Chapter 2 - Declared Dead
The next forty-eight hours passed in a blur of morphine, sterilized lights, and excruciating physical pain. Caleb didn't take me to the local county hospital where Ryan’s family had connections. Instead, he drove me straight to a private medical clinic two hours away in Denver, run by a trusted military medic he had served with years ago.
When I finally woke up, the rhythmic beep of a heart monitor was the sweetest sound I had ever heard. A nurse was adjusting my IV, and Caleb was standing by the window, staring out at the falling snow.
I reached down to my stomach immediately.
"She's okay," Caleb turned around, his face softening. "The doctors performed an emergency ultrasound. You have two fractured ribs, a severe concussion, and a torn ligament in your knee, but the amniotic sac is intact. Your daughter is a fighter, Emily."
A daughter. A teardrop slipped down my temple, spilling into my hair. I was going to have a baby girl. A baby girl whose father tried to murder her before she even took her first breath.
"How did you know... about Ryan?" I asked, my voice raspy.
Caleb pulled up a chair and sat down. He pulled out a tablet and tapped the screen, turning it toward me.
My stomach dropped. It was a news broadcast from Denver Local News.
The screen showed a photo of me—smiling, radiant, taken at our wedding three years ago. Next to it was Ryan, standing in front of a podium outside the local police department. He was wearing a dark suit, his eyes red and swollen, weeping openly into a handkerchief while a woman with sleek black hair stood subtly behind him, offering a comforting hand on his back. Vanessa.
"Tragedy in the Rockies," the anchorwoman reported. "Prominent real estate developer Ryan Carter made an emotional plea today following the sudden disappearance of his seven-month-pregnant wife, Emily Carter. According to authorities, Mrs. Carter left behind a distress note indicating severe prenatal depression before vanishing into the wilderness near Blackwood Ravine. Search and rescue teams have recovered her blood-stained scarf near the riverbank..."
"He planted my scarf near the river," I whispered, horror choking my throat. "He's telling everyone I was mentally unstable."
"It gets worse," Caleb said calmly, flipping to another document on the tablet. "He filed an expedited legal motion this morning to declare you presumed dead based on the evidence left behind, citing emergency management of your family estate. Your grandfather’s trust fund—roughly twelve million dollars—is set to release its full assets to Ryan as the sole surviving beneficiary upon official confirmation of death."
Ryan wasn't just getting away with murder; he was being paraded as a grieving, heartbroken widower. The media was eating out of his hand.
I looked at my reflection in the dark screen of the tablet. My face was bruised, scarred, and pale. The naive girl who believed in morning tea and honeymoon playlists had died on that cliff.
"He thinks I'm dead," I said, my voice dropping an octave, turning cold and sharp as ice. "He built his whole plan on my corpse."
"So let him keep thinking you're dead," Caleb suggested, leaning forward. "In the eyes of the law, Emily Carter is gone. Which means you can become anyone you need to be to tear his world apart."
"Why are you helping me, Caleb?" I asked, looking at him intently. "You don't know me. You could have just given a statement to the police."
Caleb’s eyes darkened slightly, a shadow of an old memory crossing his face. "Three years ago, Ryan’s development firm bulldozed my family's ranch using forged land deeds. My father fought them in court, lost everything, and took his own life. I've been tracking Ryan Carter for a long time, waiting for him to make a mistake. Pushing you off that cliff was his biggest mistake."
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He extended his hand toward me. "So, Emily. Do you want to hide... or do you want justice?"
I took his hand, gripping it tightly. "I don't want justice, Caleb. Justice is too soft for what he did to my child. I want retribution."
