Chapter 9 - The Choker’s Secret
The heavy wooden doors of the ballroom burst open once more, letting in a swirl of fresh snowflakes and four paramedics wearing bright reflective parkas.
They carried heavy orange trauma cases, a portable fetal doppler, and an emergency folding stretcher.
The elite guests parted instantly, scrambling out of their way, their faces pale with morbid curiosity and shock.
The lead paramedic, a middle-aged woman with sharp, capable eyes, dropped to her knees beside my armchair.
"I'm Claire, Serena," she said, her hands moving with practiced, efficient speed as she strapped a blood pressure cuff to my arm.
"We’ve got you, honey. Let's hear what that little girl is doing in there."
She squirted cold blue ultrasound gel onto my bare lower abdomen, lifting the heavy velvet of my gown.
The coldness of the gel sent a sharp shudder through my body, but I kept my eyes fixed on the small speaker unit Claire held in her hand.
For three agonizing seconds, there was only the loud, rhythmic whoosh of static.
Then, cutting through the silence of the Dre mansion, came the rapid, gallop-like thud of a tiny heartbeat.
Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump.
"Heart rate is one hundred and fifty-two," Claire announced, letting out a long, relieved breath.
"She's in distress, but she's holding strong."
"Blood pressure is one hundred and sixty over one hundred."
"We need to start an IV line of magnesium sulfate immediately to protect against seizures, and get her into the transport rig."
"I'll help carry her," Matthias blurted out, stepping forward with his hands reaching toward the stretcher.
"Get your hands away from her," Julian’s voice cracked like thunder.
Matthias froze, his eyes pleading, tears tracking through the soot on his cheeks.
"Julian, please... she's my wife."
"That's my daughter."
"You stopped having a right to call them your family the night you checked into that hotel in New Haven," Julian said, his eyes filled with pure disgust.
Julian held up the diamond necklace, the emerald-cut stone dangling between his fingers like a noose.
"Do you want to know what this really is, Matthias?"
"Do you want to know why your father picked Fiona Vale to be your mistress?"
Matthias swallowed hard, shaking his head slowly in denial.
"She... she was hired by our PR firm..."
"Fiona Vale isn't a public relations consultant," Julian said, stepping directly into Matthias’s personal space.
"Her real name is Fiona Vance-Moretti."
"She's the daughter of Hector Moretti, the private banker your father used to launder money through Cyprus in the nineties."
"She was planted in your office six months ago by your father to monitor your communication logs."
"Every time you took her to dinner, every time you bought her expensive gifts with corporate cards, she was uploading your personal access credentials to this drive."
Matthias turned his head toward Fiona, who was still weeping on the floor beneath the tree.
"Fiona?" Matthias whispered, his voice trembling with horror.
"Is that true?"
Fiona lifted her tear-streaked face, her eyes devoid of any remorse, filled only with bitter, exhausted malice.
"Did you really think a man like you could attract someone like me, Matthias?" she hissed, wiping mascara from her cheeks with the back of her wrist.
"You are weak."
"You whine about your father's expectations while spending his money like water."
"You spent three hours in that hotel suite complaining about how much you hated your life, while I was downloading the authorization signatures to your personal holding trusts."
"Your father promised me twenty percent of the insurance recovery if I kept you docile until Christmas Eve."
"He said you were too soft to survive what was coming."
"And he was right."
"You signed every single authorization document I put in front of you between room service orders."
"You handed your entire life over to us because you wanted to feel like a powerful man for one night."
Every word struck Matthias like a physical blow.
He staggered backward, his hands falling to his sides, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps.
The illusion of his grand romance, his brilliant rebellion against his father, his entire sense of self-worth crumbled into dust on the floor of his ancestral home.
He had not been a player.
He had been the mark.
A pawn used by his own father and his lover to facilitate their own escape while he took the federal blame and the fatal explosion.
"I didn't know," Matthias sobbed, looking at me with dead, hollow eyes.
"Serena, I swear to God... I didn't know they were going to do this to you."
Claire finished sliding the eighteen-gauge IV catheter into the back of my hand, securing it with clear medical tape.
"IV line is patent," Claire reported, standing up and motioning to the other three paramedics.
"Let's move her onto the backboard, gently on three."
"One, two, three."
They lifted me smoothly from the chair onto the rigid spine board, strapping the safety harnesses across my chest and hips.
Another contraction seized my abdomen, but this time, the cold calm of a veteran trauma nurse took over my mind completely.
I looked at Matthias as they lifted the stretcher toward the exit.
"I know you didn't know, Matthias," I said, my voice barely a whisper above the sound of the medical equipment.
"Because you never bothered to look at anything beyond yourself."
"You were so obsessed with being admired that you let two monsters turn you into an accessory to mass murder."
"I'm sorry," he wept, falling to his knees on the marble floor as the stretcher moved past him.
"Serena, please forgive me! I will fix this! I will give you everything!"
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"You have nothing left to give," I answered, turning my eyes away from him toward the front doors.
"The only thing you have left is the prison cell you built with your own vanity."
