1. The Hostility & The Motive
The air in the sterile, hushed private wing of the metropolitan hospital was thick with the scent of antiseptic, the faint electronic chirping of monitoring equipment, and an underlying atmosphere of profound fear and relentless hostility. I, Elena Miller-Sterling, lay still, eight months heavily pregnant, fighting a constant, exhausting, and often lonely battle against severe pre-eclampsia. My constant physical discomfort was only exacerbated by the chilling, undeniable realization I had come to six months prior: my mother-in-law, Margaret Sterling, did not merely dislike me. She hated me with a surgical, cold precision, and she wanted me gone before I gave birth.
