Chapter 2 - The Devoted Husband Act
At 6:40 the next morning, Derek woke up cheerful.
Genuinely cheerful.
He showered. Shaved. Pulled on a charcoal cashmere sweater. Then he went downstairs and came back with coffee, croissants, and an enormous bouquet of white roses.
"There she is," he said, beaming. "How's my brave girl?"
I looked at him and wondered how many times in eight years I'd mistaken confidence for kindness.
"I barely slept."
His face softened. "That's normal, honey."
He sat on the edge of the bed and squeezed my hand. "By tonight, we'll be holding our daughter."
I almost laughed at how cruel that sentence was.
Instead I whispered, "I'm scared."
Something moved across his face for half a second. Not guilt. Something more like arithmetic.
Then he leaned in close. "Nothing is going to happen to you."
I looked straight into his eyes. "Promise?"
He smiled. "I promise."
A man promising not to murder me. If I hadn't been so terrified, it might have been funny.
At 7:05, a nurse I'd never seen came in. Her badge read DANA MEYER, RN. She checked my monitor, then asked Derek if he could run down to admissions, because the hospital needed an updated signature on one of our insurance forms.
Derek frowned. "Why can't somebody just bring it up here?"
Dana gave him the flat, tired look of a woman who fights that exact battle nine times a shift. "Because that would be far too convenient for anyone involved."
He laughed. Exactly the way she'd steered him to.
"All right. Five minutes."
He kissed my cheek and left.
The instant the door clicked shut, Dana locked it. Then she turned to me.
"Your brother's downstairs."
My lungs finally opened.
"Police?"
"Hospital security, two detectives, and an assistant DA."
I started crying before I could stop it. Dana crossed the room and took my hand.
"You're safe in this room."
"Not yet," I said. "Pierce can still get to me."
She understood immediately.
Within minutes, the chief medical officer, the director of obstetrics, and two detectives came in through a staff corridor.
I played the recording.
Nobody interrupted. Nobody moved.
When Derek's voice said my death would make things "cleaner," the administrator slowly took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. When Pierce agreed to the money, the obstetrics director muttered, "Good God."
Detective Victor Salas looked at me when it ended. "Mrs. Shaw, has your husband ever threatened you before?"
"No."
"Any history of violence in the marriage?"
"Never."
"Financial problems?"
That one made me hesitate. "Maybe."
I told him about a string of odd transfers I'd noticed in our joint investment accounts over the past year. Small enough not to trip any alarms. Thirty-five thousand. Twenty-two thousand. Nineteen thousand. Derek always had a story ready — a tax payment, a bridge loan, a can't-miss investment. Two weeks earlier I'd quietly asked our corporate controller to take a closer look. The report wasn't finished.
Salas exchanged a glance with the ADA. "Your brother mentioned a family company."
"My mother left me forty-four percent of it when she died. My grandfather's trust holds another block for my daughter."
"What's it worth?"
"Somewhere between fifteen and eighteen million, depending on who's doing the math."
The room went quiet.
Suddenly six hundred thousand dollars for a crooked doctor made a horrible kind of sense.
"What happens now?" I asked.
Salas answered carefully. "Dr. Pierce comes off your care immediately. A new physician takes over. Hospital security preserves every camera file from last night."
"And Derek?"
"We need more."
I stared at him. "You have him arranging my death on tape."
"We have strong evidence. But if we can document the payment, his messages with the doctor, his messages with the girlfriend, and his behavior this morning, it becomes a case his lawyers can't talk their way out of."
I got it. "You want him to think nothing's changed."
"For a few hours."
My brother hated the idea.
I could see it the second Ethan walked in. He's forty-two, six-foot-four, and he inherited our mother's complete inability to hide anger. He crossed the room, wrapped me up, and said into my hair, "I should just carry you out of here right now."
"We can't."
"I don't care about their case."
"I do."
He pulled back. "Nora."
"If Derek figures out we know, and some judge lets him walk while they investigate, what happens then? What happens to her?"
He didn't have an answer.
I did. "We finish it."
The hospital moved fast. My chart was locked down. Every medication now needed two people to verify it. Pierce was told there'd been a scheduling snag and my induction was pushed back a few hours.
He bought it.
Meanwhile the detectives pulled hallway footage. At 1:18 a.m., Derek and Pierce could be seen slipping into a service stairwell. Seven minutes later, Derek came out alone. Pierce came out after him, carrying a small leather portfolio.
Detectives got emergency authorization to search Pierce's office. In a locked drawer they found an envelope with fifty thousand dollars in it — not the two hundred he'd been promised. Derek had apparently decided to start small.
But the cash wasn't the worst thing in that drawer.
There was also a note in Pierce's handwriting: my room number, my delivery time, and three words.
*Shaw — tomorrow.*
No medical terms. No treatment plan. Just my married name and *tomorrow*.
At 8:32, they intercepted something else. Camille texted Derek.
*Is she still going in this morning?*
Derek: *Yes. Don't panic. Pierce knows what he's doing.*
Camille: *And after?*
Derek: *We give it a few weeks. Then we stop hiding.*
Camille sent a heart.
I stared at that little red shape for a long time. It bothered me more than almost anything else in the file. Someone had put a heart under a conversation about my death.
"Arrest her," I said.
"We're getting the warrant."
"She knows exactly what this is."
"I agree."
I turned to my brother. "Call Paula. Tell her to activate the contingency documents."
His expression shifted.
Three weeks earlier, after I first spotted money leaking out of a corporate reserve account, I'd met privately with our estate attorney. I didn't know my husband wanted me dead. I just suspected he was hiding money. So I quietly rebuilt the structure of my family assets.
Derek had no idea.
Our marriage alone no longer handed him control of Ashford Coastal Group if I died. My shares would drop straight into a protected trust for my child, overseen by Ethan, Paula, and an independent fiduciary. There was also a misconduct clause: if my spouse ever became the subject of a criminal investigation tied to my death or incapacity, every discretionary dollar to him froze instantly.
He was gambling on prison for an inheritance that had already slipped out of his hands.
At 10:11, Derek walked back in carrying a cup of crushed ice, still with no idea the room had changed underneath him.
"Miss me?"
"Every second."
He set the cup down, then reached for my belly. Our daughter kicked against his palm, and his whole face lit up.
For one confusing beat, I saw the man I thought I'd married.
"Hey," he whispered. "There she is."
I almost asked him how he could feel his daughter move and still plan to bury her mother that same afternoon.
I didn't.
Instead I laid my hand over his. "Derek?"
"Yeah?"
"If something happened to me today, you'd take care of her, right?"
He met my eyes and didn't blink. "With my life."
May you like
I smiled. "Good."
Because in a few hours, his life was going to belong to the state of Georgia.
