Just A Vessel: The Surrogate's Escape

Alex POV

The heavy bass of the music inside The Azure vibrated against my ribs, syncing with the frantic thrum of my own heart.

Paolo shoved me forward.

The door to the VIP suite swung open.

It wasn't a party.

It was a tribunal.

Gavyn stood in the center of the room, his jacket discarded, his sleeves rolled up to reveal the dark ink of the tattoos on his forearms.

Iliana was curled on the velvet sofa, sobbing into her hands.

Her dress was torn at the shoulder.

A thin line of blood trickled down her neck.

"She's here," Paolo announced, gripping my arm tight enough to bruise, as if I were a flight risk.

Gavyn turned to me.

His eyes were dead.

There was no anger, no passion, just a cold, hollow void where my husband used to be.

"Tell him," Iliana shrieked, pointing a trembling finger at me. "Tell him what you did!"

I looked at the man kneeling on the floor.

Rico. A low-level enforcer who would sell his own mother for a gram of coke.

"I'm sorry, Boss," Rico stammered, refusing to look at me. "She paid me. The wife. She gave me ten grand to mess up Miss Iliana's face. Said she wanted her to look like a monster."

The air was sucked out of the room.

"That is a lie," I said.

My voice was a whisper, raspy from the lake water I had swallowed hours ago.

"I saw the text messages!" Kennith shouted from the corner.

My son was holding Iliana's phone.

"It came from Mommy's number!" Kaelynn added, her eyes wide with feigned horror.

Gavyn didn't ask to see the phone.

He didn't ask for my side of the story.

He looked at me like I was a stranger who had broken into his home.

"You attacked Family," he said.

The code.

The only law that mattered.

"Gavyn, please," I begged, stepping forward. "Look at me. Look at who I am. I wouldn't—"

"Silence," he commanded.

He nodded at the guard standing next to Rico.

"Teach her."

Two words.

They ended my life.

The guard stepped forward and backhanded me across the face.

I hit the floor hard.

The taste of copper filled my mouth.

I didn't scream.

I looked up.

Gavyn had turned his back.

He was kneeling beside Iliana, dabbing at her scratch with a napkin, whispering soothing words.

My children were watching me.

They weren't crying.

They were smiling.

A cold, cruel smile that belonged to strangers.

The guard kicked me in the ribs.

Pain exploded in my side, stealing my breath.

"Enough," Gavyn said, not looking at me. "Get her out of my sight. Lock her in the adjoining room until I decide what to do with her."

They dragged me into the next room and threw me onto the carpet.

The door slammed shut.

I lay there in the dark, clutching my side.

The seal on the connecting door wasn't tight.

I could hear them.

I could hear the ice clinking in glasses.

I could hear Iliana's laughter, bright and sharp, the sobbing instantly forgotten.

"You need to relax, darling," Iliana cooed. "Drink this. It will help with the shock."

"I'm fine," Gavyn grunted.

"Just a sip. For me."

A pause.

"You're tense," she whispered.

I heard the sounds of movement. The rustle of fabric.

"Daddy and Iliana are making a new brother," Kaelynn's voice drifted through the crack in the door, clear and innocent.

My stomach turned.

"Shut up," Kennith hissed. "She gave him the love potion. The special juice."

"The one that makes him sleepy?"

"The one that makes him do whatever she wants. She says he's a puppet when he drinks it."

"She's smart," Kaelynn giggled. "Mommy was stupid. Mommy didn't use potions."

"Mommy is a *salope*," Kennith said.

*Bitch.*

He called me a bitch in French.

I lay on the floor, the physical pain in my ribs fading into a dull throb compared to the agony in my chest.

Iliana was drugging him.

And my children knew.

They were accomplices to their father's downfall.

I closed my eyes, and for the first time in six years, I didn't pray for my marriage.

I prayed for the strength to burn it down.

Iliana thought she had won everything.

But she had made one fatal mistake.

She didn't know the twins were biologically hers.

She didn't know she was poisoning her own bloodline.