My twin sister and I were both eight months pregnant. At her baby shower, my cruel mom demanded that I give my $18,000 baby fund to my sister, saying, “She deserves it more than you!” When I firmly refused, saying, “This is for my baby’s future!”, she called me selfish and then suddenly pu//nc/hed me hard in the stomach with full force. My water broke immediately and I blacked out from the pa/i/n, falling backwards into the pool. Dad said, “Let her float there and think about her selfishness!” My sister laughed, “Maybe now she’ll learn to share!” They all just stood there watching me drown while un/cons/cious. Ten minutes later, I woke up on the edge of the pool where a guest had pulled me out. But when I looked at my pregnant belly, I screamed in sh0ck….

Chapter 1: The Deep End of Blood

The water was a freezing, suffocating weight, pressing against my lungs with the density of liquid lead. My chest throbbed with a hollow, sickening ache—not merely from the brutal impact of hitting the surface, but from the raw, jagged realization of the betrayal that had sent me falling. It was a betrayal that struck with far more devastating force than my mother’s closed fist against my jaw. I drifted there, suspended in a chlorine-scented purgatory, teetering on the precarious edge of consciousness. Above the surface, muffled by the churning blue, I could hear them.

They were laughing.

My own flesh and blood, the people who shared my DNA, had simply turned their backs and left me to sink. I was eight months pregnant.

When I finally clawed my way to the abrasive concrete edge of the pool ten minutes later, I was a gasping, trembling wreck. I dragged my heavy, saturated body over the lip of the tiles, vomiting pool water and bile onto the pristine patio of The Hawthorne Estate. My belly, swollen with the fragile life of my unborn child, felt unnaturally tight, foreign, and agonizingly hard. I pressed a shaking hand against the damp fabric of my maternity dress and let out a scream that tore at my vocal cords. It wasn’t just physical agony; it was an absolute, terrifying disbelief that tangled with the ice water in my veins. In that shattered, shivering moment, I knew with crystalline certainty that they had finally crossed the point of no return.

Our family dynamic hadn’t always been a theater of outright cruelty. If I closed my eyes and dug deep enough into my earliest memories, I could recall a time when my twin sister, Evelyn, and I used to huddle under a shared, star-patterned blanket, whispering childish secrets into the late hours of the night. We had been raised in a sprawling suburban house that perpetually smelled of expensive vanilla candles and rigid, suffocating discipline. Back then, I was foolish enough to believe that a mother’s love was an unconditional birthright.