Chapter 67

Evelyn stood before the woman who now held her life, and the life of her unborn child, in her hands. Dr. Niran Williams, pale yet formidable, looked every bit the image of a new kind of royalty. Even confined by injury, she radiated authority. The air in the room felt heavy with unspoken hostility and unequal power.

Williams rested against the pillows with calculated poise. She had already prepared her leverage and began listing the rules in a flat, authoritative voice. Evelyn’s presence became nothing more than a contract of servitude. The rules covered everything: wake-up times, strict curfews, household chores, meal preparation, medication management, and, most intimate of all, changing Williams’s dressing. It was slavery masked as conditional freedom. Evelyn was expected to serve as nurse, housekeeper, and personal assistant while tending to the very woman who held her captive.

When Williams finally finished her exhaustive list, Evelyn’s shock became impossible to hide.

“Do you have any questions?” Williams asked. Her tone carried the faintest hint of challenge.

Evelyn licked her dry lips and gathered her thoughts. “For how long will this last?”

Williams rose slowly, her stiff movements betraying the extent of her injuries. She picked up a sleek encrypted tablet from the nightstand and handed it to Evelyn. “A full-term pregnancy lasts nine months unless there are complications. You might reach the term earlier or later.”

Evelyn’s gaze dropped to her still-flat abdomen. “So even when my belly becomes big, I still have to do all of this?”

Williams stared at her with growing impatience. “I was not finished.”

Evelyn fell silent under the weight of that cold look. Williams paused, considering the time she herself would need to fully recover, especially the healing of her right hand. After a moment of reflection, she continued. “I will give you five weeks. If you hold out until then, the door opens and you walk free. But if you refuse, then we end this today. If the Mayeurs do not make a decision, the embryo legally reverts to the hospital, and you already know my position on that.”

“I never said I would refuse. I will do it,” Evelyn said. Her voice trembled but her conviction returned. Her eyes focused on the tablet.

“Everything I listed is inside this device. You will begin with fifteen points. Each time you fail a task, you lose one. When your points reach zero…”

“That will not happen,” Evelyn interrupted.

Williams gave a faint smile. “I admire your optimism.”

Evelyn took a breath. “Since we have an agreement, can I have my phone back?”

Williams’s expression hardened. “No.”

Evelyn looked down at the tablet again, the endless list of duties feeling like a weight in her hands. She lifted her chin. “You will not go back on your word, right?”

“A deal is a deal,” Williams replied. She lay back again, a clear signal that the discussion was over.

Evelyn tightened her grip on the tablet. “I will make you something to eat. Then I will help you with your dressing. After that, I will return to my room. But,” she added in a low, dangerous voice that made Williams look up, “you need to know that a deal is a deal for both of us.”

“Get to work,” Williams ordered and dismissed her with a glance.

Evelyn stepped out of the room.

So this was the battlefield she had chosen.

If she wanted the child inside her to live, she would have to fight under Williams’s roof, under Williams’s rules. Yet she had her own plans. If Williams believed this list would break her, she had gravely underestimated Evelyn.

Because Evelyn intended to use that very list, this weapon, to trap her.

She reached the kitchen and looked out the window. Guards still stood outside like cold silhouettes. She sighed, opened the fridge, and instinctively devoured fresh fruit and a pot of yogurt. Hunger had taken over her body. Once she was full, her mind sharpened. She checked the time. She needed to hurry. Failure on the first day was unacceptable.

She began preparing a meal, choosing ingredients suited for a recovering patient: a nourishing fish broth, slices of hearty bread served with a savory apple and cabbage slaw, and a rich chocolate milk. The scent of warm spices slowly filled the quiet, luxurious apartment.

Outside, the night had deepened into a storm of urban chaos.

Oswald lay in his prison cell, trying to read a worn book, when the steel door slid open. A guard entered, his demeanor unsettling.

“Oswald, how are you?” the guard asked, stepping closer with theatrical menace.

Oswald raised his head.

The guard leaned in. “Starting tomorrow, you will experience hell. You will regret your actions. You are a devilish man. A woman beater.”

The defamatory accusations against Oswald, strategically leaked and engineered by Makizal’s team to destroy him from the inside, were already spreading through the prison.

Oswald sat up, rage and fear wrestling inside him.

“No. I never hit a woman,” he shouted.

The guard smirked.

Who would believe him? He was the man who had pointed a gun at a renowned surgeon’s heart. The media had painted him as a violent misogynist. In a prison full of fathers and men who despised abusers, this label was a death sentence.

Through the guard’s cruel, taunting voice, Oswald understood. Beatings, humiliation, and terror would become his daily reality. A slow execution ordered by the woman he had tried to kill.

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