Chapter 8 - The Rip Of The Veil
The silence inside St. Michael’s Cathedral was so absolute that you could hear the rain drumming against the stained-glass windows.
Vivian stepped forward, her eyes wide with dramatic tears as she clutched Damian’s arm with trembling fingers.
"Damian, she’s insane! She’s an obsessed waitress who has been stalking you at the restaurant for months! Roman, get her out of here before she harms our baby!"
Roman drew his suppressed automatic pistol from his shoulder holster, pointing it directly at my chest in front of two hundred witnesses.
Before Roman could pull the trigger, three plainclothes federal marshals rose from the fourth-row pews, their weapons drawn and leveled at Roman’s head.
"Federal marshals! Drop your weapon, Roman! Drop it right now!"
Damian didn't look at the marshals; he turned his gaze slowly toward Vivian, his gray eyes turning into chips of Arctic ice.
"Damian, please," Vivian sobbed, pressing her hand over her stomach.
"Think of your son! The stress is going to hurt the baby!"
I walked down the red carpet aisle, stopping three feet away from the woman who had condemned me to drown in the dark.
"Show him the baby, Vivian," I said, my voice cutting through the sanctuary like a surgical scalpel.
"Show him the heartbeat you bought for eighty thousand dollars from Dr. Pike."
"Shut up! You filthy little tramp!" Vivian shrieked, lunging forward with her manicured nails aimed at my eyes.
I caught her wrists with the clinical precision of a trauma nurse, spinning her around and gripping the back of her ivory designer gown.
With one violent, decisive pull, I ripped the delicate silk seam down the center of her back.
The heavy fabric tore open with a sharp, sickening sound.
Beneath the silk, strapped tightly around her waist with wide industrial velcro bands, hung the tan silicone prosthetic belly.
The thick rubber was stained with sweat, buckled at the hips, and completely detached from her flat, unyielding stomach.
A collective scream of horror and disgust erupted from the wealthy guests in the pews.
Vivian’s mother fainted dead away onto the marble floor, while Chloe Barrett turned and fled toward the side exit, straight into the waiting arms of federal agents.
Damian Cross stood completely motionless, staring at the rubber prosthetic hanging loose around Vivian’s hips.
The color vanished from his face until he looked like an ancient statue carved from gray granite.
The grief, the hope, the six months of hand-crafted nursery cradles and whispered prayers—all of it had been built on a piece of molded plastic.
"Damian... Damian, let me explain," Vivian choked out, falling to her knees and grabbing the hem of his trousers.
"I did it because I loved you! I knew you wanted a family! I was going to adopt a newborn in Nassau—"
Damian pulled his leg away from her grasp as if she were a venomous snake, stepping back onto the altar platform.
He didn't scream. He didn't curse.
He simply looked down at her with a look of such absolute, lethal revulsion that Vivian stopped speaking and curled into a weeping ball on the floor.
May you like
"Take her away," Damian whispered, his voice shaking with a terrifying stillness.
"Take all of them away."
