When a Pregnant Woman at a Gala Barely Touched the Glass to Her Lips, the Strongest Man Suddenly Turned Pale

I fell onto the floor in New York’s richest hall before anyone realized that my glass had been marked for me.

That evening I had my hand placed on my belly as if I were simply resting it from the heavy dress. In reality, I was seventeen weeks pregnant and had not told anyone about it yet except Roman.

Roman Caldwell knew.

No one else.

When I saw myself in the mirror, the little copper compass fastened to the shoulder of my dark emerald dress seemed to smile at me. This brooch had remained to me from my father. He always told me, “You will find the way even if every door closes for you.”

That evening I did not yet know how much I would need his words.

“You are refusing champagne too?” Evelyn Rusk asked me loudly.

The two women standing beside her looked at each other and quietly giggled.

“I have a meeting in the morning,” I answered.

Evelyn’s eyes examined first my face, then my belly.

“How hardworking you are.”

Her voice was sweet like honey, but every word cut my skin. For years I had learned how not to let people notice my size before they saw my face. Evelyn deliberately decided to make them forget both.

“I simply prefer water,” I said.

“How boring, Madeline.”

At that moment a young waiter tremblingly handed me a champagne flute. I took it as I always did: I would bring it to my lips, but I would not drink.

At the other end of the hall Roman was speaking with a billionaire man, but suddenly he fell silent. His gaze stopped on me.

I barely touched the rim of the glass with my lips.

I felt a bitter taste.

Then my lower lip went numb.

I immediately lowered the glass and saw a small blue dot at its bottom. Not a stain. It was some sticky mark attached beneath the glass.

“Roman…”

The hall tilted. The chandeliers began to swim into one another. My fingers loosened and the flute shattered on the marble floor.

Someone giggled.

“Probably the dress is too tight,” said a man behind me.

Then my knees gave way.

Roman reached me before I touched the floor.

“I did not drink it,” I whispered.

In his arms I felt the cold metal of his watch and the mad pounding of my own heart.

Roman first saw my pale face, then the shattered flute. A blue dot still clung to one shard.

His face changed.

“No one leaves,” he said.

All three doors of the hall were locked. Security stopped the guests by the walls. The music stopped, and the breathing of three hundred people became one heavy noise.

Evelyn lost her smile.

A few minutes later the head of security found the young waiter by the kitchen stairs. He held a small cloth in his hand and trembled as if he already knew that escape was impossible.

“I did not poison her!” he shouted.

Roman placed a sealed packet on the table.

“Then tell me what this blue mark means.”

The waiter looked at the shard.

The color drained from his face.

“The woman told me that it marked the harmless champagne flute.”

“Which woman?” I asked.

The waiter slowly looked at me, then toward Evelyn, and raised his hand.

“Her.”

Evelyn stepped backward, and the heel of her shoe caught in a crack in the marble.

“I did not want to kill her,” she said. “I swear to God, I was only told where her flute would stand.”

Roman’s head of security started the video recording at that very moment. On the screen Evelyn stood in the kitchen, handing money to the waiter and saying something to him quietly.

Then, in the corner of the frame, a second person appeared.

The face was not visible.

Only a hand.

It touched exactly the flute on which the blue mark was.

He wore a black watch on his wrist, and a narrow silver crest gleamed on the watch strap.

I knew that crest.

I immediately recognized it as the symbol of the charitable foundation whose new building I was designing.

Roman recognized it too.

But he did not go toward Evelyn. He bent before her and asked in such a voice that the woman immediately began to cry.

“Who is threatening your daughter?”

Evelyn lowered her eyes.

And I realized for the first time that the woman who seemed to be acting against me might only be someone’s frightened weapon.

And that the unknown person had known about my pregnancy earlier than Roman should have told anyone.

The head of security raised a hand toward the screen.

“Mr. Caldwell, you need to see this frame again.”

Roman turned around. On the screen the unknown hand appeared again, and now the edge of a folded paper could be seen beneath the crest. The head of security opened a folder and placed his fingers on its cover…

The head of security’s fingers stopped on the folder’s cover, but he had not opened it yet. Everyone in the hall followed his movement with their eyes.

“Say what you saw,” Roman ordered.

“First we need to know who is listening to us,” he answered quietly.

At these words security took the phones from the guests standing by the walls. My head was still spinning and I sat on a chair, my hands wrapped around my belly. The copper compass touched the fabric of the dress, and its little needle lightly knocked with every movement.

Evelyn stood before me. Her makeup had run.

“My daughter Brooke works as an accountant at the foundation,” she said. “Three weeks ago she discovered transfers to companies that do not actually exist.”

“How much money?” Roman asked.

“Twenty-two million dollars.”

Someone in the hall exhaled loudly.

“And because of this you came against me?” I asked.

Evelyn shook her head.

“First they threatened Brooke. They said they knew her address, her workplace, and also what time she went out with the dog every day. Then Preston Vale called me.”

Roman’s eyes hardened.

“He called you himself?”

“It was his voice. He told me that if I wanted to see Brooke alive, I had to give him information about you. Your schedule. Whom you met. How serious your relationship with Madeline was.”

My fingers went cold.

“And did he ask about the pregnancy too?” I said.

Evelyn lowered her head.

“Yes.”

Roman turned toward me.

“I should have protected your secret.”

“But someone already knew,” I answered. “He did not learn it from you.”

“That is so,” he said.

The head of security opened the folder and took out a laboratory report.

“The substance was not added to the champagne. It was spread on the rim of the flute. A small amount was enough to make you lose consciousness, but the consequences for the baby could have been severe.”

I felt such coldness in my belly as if a door had opened inside.

“The name of the laboratory?” Roman asked.

“A private institution financed by the foundation.”

At that same moment his phone rang. Roman answered, listened for a few seconds, and his face tensed.

“Tell me again.”

The voice on the other side was so quiet that I saw only the tightening of his jaw.

“The laboratory burned down,” he said and ended the call. “All samples have been destroyed.”

Evelyn put her hand against the wall.

“Preston would do that.”

“Where is he?” Roman asked.

“I don’t know.”

Roman looked at the head of security.

“Find him.”

Four hours later, at six fifteen in the morning, Preston Vale was found in an abandoned warehouse at the harbor. I waited in the car, while two security officers stood nearby. Raindrops fell against the window, and every strike resembled a heartbeat.

Preston was brought out in handcuffs. His face was bloody, but he was still wearing an expensive jacket and the black watch whose silver crest I had seen in the video.

“I did not poison Madeline,” he said.

“But you knew what was happening,” Roman answered.

“I was only checking the accounts.”

“Whose orders were you taking?”

Preston looked at Roman, and for the first time I noticed how afraid he was.

Suddenly glass shattered in the warehouse. A bullet pierced the door of the security car. Everyone ducked to the floor.

“It’s an attack!” someone shouted.

Several minutes later one of the attackers was found wounded. He had a burned phone in his pocket. The message contained only two lines: “Silence all witnesses. Then go to the clinic.”

To the clinic where I was supposed to go that same morning for the baby’s examination.

Roman snatched the phone from my hand.

“You are not going there today.”

“If I don’t go, they will come there too,” I said.

Preston’s face tightened. He looked at the message and his lips turned pale.

“You know the sender,” I said.

“No.”

“Then why were you frightened?”

He closed his eyes.

“Because I trusted this man all my life.”

Roman bent toward him.

“Who is he?”

Preston did not have time to answer. Alarm sirens sounded in the direction of the clinic. A new message came to Roman’s phone, this time with only one sentence: “If you want the child to survive, come alone.”

And when Roman looked at the screen, he had such an expression as if he had already understood whose voice it was…

Roman still held the phone when he turned the screen toward me. At the end of the message there was only one letter — K.

“Your father?” I asked.

Roman did not answer me.

But Preston said quietly:

“Gideon Caldwell.”

Silence fell over the warehouse. Roman’s father had died ten years earlier, but Gideon’s name still lived on in the Caldwell business. He was Roman’s uncle, chairman of the supervisory board of the family foundation, and the man who had taught Roman everything in childhood: harbors, money, influence, and silence.

“Impossible,” Roman said.

“I sent the reports to him himself,” Preston answered. “All the false companies were part of his scheme. Brooke discovered it. And I obeyed him because Gideon paid off my family’s debt and I had him as a father all my life.”

Roman struck the hood of the car with his fist. The metal roared.

“How did he find out about my pregnancy?” I asked.

Preston lowered his head.

“There was a hidden room in the project for the foundation’s new building. Camera recordings and personal accounts were kept there. You, Madeline, accidentally noticed an inconsistency in the foundation plans. That is exactly why they began watching you.”

Then I remembered that strange day when only one plan disappeared from my desk — the plan of the underground floor. I thought I had simply lost it.

“Did they know that the baby was Roman’s child?” I asked.

“They knew that this child would become the Caldwell heir,” Preston said. “Gideon wanted Roman either to become controllable or to be completely removed from the family business. And you were the only person because of whom Roman would go against him.”

Roman extended his hand toward me.

“We are going to the clinic anyway. But not alone.”

At eight in the morning we entered the clinic’s underground parking lot. Security went ahead. White lights blinked on the walls, and the sharp smell of disinfectant struck my throat.

I had my hand on my belly.

“I’m afraid,” I told Roman.

“Me too.”

It was the first time Roman had not tried to hide his fear.

Doctor Lea Morgan locked the door from the inside. She checked my pulse, then placed the blood-test results on the table.

“The baby is alive,” she said. “The heartbeat is stable.”

I was able to breathe only when I heard a small, quick sound from the machine.

Roman lowered his eyes.

“But the substance applied to the glass was not only a sedative,” the doctor continued. “A chemical compound was found in it that increases the risk of ending the pregnancy.”

The door shook from outside.

Security raised their weapons.

“Police!” a voice rang out.

Roman looked at the doctor.

“These are not my people.”

At that moment Preston took a small memory device from his pocket.

“This is everything I have about Gideon. Recordings, transfers, and his conversations. But one file will open only if I am not alive today.”

“Turn it on,” I said.

“Not here.”

The door shook a second time. The metal of the lock bent.

Roman drew his weapon, but I grabbed his hand.

“If we run right now, everything will be lost.”

Preston connected the device to the doctor’s computer. A video appeared on the screen. Gideon Caldwell sat in a wooden office, wearing the same black watch on his wrist.

Evelyn stood beside him.

“Madeline is only an obstacle,” Gideon was saying. “Before the child is born, we must separate Roman from her.”

Evelyn was crying.

“You said she only had to fall asleep.”

“I do not control the consequences,” Gideon answered coldly.

Then his voice sounded in the video:

“The blue mark will make everyone believe that the flute was harmless. If the woman survives, let her remember nothing. If she does not survive, no one will care about the death of one pregnant architect.”

Roman’s face turned white.

And I felt a strange calm. At last, my fear had turned into words.

Outside, the door lock collapsed completely.

Then a new message appeared on the doctor’s computer. My name was written as the author of the file.

And in the very first sentence it said: “If you are reading this, know that Gideon is not the only person trying to kill this child…”