"Why?" The single word scraped from the depths of Georgia's soul. "What did I ever do to you? I gave him up! I let you have everything you wanted!"
"Oh, Georgia." Stella's smile was sharp and utterly cruel.
She stepped delicately over Kathy's body, careful not to get blood on her Louboutins.
Each step was calculated, the walk of a woman who knew she'd already won, who was simply enjoying the victory lap.
"You really are pathetically naive, aren't you?" She crouched down beside Georgia, gripped her blood-matted hair with her pointed red nails and forced her head up.
Making her look directly into those cold, calculating eyes that held no warmth, no mercy or humanity.
"Do you want to know the truth? The real truth?" Stella's smile turned venomous. "I've taken so much pleasure watching you suffer these past three years. Watching you try so hard to be the perfect wife, the dutiful daughter-in-law, the woman who could somehow earn Arlo's love through sheer determination.
It was pathetic.
Also, watching you flee for the past nine months, thinking you were so clever, so careful, covering your tracks like some amateur spy. It's been the most entertaining show I've ever witnessed!"
Georgia's heart stopped beating for one terrible moment. "You... you knew where I was?"
"Of course we knew, you stupid girl." Stella's grip tightened, sending sharp spikes of pain through Georgia's skull. "We have eyes everywhere, Georgia. Everywhere."
Stella released Georgia's hair with contemptuous force, letting her head drop, and stood up.
Then she brushed imaginary dust from her suit with meticulous care.
"We've known your location since the day you ran. Watching you scramble around like a frightened mouse, spending all that money you stole, thinking you were outsmarting us. It was delicious! I've never laughed so hard in my life."
"I didn't steal anything!" Georgia gasped with desperation and indignation. "That was my inheritance Grandma Wellington left me! It was mine by right! She gave it to me!"
"Is that what you think?" Stella's delight was genuine, lighting up her face in a way that made her look almost beautiful.
"Oh, this is even better than I thought. You really have no idea, do you? You really believed the old woman cared about you?"
She walked around the room with leisurely confidence, examining the medical equipment with idle curiosity.
The security systems. The reinforced walls. Everything Georgia had built to protect herself and her child, every precaution she'd taken, every measure she'd implemented.
"I have to admit, I'm impressed. You really did pull off something remarkable here. A fully equipped surgical suite with top-of-the-line security. That takes talent, Georgia. Real talent. More than I gave you credit for."
Stella turned back, her expression shifting to something darker and infinitely more dangerous. "But you couldn't run from your fate, Georgia. Some people are born to win, and others are born to lose. You've always been a loser. From the moment you were born, you were destined to fail."
Her gaze moved to the baby still wailing in one of the men's awkward grip, his tiny face red and scrunched with distress and confusion.
A wicked smile crossed her red lips.
"And this precious little has such an important role to play in our plans. You should be proud, Georgia. Your son is going to be very useful to us."
"NO!" Georgia tried to surge to her feet, adrenaline giving her strength she shouldn't have had, strength born of pure maternal desperation.
But someone grabbed her immediately, forcing her back down.
"He's innocent! He's just a baby! Please, Stella, please don't do this!" Georgia dissolved into incoherent sobs. "Take me instead! Kill me! Torture me! Do whatever you want to me, but please leave him alone! He hasn't done anything wrong! He's innocent!"
"Give him to me." Stella extended her arms toward the man.
The man stepped forward without hesitation, transferring the screaming infant into her arms while Georgia fought with everything she had left.
She bit down hard on the guard's arm, clawed at faces and hands with desperate fury, leaving bloody tracks across skin, screamed until her throat felt raw and torn.
But she was too weak from childbirth. Too broken from months of running and hiding.
Too exhausted from three years of surviving in a loveless marriage that had slowly drained the life from her soul, drop by drop, day by day.
They tackled her down easily, pressing her face into cold marble with crushing force while her son's cries grew more desperate.
"You won't get away with this." Georgia's words came out muffled against the floor. "The law exists to take down criminals. Someone will find out, stop you. Someone will make you pay for this. Someone will..."
A deep, menacing chuckle reverberated from the doorway, cutting off her desperate threats.
Georgia's blood turned to ice as every muscle in her body went rigid. Her heart seemed to stop beating entirely, frozen in her chest.
She knew that laugh. Had heard it a thousand times over three years of marriage. Had once thought it was the most beautiful sound in the world, back when she was foolish, naive and believed in fairy tales and happy endings.
Slowly, painfully, she lifted her head, dreading what she would see but unable to stop herself from looking.
Arlo Wellington stood in the doorway, looking every inch the powerful CEO he was in a three-piece suit without a single wrinkle.
He looked fresh from a board meeting, not a massacre.
The contrast was wrong on every fundamental level.
His handsome face showed nothing. No anger. No pity. No remorse. No guilt. Just cold, calculated indifference while he surveyed the carnage without any visible reaction.
He looked at the bodies, at the blood, at the destruction, and felt nothing.
Tears spilled from Georgia's eyes.
This was the man she'd once loved so desperately that she'd destroyed her entire life for him. The man she'd given up everything for.
Her dreams, her dignity, her self-respect.
The man she'd believed, against all evidence, might someday love her back if she just tried hard enough, if she just became perfect enough, if she just suffered enough.
"Arlo." The whisper barely made it past her lips, broken, pleading and pathetic. "Please. Please don't do this. I'm begging you. I'll do anything you want. Just let our son live. Please."
He didn't look at her.
Those eyes remained fixed on the baby in Stella's arms, studying the infant with detached interest, like he was examining a piece of property or a business asset.
"Should I tell her, darling? Or do you want to do the honor?" Stella smiled, cradling the baby with exaggerated tenderness.
"Tell her everything." Arlo finally looked at Georgia, and the emptiness in his gaze made her wish he hadn't.
Those dark eyes she'd once dreamed about, once imagined softening with love, showed nothing but emptiness. A void where a soul should have been.
"She's going to die anyway. Might as well let her know how thoroughly she was played. How utterly stupid she was." His words came out flat and emotionless.
Stella looked at Georgia with schadenfreude. "You see, Georgia, this hidden estate you built? Along with all those little businesses you set up secretly, thinking you were so clever? They've already been reported to the authorities for illegal organ trafficking, money laundering, human trafficking, etc. The evidence is overwhelming, and it all points directly to you."
Stella's smile widened into something truly monstrous.
Georgia's world tilted sideways. "What? No. No, that's not true. I never did any of that. I would never..."
"It doesn't matter what you did or didn't do." Arlo's words cut through her protests. "What matters is what we can prove.
And we can prove that Georgia Wayne-Wellington, desperate and unstable after discovering her husband's affair, embezzled millions from the Wellington Foundation to build an illegal medical operation."
"The baby will be our insurance policy. Our leverage. Our guarantee that certain business arrangements go smoothly." Stella bounced the infant gently, her movements practiced and maternal.
Georgia wanted to vomit.
"He'll ensure cooperation from parties who might otherwise be difficult. He's quite valuable, really. You should be proud."
"What business arrangements? What are you talking about? What parties?" Georgia's mind reeled, struggling to process information that didn't make sense, that couldn't be real and had to be some kind of nightmare.
"Did you really think I married you out of obligation?" Arlo moved into the room with measured steps and crouched down beside Georgia.
"Did you really think my grandmother forced my hand? That I was some dutiful grandson who couldn't say no to a dying woman's wishes?" The question came out soft, almost gentle, which somehow made it worse.
Georgia's heart stopped beating and the world seemed to stop spinning.
Everything went silent except for the sound of her own ragged breathing.
Despair, so strong that it felt physical, enveloped Georgia's being as realization dawned on her—one she desperately wished was just her imagination.
It turned out that she never truly knew the extent of the hole she had so stupidly dug for herself.