Chapter 5: Cold Awakening
The recovery room was dimly lit, the silence broken only by the steady, rhythmic beep of the heart monitor.
When Marcus quietly pushed the door open, the sight of Khloe made his breath catch in his throat. She looked incredibly small in the center of the large hospital bed. Her dark hair was fanned out across the white pillow, her skin as pale as porcelain. An IV dripped clear fluid into her bruised vein, and a continuous fetal monitor was strapped tightly across her stomach.
She wasn’t asleep. She was staring blankly at the ceiling.
“Khloe…” Marcus whispered, his voice trembling. He took a hesitant step into the room, feeling like an intruder in his own life.
Khloe didn’t turn her head. She didn’t acknowledge him. The silence stretched between them, heavy with the weight of everything that had been broken.
Marcus walked to the edge of the bed and slowly sank to his knees. The great Marcus Thorne, a man who bowed to absolutely no one, lowered his head until his forehead rested against the cold metal railing of her bed.
“I am so sorry,” he choked out, tears finally spilling from his eyes. “God, Khloe, I am so sorry. I didn’t know. I swear to you, I didn’t know she was capable of something like this. If I had known, I never would have let her near you.”
He reached out, tentatively trying to place his hand over hers.
Khloe pulled her hand away.
The rejection was slight, barely a movement at all, but it struck Marcus harder than a bullet. He looked up, his eyes bloodshot and pleading.
Khloe slowly turned her head. Her eyes, usually so warm and full of love for him, were completely hollow. There was no anger in them. There was no sadness. There was only a terrifying, freezing indifference.
“You didn’t know she was capable of violence,” Khloe said, her voice raspy and weak, yet steady. “But you knew she disrespected me.”
Marcus swallowed hard. “Khloe, please—”
“You knew,” Khloe continued, cutting him off with surgical precision. “You knew she made snide comments about my background. You knew she called me a gold-digger behind my back. I told you, Marcus. I cried to you in our bedroom. I begged you to set boundaries with her.”
“I thought she was just… I thought it was just petty jealousy,” Marcus pleaded, desperate to explain himself. “I didn’t want to cause a rift with her father’s company. It was business, Khloe. I was an idiot. I was blind.”
“No, Marcus. You weren’t blind,” Khloe said, finally turning her body slightly to face him, wincing as the pain flared in her side. “You just didn’t care enough. You liked the attention. You liked having this beautiful, wealthy woman fawning over you, and you liked playing the peacekeeper. You prioritized your ego over my safety.”
“That’s not true! I love you! I love our baby!” Marcus begged, grasping the bedrail until his knuckles turned white. “I will fix this. I swear to you. I will ruin her. I will make sure Isabella spends the next ten years in a prison cell. I will give you anything you want, Khloe. Just please… don’t look at me like that.”
Khloe closed her eyes, exhausted by the conversation. The monitors beeped steadily in the background.
“I don’t care what you do to Isabella,” Khloe whispered. “She is a monster. But monsters can only enter your home if someone leaves the front door wide open.”
She opened her eyes and met his desperate gaze.
“You opened the door, Marcus. She just walked through it.”
Marcus felt a cold dread settle in the pit of his stomach. “What are you saying?”
“I am on bedrest for the next two months,” Khloe stated clinically, repeating her uncle's orders. “I need peace. I need safety. And right now, looking at you makes my blood pressure spike.”
“Khloe, no. Please don’t do this.”
“I want you out of the penthouse,” she ordered, her voice leaving absolutely no room for negotiation. “Have your assistant pack your things. You can stay at the hotel. You can stay at the office. I don’t care. But when I am discharged tomorrow, I do not want to see you.”
Marcus felt as if the floor had completely dropped out from beneath him. “You’re my wife. You’re carrying my child. I’m not leaving you.”
“You left me a long time ago, Marcus,” Khloe said, turning her face back toward the ceiling, dismissing him entirely. “Get out.”
Meanwhile, across the city, in a cold, concrete holding cell at the 4th Precinct, Isabella Rossi was granted her one phone call.
She didn't call her lawyer. She didn't call her father.
She punched in a memorized, unlisted international number. She listened to it ring three times before a smooth, deep voice answered on the other end.
“I told you not to call this number unless it was an emergency, Isabella,” the man said.
Isabella gripped the phone receiver so tightly her hand cramped. She looked down at her ruined, blood-stained red dress, her eyes burning with a psychotic, vengeful rage.
“Plan A failed,” Isabella whispered into the receiver. “They have me on camera. Marcus has turned against me.”
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A dark chuckle echoed through the phone. “I told you brute force was messy, little bird. What do you need me to do?”
Isabella smiled in the dark. “Destroy the Thorne empire. Burn it all to the ground. And make sure Khloe Thorne never makes it to the delivery room.”
