

Amber stood to the side, wiping fake tears to fan the flames.

"Everyone, look at this! This doctor held a grudge because we reported her, and now she’s taking it out on a pregnant woman!"

"Victor poured his heart into making that soup!"

The onlookers started whispering and pointing at me.

"That doctor is so malicious."

"Yeah, she just can't stand seeing other people happy."

Holding my stinging cheek, I slowly turned my head.

I looked at Chloe’s furious face, and then at Victor’s smug smirk.

The baby's voice in my head was now so weak it was barely a whisper.

"Doctor... why did mommy hit you?"

"It hurts..."

I spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva and smiled.

"Chloe."

I stared into her eyes, pronouncing every word clearly.

"There was a bug in the soup. I was just trying to help."

"But since you love his 'hard work' so much..."

"By all means, drink up next time."

I pushed through the crowd and walked out of the room without looking back.

You can't wake up someone who is pretending to be asleep.

But I could make sure she woke up screaming when the reality hit her.

After getting slapped, I became a total outcast in the department.

Dr. Carter didn’t even let me do basic ward rounds anymore.

He assigned me to hand out flyers and organize dusty, archived medical files.

Everyone avoided me like the plague, terrified of getting on the bad side of the Lindemann Group. I, however, enjoyed the peace.

During lunch break, I sneaked back into Chloe's room.

While they were out at a fancy restaurant, I used a syringe to collect the residue of the soup trapped in the cracks of the floor tiles.

In the afternoon, I found Ethan, a close colleague of mine in the pathology lab, and asked him to run an expedited chemical analysis.

When I got the results, my hands were shaking.

The report clearly showed a high concentration of Mifepristone, along with an unidentified neurotoxic compound.

Mifepristone was a powerful abortion pill.

And Ethan had left a warning note at the bottom: "The neurotoxin shows signs of chronic accumulation. This suggests the patient has been microdosing this poison since early pregnancy."

This would 100% lead to severe fetal skeletal malformations and facial deformities.

Victor never wanted this child to be born alive.

He wanted a deformed baby to completely destroy Chloe’s mental state.

I took a deep breath and folded the report.

I didn't give it to Chloe directly. She hated me right now.

Victor could easily lie his way out of it, and she would believe him.

So, during a shift change, I slipped the report into Chloe's medical chart hanging at the foot of her bed.

As long as she opened it, she would see the truth.

However, I underestimated how cautious and evil these people could be.