My Husband Tried To Poison My Unborn Baby — So I Left Him Broken On The Floor
Part 1
My Husband Tried To Poison My Unborn Baby — So I Left Him Broken On The Floor
The heavy oak door of my husband’s study was cracked open just enough to let a thin sliver of gaslight bleed into the dark hallway.
I had just come from the doctor’s office with the most wonderful news of my life.
I was six weeks pregnant.
My hand was raised to knock, my heart fluttering with the innocent hope that this child would finally turn our practical marriage into a real family.
Then I heard the voices.
Greg was speaking with his business associate, Craig.
I despised Craig.
He always smelled of stale tobacco and looked at me like a piece of furniture that had been appraised and found lacking.
Through the crack in the door, I heard Craig’s raspy voice warn Greg that the creditors were threatening to call in their loans.
He said the entire firm would collapse by the holidays.
My stomach dropped.
Greg had never mentioned any financial trouble to me.
He was a man of precise habits, always smelling of expensive bay rum and projecting complete control.
I heard Greg pour a drink and confidently state that my trust fund would provide all the leverage they needed.
Craig laughed, a cynical, exhausted sound.
He reminded Greg that my father had made the trust ironclad.
Greg only got the principal if I died without an heir.
If I had a child, the money would be locked in a generational vault until the baby came of age, and Greg would be cut out completely.
The hallway suddenly felt freezing.
Greg flatly stated that I was with child.
I stopped breathing.
I hadn’t told him yet.
The maid must have gossiped about finding my sick basin that morning.
Craig cursed under his breath, pointing out that a living heir would ruin everything.
He told Greg that he would lose the collateral and the creditors would destroy him.
I pressed my hand against my stomach, silently pleading for my husband to say my wealth didn’t matter.
Instead, I heard the heavy thud of a ledger closing.
Greg coldly commanded him to ensure I lost the baby.
He didn’t yell.
He delivered the command with the terrifying banality of a man ordering his boots polished.
My knees turned to water.
My vision swam into a jagged smear as my mouth flooded with metallic saliva.
I grabbed the doorframe to keep from collapsing, my fingernails digging into the wood so hard a splinter pierced my thumb.
Craig cynically asked what would happen if I didn’t miscarry.
Greg replied smoothly that they would move to a secondary plan.
But he told Craig to start with a tonic.
He said to slip it into my evening tea.
He reasoned that women miscarry all the time, and it would look like a natural tragedy.
I backed away into the enveloping shadows of the hallway.
I carried the dead weight of my shattered life back to my bedroom.
I collapsed onto the cold bathroom tiles and retched violently into the porcelain basin.
The sour bile burned my throat.
The horrifying command echoed endlessly through my mind.
The words repeated in my skull like a broken phonograph needle.
When I looked in the mirror, I hated the weak, pale victim staring back at me.
The dinner gong rang.
I forced myself to go downstairs, knowing that if I claimed sickness and stayed in my room, they would bring me the spiked tea.
The dining room felt like an oppressive cavern.
Greg stood and offered me a perfectly composed, handsome smile.
It was the same smile that had charmed my father into signing away half his fortune.
He carved the roast mutton with immaculate hands.
Those were the hands currently engineering the murder of the life inside me.
I chewed my food mechanically, unable to taste a thing.
When Greg covered my clenched fist with his warm hand, I felt only a creeping, venomous rot.
He stroked my knuckles and insisted I have a cup of peppermint tea before bed to settle my stomach.
I looked right into his eyes.
I thanked him, keeping my voice eerily calm.
That night, Greg brought the tea service into my private sitting room.
The scent of peppermint was unnaturally sharp.
It was an aggressive mask trying to smother the faint, bitter odor of damp earth and poison.
He sat in his leather chair and watched me with dark, unreadable eyes.
He told me to drink it while it was hot.
Panic flared in my chest.
He was going to sit there and watch me drain the poison.
I desperately told him the fire was dying and I felt chilled.
Good manners warred with his lethal impatience, but he finally stood and turned his back to shift the coals with the heavy iron tongs.
I moved with silent speed.
I tipped my cup and poured the hot, bitter tea into the dark soil of the massive parlor palm standing next to my chair.
I righted the cup, leaving just a swallow at the bottom.
I brought it to my lips just as Greg turned around.
I swallowed the lukewarm drop and grimaced at the chalky residue it left on my tongue.
He smiled his charming, hollow smile and told me he only wanted what was best for me.
For the next two weeks, we repeated this macabre ritual.
He brought the tea, and I found a way to dispose of it in the palm or out the window.
I learned to fake the severe abdominal cramping he expected to see.
I painted pale shadows under my eyes with crushed charcoal.
But the most terrifying proof of his intent wasn’t in his hidden ledgers or whispered conversations.
It was in the corner of my sitting room.
By the twelfth day, the grand parlor palm began to die.
Its lush green fronds turned a sickly, jaundiced yellow and curled inward.
The stalk withered and collapsed under its own weight.
The soil smelled rancid and acidic.
I reached out and snapped a dead frond, listening to the dry, hollow crack.
That violent, unnatural decay was meant for my womb.
The leaves were rotting, and I knew with absolute certainty that if I stayed in this house, my baby and I would be next.
