Chapter 2 - Seventeen Missed Calls
Julian scrambled backward on the mattress like a roach exposed to sudden daylight, his limbs tangling awkwardly in the heavy sheets.
He knocked over an open bottle of vintage Pinot Noir on the nightstand, sending dark red liquid splashing across the pristine cream carpet like fresh arterial blood.
“Elena!” he gasped, his voice cracking into a high-pitched, pathetic stammer.
The young blonde woman beside him casually pulled the top sheet over her breasts, her expression devoid of guilt, shame, or fear.
She looked at Elena from head to toe, lingering deliberately on her unwashed hair, her pale, swollen lips, and her postpartum body.
Elena did not cry.
The shock was so violent, so absolute, that it incinerated every tear before it could even form behind her eyes.
With agonizing deliberation, Elena reached into her coat pocket, pulled out the dead smartphone, and plugged it into the wall outlet beside the door.
The screen lit up with the glowing emblem of its operating system, quickly flooding with backlog notifications.
She held the illuminated screen toward Julian's face with a hand that had suddenly stopped trembling.
Seventeen missed calls.
Seventeen desperate attempts from a hospital room while her blood pressure spiked to catastrophic levels and her son choked on amniotic fluid.
“I was on an operating table,” Elena whispered, her voice dangerously quiet, slicing through the heavy air of the bedroom.
Julian grabbed his silk boxers from the floor, frantically pulling them on while hopping on one foot.
“Elena, listen to me, it’s not what it looks like, please, you weren’t supposed to be discharged until Friday!” he blabbered, exposing his own guilt with every word.
“You weren’t answering,” Elena said, her eyes never leaving his face.
“I called you seventeen times while they cut through seven layers of my flesh to keep your son alive.”
“My phone was on silent, baby, I swear to God I had a business meeting that ran late!” Julian lied, sweating profusely as he stepped toward her.
The woman in the bed let out a soft, amused scoff that rang louder than a thunderclap in the tense bedroom.
Her name was Chloe Vance, an ambitious junior marketing associate who had spent months plotting Julian's seduction.
Chloe slowly stepped out of the bed, completely unbothered by her state of undress, wrapping Elena’s own monogrammed silk robe around her slender shoulders.
She walked over to the antique vanity where Elena kept her most treasured family heirlooms and personal jewelry.
With a deliberate, fluid motion of her hand, Chloe swept Elena’s perfume bottles, cosmetics, and framed ultrasound photos off the polished mahogany surface.
The crystal bottles shattered onto the hardwood floor, releasing an overwhelming cloud of lavender and rose essence mixed with the smell of destruction.
“You should really learn to knock, sweetie,” Chloe purred, checking her freshly manicured nails in the mirror.
“Julian told me you two were basically roommates anyway.”
“He said you let yourself go months ago, and honestly, looking at you right now, I completely understand why he couldn't stay away from me.”
Elena looked at the framed sonogram lying among the broken glass, the black-and-white picture of her unborn child now crushed under a stranger's foot.
Julian didn't scold Chloe.
He didn't order her to shut her mouth or demand that she leave his family home.
He simply stood there, glancing anxiously between Chloe’s defiant beauty and Elena’s exhausted, wounded posture.
“Chloe, don’t make it worse,” Julian mumbled weakly, his voice betraying where his true loyalties now rested.
Baby Leo stirred in Elena’s arms, letting out a small, breathless whimper of distress at the sharp smell of alcohol and broken perfume.
Elena instantly turned her torso to shield the infant, burying his fragile face against the warmth of her neck.
“You slept with her in my bed,” Elena stated, the realization setting into stone inside her soul.
“Elena, you're being hysterical because of the hormones!” Julian suddenly barked, his panic morphing into weaponized gaslighting.
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“You were gone for a week, you didn't pay attention to my needs, what did you expect a grown man to do?”
The sheer audacity of his words hung in the air like poison gas, suffocating whatever remnant of love had survived the last five minutes.
