“We’ll secure your husband immediately. Then we’ll also identify the nurse we believe to be his accomplice. Please rest assured, everything will be okay now.”
But I couldn’t feel reassured. Where was Jace right now? One of the officers radioed in and then left the room. All I could do was hold Nira and wait. Time felt eternal.
“Mommy, Daddy can’t hurt you anymore, right?” Nira asked in a small voice.
“That’s right, Nira. It’s okay now. We’re safe.” I answered that way, but my heart kept pounding violently.
Before long, I heard voices from the hallway. “Don’t move! Put your hands up!” A police officer’s voice. And then Jace’s surprised voice, “What? What are you doing? I haven’t done anything!”
Liar, I screamed in my heart. You tried to take everything. My life, the baby’s life, our future. But Nira protected me. My five-year-old daughter saved me.
The police officer returned to the hospital room thirty minutes later. “We’ve secured the suspect.” Hearing those words, I finally felt like I could breathe a little.
The officer sat down in a chair. “I’d like to hear the details, if that’s all right.”
I told them everything. The officer listened with a serious expression. “Actually, when we apprehended your husband, he was with the accomplice nurse. They were in the hallway on the third floor, discussing how to dispose of you next.”
Those words sent a chill down my spine.
The officer continued. “We recorded the conversation. Your husband was saying he’d soon make Mara’s death look like it was caused by postpartum issues. The plan was to make it look like a personal tragedy by giving you a large dose of sleeping pills. The nurse was set to prepare the drugs.”
My hands shook as the reality settled in. If Nira hadn’t noticed—if she hadn’t quietly gathered proof—I would already be dead.
The police launched their investigation immediately. The files on Nira’s tablet became critical evidence. When they seized Jace’s phone, they uncovered even more—messages between him and his lover, a nurse named Ysolde. Their affair had lasted two years, and the plan to kill me had begun around the same time.
“The original plan was to stage an accident,” one officer explained. “There’s evidence they tried causing falls and sabotaging your car brakes, but those attempts failed.”
Memories rushed back. The near-fall on the stairs six months earlier—Jace standing right behind me. The brake failure three months ago. None of it had been random.
“When those didn’t work, they turned to drugs,” the officer continued. “Slow poisoning during pregnancy to cause a miscarriage, break you emotionally, then stage your death as suicide. It was methodical and deeply malicious.”
See more on the next page
Advertisement
