Chapter 7 - The Trap Snaps Shut
The locked maternal unit at Harrington Memorial was located on the fourth floor of the west pavilion. It was clean, quiet, and guarded by two armed county deputies stationed outside the reinforced steel doors.
Serena Vale sat on the edge of the adjustable hospital bed, wearing standard-issue blue paper scrubs. The radiant, arrogant beauty queen of the Bellevue ballroom was gone. Her hair was pulled back in a messy knot; her skin was sallow, devoid of foundation or bronzer; and her hazel eyes were ringed with dark circles of exhaustion and panic.
The door buzzed and clicked open.
I walked in, wearing my pristine white coat, a clipboard tucked beneath my arm.
Serena looked up, flinching as if she expected me to strike her. "What are you doing here? My lawyer said you couldn't be near me."
"Your lawyer filed an emergency application claiming you were experiencing acute placental insufficiency," I said, pulling up a rolling stool and sitting down three feet from her bed. "As the Chief of Surgery and the senior consulting director for maternal-fetal medicine on this campus, I am legally required to review all high-risk clinical admissions."
"You hate me," Serena whispered, her voice cracking, her hands curling into the sheets. "You're going to let me die. You’re going to let his baby die."
I looked at her with the same calm, unblinking focus I used when examining a diseased valve on an echocardiogram.
"Miss Vale, unlike my husband, I took an oath. I have never violated it, and I will not start with you." I clicked my pen. "Your blood pressure is one-forty over ninety-two. High, but stable with the labetalol drip we started an hour ago. The fetal heart rate is one-forty-eight beats per minute. Strong. Rhythmic. The child is doing better than you are."
Tears spilled over Serena’s lashes, tracking down her cheeks. "Grant told me you were sterile. He told me you refused to try anymore because you cared more about your promotions than having a family."
A sharp, cold pain lanced through my chest, but my face remained an unreadable mask.
"Grant lied to you," I said evenly. "Just like he lied to me. I underwent three cycles of IVF that nearly destroyed my kidneys. I lost two pregnancies at five months because of an anatomical complication that Grant knew about. And while I was lying in a recovery room after my second dilation and curettage in 2018, Grant was wire-transferring fifty thousand dollars to a jewelry designer in Manhattan for a diamond tennis bracelet that never made it to our house."
Serena’s breath hitched. She looked away, her jaw trembling. "He said he loved me."
"Grant Mercer doesn't love anyone, Serena. You were a uterus with a social media following. You were the vehicle he needed to break my family's trust. Did he tell you about the Delaware Chancery amendment?"
"The... the what?"
"The legal document your cousin notarized," I said, leaning in slightly. "The one that transferred controlling interest of the Vane estate to Grant in the event of an heir being born outside the marriage."
Serena blinked, her eyes darting frantically. "He told Clara it was an insurance rider! He said it was standard corporate paperwork so the baby would have private healthcare coverage!"
"He set you up to take a federal fall for bank fraud," I said plainly. "Your signature is on three corporate checking accounts that received laundered foundation funds. Clara’s signature is on an illegally notarized trust amendment. When the Department of Justice drops the hammer next Tuesday, Grant’s high-priced criminal defense team is going to claim that *you* manipulated him. That you were an extortionist who targeted a wealthy fund manager and used a pregnancy to bleed his family dry."
"No!" Serena cried, grabbing her hair with both hands. "No, that's not true! I have the text messages! I have the voice notes from the hotel in Bern! He told me how to move the money! He told me what accounts to set up!"
I set my clipboard down on the small bedside table.
"Then I suggest you give those voice notes to the United States Attorney," I said softly.
Serena looked at me, her eyes wide, pleading, stripped of every shred of the cruelty she had displayed at the admissions desk seventy-two hours ago. "Why are you helping me? I tried to take your husband. I wore your clothes. I called myself your name."
I stood up, smoothing the front of my white coat.
May you like
"I’m not helping you, Serena," I said, looking down at her. "I am protecting an innocent child who had the terrible misfortune of being fathered by a monster. And I am making sure that when Grant Mercer walks into a federal penitentiary, he does so knowing that the woman he used to destroy me was the one who handed the government the nails for his coffin."
***
