Chapter 2 - A Funeral for the Living
I woke to the sound of rain tapping against glass.
For a few disoriented seconds, I believed I was still on the mountain. I tried to move, but pain pulled across my abdomen, and a quiet electronic beeping came from somewhere beside me.
Then I saw Adrian sitting near the window.
His silver hair was disordered, and his black coat had been replaced by a wrinkled hospital shirt. He looked like a man who had not slept in days.
“My baby,” I whispered.
Adrian stood immediately.
“He’s alive.”
The relief that moved through me was so powerful it became pain.
“Where is he?”
“In the neonatal intensive care unit. The doctors performed an emergency delivery. He stopped breathing twice, but they brought him back.”
Tears ran into my hair.
“Can I see him?”
“When the doctor clears you.”
I placed both hands over the bandages across my stomach. My son had survived the fall, the cold, and an emergency birth. He was somewhere inside the same hospital, fighting for every breath.
“What day is it?”
“Saturday.”
I stared at him.
The cliff had been Wednesday.
“I’ve been unconscious for three days?”
Adrian nodded.
“Victor’s holding your funeral this afternoon.”
The words landed like another fall.
He explained that the authorities had recovered my torn scarf and one of my boots below the cliff. Victor had identified them, then pressured local officials to issue a presumed-death certificate because the weather made a full search impossible.
He had moved quickly.
Too quickly.
“Why did they believe him?”
“Because he cried at the right moments,” Adrian said bitterly. “Because he has friends in the county administration. And because the storm gave him the perfect explanation.”
Adrian handed me a tablet.
A livestream had already begun from St. Matthew’s Cathedral in New York. Hundreds of guests filled the pews. White roses surrounded a closed mahogany casket containing no body.
My photograph stood beside it.
Victor had chosen one from our wedding day.
I barely recognized the smiling woman in the picture.
My husband stood at the front of the cathedral wearing a black designer suit. Serena sat in the first row, dressed in mourning clothes and holding his hand whenever photographers turned toward them.
“She’s sitting with my family,” I whispered.
Adrian’s face hardened.
Victor approached the podium.
“My wife was a troubled woman,” he began. “I loved her, but she often behaved recklessly.”
I gripped the edge of the tablet.
He described me as emotional, unstable, and careless. He claimed I had walked toward the cliff after he warned me not to. He told the congregation he had risked his own life trying to save me.
Then he lowered his head.
“I will spend the rest of my life wondering why Elena refused to listen.”
Serena lifted a handkerchief to her dry eyes.
A reporter near the aisle asked whether Victor wanted to comment on rumors concerning the insurance policy.
Victor looked directly toward the cameras.
“The money cannot replace my wife or child. I wish people would stop turning tragedy into gossip.”
Behind him, Serena smiled.
It lasted less than a second.
But I saw it.
Adrian saw it too.
Then Victor leaned toward one of his business partners, apparently unaware that the microphone remained active.
“They both froze to death,” he muttered. “That worthless woman got what she deserved.”
The livestream audio abruptly cut off.
The cathedral erupted in confused whispers.
Adrian reached for the tablet, but I held it tighter.
“He said that at my funeral.”
“He just gave us evidence of his real feelings.”
“Feelings aren’t proof that he pushed me.”
“No,” Adrian agreed. “But arrogance makes people careless.”
Victor continued the service as if nothing had happened. When it ended, he allowed Serena to leave the cathedral on his arm.
She was wearing a necklace I recognized.
A small diamond pendant surrounded by pale blue stones.
It had belonged to my mother.
I had kept it in a locked box inside my bedroom.
Victor must have given it to her after leaving me on the mountain.
Something inside me changed.
Until then, part of me had still been trying to understand how the man I married could have become a murderer. I remembered the Victor who brought me coffee in bed, danced with me barefoot in our kitchen, and cried when we first heard our son’s heartbeat.
Now I wondered whether that man had ever existed.
Perhaps every tender moment had been an investment.
Every kiss had been part of a calculation.
Every promise had been made by a man waiting for me to become more valuable dead than alive.
A doctor entered and explained that my son was stable but extremely vulnerable. He had been born with dangerously low body temperature and needed respiratory support.
“You can see him for a few minutes,” she said.
They placed me in a wheelchair and rolled me into the NICU.
My son looked impossibly small beneath the clear cover of the incubator. Thin wires crossed his chest. A tiny breathing mask covered most of his face.
I pressed my fingertips against the glass.
“Hello, Gabriel,” I whispered.
Victor and I had once chosen the name together.
I almost changed it in that moment.
Then Gabriel’s tiny hand moved.
One finger stretched toward mine through the incubator opening.
He had survived Victor.
His name did not belong to his father.
It belonged to him.
Adrian stood several feet behind me, fighting tears.
“Why didn’t you find me sooner?” I asked quietly.
He looked away.
“Your mother believed being connected to me would put you in danger. Cross Atlantic had enemies when I was younger. She left before telling me she was pregnant.”
“You knew after she died.”
“I found her letter too late. By then, you were married to Victor. When I tried to contact you, he blocked every request.”
I remembered Victor dismissing several letters as investment scams.
“He knew who you were?”
“I believe so.”
A hospital administrator entered the NICU and approached Adrian.
“Mr. Cross, we have a security concern.”
Adrian stepped into the hallway with him. Their conversation was quiet, but I heard enough.
Someone had called the hospital repeatedly asking whether a pregnant woman had been rescued from Blackthorn Cliff.
The caller had refused to provide a name.
Then, thirty minutes earlier, a man had tried to access the private maternity floor using an old visitor authorization code.
The code belonged to Victor Hale.
Adrian immediately ordered additional security around my room and Gabriel’s incubator.
“He knows,” I whispered.
“We don’t know that.”
“He suspects.”
A nurse pushed my wheelchair toward the elevator. Two armed security officers followed us. Adrian remained on his phone, contacting investigators.
When the elevator doors opened on my floor, the hallway appeared empty.
Then the lights flickered.
A figure wearing hospital scrubs stepped out of a supply room.
His face was hidden behind a mask.
He held a small medical case in one gloved hand.
The man looked at me, then at the identification photograph attached to my wheelchair.
“Elena Hale,” he said.
The security officers moved forward.
The man dropped the case and ran.
One officer chased him toward the stairs while the other remained beside me. The abandoned case struck the floor and opened.
Inside were a syringe, a forged medical badge, and a photograph of Gabriel’s incubator.
May you like
Written across the back of the photograph were five words.
FINISH THE CHILD BEFORE MIDNIGHT.
