Pregnant Wife Dies In Labor — Mistress Laughs Until Doctor Whispers, ‘It’s Twins!’
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Twins of Karma
Marcus Chen would never forget that night. The hospital hallway was colder than the Singapore rain outside, the fluorescent lights too bright, the silence too deep. His wife was dying just twenty feet away. Her screams, which had echoed through the maternity ward for hours, had turned into a terrifying silence. And Marcus was not alone.
Vanessa stood beside him, arms folded, a sly smile playing at the corners of her lips. She had always been beautiful—sharp cheekbones, a confident stance, and eyes that seemed to see straight through people. Tonight, she looked victorious. The obstacle was about to be removed. Marcus would finally be hers. All of him. And, perhaps more importantly, all of his fortune.
But when the doctor emerged from those operating room doors, her face wasn’t just grim—it was cold, calculating. She looked past Marcus, her eyes boring into Vanessa’s smug expression, and whispered four words that would turn the mistress’s victory into her own personal nightmare.
“We saved the babies. It’s twins.”
Vanessa’s triumphant smile froze on her face. Her skin went from flushed with victory to chalk white in an instant. Twins. Not one needy child, but two—two permanent, unbreakable links to the dead wife. Two heirs to the Chen fortune. Two reminders that she would always be second place.
But to understand how they arrived at this moment of devastating karma, we need to go back six months, to when Marcus Chen’s life was still picture perfect on the surface, but rotting from the inside out.
Six Months Earlier
The penthouse overlooking Marina Bay wasn’t just expensive—it was obscene. Forty million dollars of glass, marble, and imported Italian furniture. Marcus Chen, at forty-two, had built his tech empire, Chunkor Systems, from nothing. From a cramped apartment in Queens to this Singapore palace in just fifteen years. The financial magazines loved him for it.
His wife, Dr. Lily Chen, was his perfect counterpart—a renowned cardiothoracic surgeon at Singapore General Hospital. She had saved hundreds of lives with her precise, steady hands. She was brilliant, beautiful, and devoted. Their marriage was the kind that made other couples jealous. The power couple who seemed to have it all.
Except for one thing. One silent, painful thing that had haunted them for eight long years. They couldn’t have a child.
Eight years of negative pregnancy tests. Eight years of perfectly timed attempts. Eight years of watching Lily’s hope dim a little more with each passing month. The fertility treatments had been brutal—hormone injections that made her sick, IVF cycles that failed again and again. And the mounting pressure that slowly transformed their passionate marriage into a clinical, scheduled routine.
But then, on their ninth attempt, a miracle happened. Lily was pregnant.
Marcus remembered the moment she told him. It was a Saturday morning, and she’d walked into his home office holding a small wrapped box. Inside was a tiny pair of baby shoes, white with blue laces.
“We did it,” she whispered, tears streaming down her face. “Marcus, we’re going to be parents.”
He’d held her then, feeling her body shake with sobs of relief and joy. He’d felt it too, that overwhelming wave of gratitude and love. But there was something else there, something he didn’t want to acknowledge—a small, dark seed of resentment that had been growing for months.
The truth was, Marcus Chen had already found his escape. Her name was Vanessa Lynn.
The Mistress
Vanessa was twenty-eight, razor-sharp, and hungry for power. She’d joined Chunkor Systems eight months ago as a senior business analyst. From the first moment Marcus saw her in that board meeting, he knew she was dangerous. Not in a threatening way—an intoxicating way.
Vanessa didn’t look at Marcus like he was a husband or a boss. She looked at him like he was a conquest, a trophy to be won. And after eight years of scheduled sex and medical terminology, that look made him feel alive again.
The affair started three weeks after she joined the company. Late nights working on the Singapore expansion project. Shared dinners that turned into shared drinks. Intellectual conversations that slowly became intimate confessions. Vanessa made him feel young again, reckless again. She wasn’t asking him about basal body temperatures or ovulation windows. She was asking him about his dreams, his ambitions, his desires.
One night, after a particularly successful presentation to the board, they ended up at her apartment—a sleek, modern space in the Orchard Road district. She poured them both wine, and when she leaned in to kiss him, Marcus didn’t pull away. He told himself it was just once, just one night to feel something other than the crushing pressure of fertility treatments and disappointed hopes.
But once became twice, twice became a pattern, and a pattern became a full-blown affair.
For three months, Marcus lived a double life. During the day, he was the devoted husband, attending doctor’s appointments with Lily, holding her hand through another round of injections, telling her it would work this time. At night, after claiming he had late meetings or investor calls, he was with Vanessa, losing himself in the dangerous thrill of something forbidden.
Vanessa was everything Lily wasn’t in those moments. She was carefree, spontaneous, and she never looked at him with that mixture of hope and fear that had become Lily’s permanent expression. With Vanessa, there were no stakes, just pleasure and escape.
But then Lily got pregnant, and suddenly Marcus’ carefully compartmentalized world started to crack.
The Trap
The night Lily told him about the pregnancy, Marcus had been planning to end things with Vanessa. He’d rehearsed the speech in his head a dozen times: This was a mistake. I love my wife. We need to stop. Simple, clean, final.
But when he went to Vanessa’s apartment that evening to break it off, she opened the door in a red silk robe and told him something that made his blood run cold.
“I’m pregnant too, Marcus. Eight weeks.”
The world tilted. Marcus stood in her doorway, his mouth opening and closing like a fish drowning in air.
“What? How? We were careful.”
“Apparently not careful enough,” Vanessa said, her voice eerily calm. She walked to her kitchen counter and poured herself a glass of water. “I found out yesterday. I was going to tell you tomorrow, but you’re here now, so here we are.”
Marcus felt his chest tighten. Two pregnancies—his wife and his mistress, both carrying his children. This wasn’t just a mess. This was a catastrophe.
“You need to get rid of it,” he said, the words tumbling out before he could think. “Vanessa, I can’t. My wife just told me she’s pregnant. This is everything we’ve wanted for eight years. I can’t destroy that.”
Vanessa set down her glass very carefully. When she turned to face him, her expression had changed. The warmth, the playfulness—it was all gone, replaced by something cold and calculating.
“Get rid of it?” she repeated, her voice dangerously soft. “Marcus, darling, I’m not some inconvenient problem you can just erase. I’m carrying your child, your heir.”
“So is Lily,” Marcus shot back, panic rising in his throat. “She’s my wife, Vanessa. This—It was a mistake. I’m sorry, but it has to end.”
Vanessa smiled then, but it wasn’t a kind smile. It was the smile of a chess player who’d just seen checkmate three moves ahead.
“Oh, Marcus, we’re just getting started. You see, I’ve been thinking about our future. Chunkor Systems is valued at what now? Four billion? And you own sixty-two percent. That makes you worth about $2.5 billion.”
Marcus felt ice water in his veins. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about my child’s future,” Vanessa said, walking toward him slowly. “I’m talking about securing what’s mine. You’re going to divorce Lily. You’re going to marry me. And you’re going to do it before both babies are born.”
“You’re insane,” Marcus whispered.
“I’m practical,” Vanessa corrected. “You have a choice, Marcus. You can do this the easy way—divorce Lily quietly, give her a generous settlement, and we can be a family. Or—” she paused, pulling out her phone, “I can do it the hard way.”
She showed him the screen. It was a folder labeled “Insurance.” Inside were dozens of photos: Marcus and Vanessa together at restaurants, entering her apartment building, in her bed. There were screenshots of text messages, credit card receipts, hotel bookings—everything meticulously documented.
“I’ve been preparing for our future since the day we met,” Vanessa said sweetly. “I’m very thorough, Marcus. It’s one of the qualities you admired about me, remember?”
Marcus felt the world collapsing around him. This wasn’t a relationship. It had never been a relationship. It was a trap, and he’d walked right into it.
“If you don’t divorce Lily and marry me,” Vanessa continued, her voice still that eerily calm tone, “I’ll send all of this to the Singapore Straits Times. I’ll send it to your board of directors. I’ll send it to your investors. And then I’ll file a paternity suit that will drag your name through every gossip column in Asia.”
She moved closer, placing a hand on his chest. “Your reputation will be destroyed. Your company will crater. Your wife will divorce you anyway and take half of what’s left. But if you do this my way, Marcus, we can control the narrative. A sad marriage that didn’t work out. A new love. A fresh start.”
Marcus stared at her, seeing her clearly for the first time. She wasn’t the fun, spontaneous woman he’d thought she was. She was a predator who had been hunting him from the very beginning.
“I need time,” he said finally, his voice hollow.
“You have two weeks,” Vanessa replied. “Lily is what, twelve weeks pregnant now? The first trimester is the most dangerous, Marcus. Anything could happen. Stress, for example, is very bad for pregnant women.”
The implied threat hung in the air between them like poison gas.
Marcus left her apartment in a daze. He sat in his car in the parking garage for an hour, his hands gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. He wanted to scream. He wanted to drive his car off a bridge. He wanted to rewind time and undo every stupid, selfish decision he’d made, but he couldn’t. The trap had already closed.
The Wife’s Revenge
What Marcus didn’t know, what he couldn’t have known, was that someone else had been watching him. Someone who had suspected the affair long before that night.
Dr. Lily Chen was not a fool. She had built her career on observation, on noticing the small signs others missed—a slight irregularity in a heartbeat, a shadow on an X-ray that shouldn’t be there. And for the past three months, she’d been noticing irregularities in her husband. The way he showered immediately when he came home, when he used to just collapse on the couch. The new cologne he’d started wearing. The phone that was now always face down on the nightstand. The credit card statement with charges from restaurants she’d never been to.
Lily had wanted to be wrong. God, how she’d wanted to be wrong. So, she’d hired a private investigator, a discreet woman named Patricia Lim, who specialized in marital infidelity cases. Patricia had given her the report two days after Lily found out she was pregnant—a manila folder filled with photographs that shattered her world.
Marcus and Vanessa kissing in a parking garage. Marcus and Vanessa entering her apartment building. Marcus and Vanessa at a romantic restaurant in Sentosa, his hand covering hers across the table.
Lily had sat in her car outside the hospital after her shift, staring at those photos, feeling something inside her break apart. Eight years—eight years of standing by his side through the fertility nightmare. Eight years of injecting herself with hormones that made her feel like a stranger in her own body. Eight years of hope and disappointment and trying again. And he’d thrown it all away for a twenty-eight-year-old analyst who looked at him like he was a prize to be won.
But Lily Chen was a surgeon. She didn’t make emotional decisions in the operating room, and she wouldn’t make them in her life. So, she made a choice that night. A choice that would change everything. She wouldn’t confront Marcus. Not yet. She would wait. She would watch. She would protect the life growing inside her—the miracle she’d waited eight years for. And when the time was right, when she had gathered every piece of evidence she needed, she would destroy him legally, financially, and publicly.
Lily Chen was done being the devoted wife. She was going to be the avenging angel.
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The Downward Spiral
But fate, it turned out, had its own plan. A plan that would render all of their schemes meaningless.
In Lily’s twentieth week of pregnancy, during a routine ultrasound, the technician paused, frowning at the screen. She called in the doctor, who studied the images with a concerned expression.
“Dr. Chen,” the obstetrician said carefully, “I’m seeing some abnormalities in your blood pressure readings. Have you been feeling unusually tired? Any swelling in your hands or feet?”
Lily nodded, but she dismissed it as normal pregnancy symptoms. She was a surgeon who regularly did twelve-hour shifts. Of course she was tired. But the doctor ordered more tests—blood work, kidney function panels, a 24-hour urine collection.
The results came back three days later, and they were concerning. Protein in her urine. Elevated blood pressure. Early signs of preeclampsia.
“We need to monitor this very closely,” her obstetrician warned. “Preeclampsia can escalate quickly. If it progresses to eclampsia, it becomes life-threatening for both you and the baby.”
Lily listened to the doctor’s warnings with her clinical mind, already calculating risks and outcomes. She was a surgeon. She understood that pregnancy complications were common, manageable with proper monitoring. What she didn’t tell the doctor, what she couldn’t admit even to herself, was that she’d been under massive psychological stress. The affair, the betrayal, the meticulous planning of her revenge, the constant performance of being the happy, oblivious wife. Stress, the silent killer. Stress, the trigger for preeclampsia.
Marcus had been with her for that appointment, playing his role perfectly. He asked all the right questions, held her hand at the right moments, promised to reduce her stress levels. But that very evening, he went to Vanessa’s apartment and told her about the complication.
“Lily has preeclampsia,” he said, pacing Vanessa’s living room. “The doctor said it could become serious. We need to stop this pressure. I need time.”
Vanessa stood from her couch, her own pregnant belly prominent at twenty weeks, and slapped him across the face. The sound cracked through the apartment like a gunshot.
“Stop the pressure?” she hissed, her eyes blazing. “I’m six months pregnant with your child, Marcus. I don’t care about Lily’s medical drama. You have two weeks to file for divorce or I’m going public with everything, and I mean everything.”
She pulled out her phone and showed him something new. Recordings. Audio recordings of their conversations, including ones where Marcus had explicitly discussed hiding assets from Lily, strategizing how to minimize what she’d get in a divorce.
“These recordings,” Vanessa said coldly, “prove premeditation. They prove you’ve been planning to defraud your wife. If I release these, you won’t just lose half your assets in a divorce, Marcus. You’ll face criminal charges for financial fraud. You could go to prison.”
Marcus stared at her, his cheeks still stinging from the slap, and finally understood the full scope of his nightmare. Vanessa hadn’t just trapped him. She’d built a prison around him, brick by brick, recording by recording. And now she held all the keys.
He left her apartment that night, feeling like a dead man walking. Every choice led to destruction. If he divorced Lily now, the stress could kill her and the baby. If he didn’t, Vanessa would destroy him publicly and legally. There was no good move left on the board.
The Final Betrayal
What Marcus didn’t know was that Vanessa had already made a decision of her own. A decision so cold, so calculated that it would have chilled him to his core if he’d known. Vanessa had decided that Lily Chen needed to disappear. Not through violence—Vanessa was too smart for that—but through attrition, through stress, through carefully escalated pressure that would worsen Lily’s preeclampsia until nature took its course.
Vanessa began a subtle campaign of psychological warfare. Anonymous letters sent to Lily’s workplace about Marcus’ affair. Accidental phone calls to the Chen house where Vanessa would breathe heavily and hang up. Messages left with Marcus’s assistant about the Singapore property transfer—a completely fictional transaction designed to make Lily think Marcus was hiding assets. Each carefully placed bomb was designed to spike Lily’s stress levels. And it worked.
Lily’s blood pressure climbed. At twenty-four weeks, she was put on modified bed rest. At twenty-eight weeks, her obstetrician discussed the possibility of early delivery if the preeclampsia worsened. But Lily Chen was a fighter. She took her medications religiously. She monitored her blood pressure four times a day. She reduced her surgical schedule and spent more time resting. She was determined to carry this baby to term, to bring this miracle safely into the world.
And then at thirty-four weeks pregnant, everything exploded.
Lily came home early from the hospital one afternoon, exhausted from a difficult surgery. She walked into the master bedroom to lie down, and that’s when she saw it. Marcus’s laptop left open on the bed, an email program still active. She knew she shouldn’t look. But something—intuition, fate, divine intervention—made her glance at the screen.
The email was from Vanessa, sent just an hour ago.
Marcus, the stress campaign is working. Patricia’s contact at Singapore General says Lily’s preeclampsia is worsening. Her OB is discussing pre-term delivery. If she goes into early labor, the risks skyrocket. Mother and baby could both… well, you know. Then you’d be free. We’d be free. Just be patient, darling. Nature will take its course. V.
Lily read the email three times, her hands shaking so violently she could barely hold the laptop. They were trying to kill her, not with a weapon, not with poison, but with stress, with psychological torture designed to worsen her medical condition until it became fatal.
The shock was so complete, so overwhelming that Lily’s vision blurred. She felt a sharp pain in her head, a pressure building behind her eyes. Her hands flew to her temple as the worst headache of her life exploded through her skull. She tried to call out for Marcus, but he was still at the office. Her phone was in her purse, on the kitchen counter. She took two steps toward the bedroom door and collapsed.
The seizure lasted forty-seven seconds. When it ended, Lily Chen lay on the bedroom floor, blood trickling from where she’d bitten her tongue, her pregnant belly rising and falling with shallow breaths. She’d progressed from preeclampsia to full eclampsia—the life-threatening complication that killed mothers and babies. Her brain was swelling, her organs were shutting down, and she was completely alone.
The Hospital
Marcus found her twenty minutes later. He’d come home early to pick up some documents, and the sight of his wife seizing on the bedroom floor would haunt him for the rest of his life.
“Lily. Lily.” He dropped to his knees, rolling her onto her side, his hands shaking as he dialed 995.
“My wife is pregnant and she’s having a seizure. She’s thirty-four weeks. She has preeclampsia. Please, we need an ambulance now.”
The paramedics arrived in eight minutes. They stabilized Lily enough to transport her, loaded her onto a gurney, and rushed her to Singapore General Hospital—ironically, the same hospital where she worked. Marcus rode in the ambulance, holding Lily’s cold hand, watching the paramedic inject her with magnesium sulfate to stop the seizures. His mind was a chaos of terror and guilt. The email he’d left open on his laptop—had she seen it? Is that what triggered the seizure?
At the hospital, the emergency team swarmed Lily. Her obstetrician, Dr. Sarah Tan, took one look at the monitors and made an immediate decision.
“We’re taking her to the OR. Emergency C-section. The baby needs to come out now or we’ll lose them both.”
Marcus was ushered to the surgical waiting area on the fourth floor. The same sterile, fluorescent-lit hallway where a hundred other terrified family members had paced before him. He pulled out his phone with shaking hands and did something he would regret for the rest of his life. He called Vanessa.
“She’s in emergency surgery,” he said, his voice cracking. “Eclamptic seizure. They’re doing a C-section right now.”
There was a pause on the other end. Then, Vanessa said very quietly, “So, it’s happening. Marcus, this is terrible, but this might be the way out. If something happens to Lily, you’ll be free. We can be together. We can be a family.”
Marcus felt bile rise in his throat. “Are you insane? She might die. Vanessa, my wife might die.”
“Your pregnant mistress is standing right here,” Vanessa shot back, her voice cold. “Your real family is right here. Where are you, Marcus?”
“At the hospital.”
“Stay there. I’m coming.”
“Don’t you dare—” Marcus started. But she’d already hung up.
Fifteen minutes later, Vanessa walked off the elevator onto the fourth floor. She was seven months pregnant now, her belly prominent under an expensive black dress. She walked straight up to Marcus, who was standing outside the OR doors, his face ashen.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Marcus hissed, looking around frantically. “Lily’s colleagues work here. If anyone sees—”
“I’m here for you,” Vanessa said, loud enough for the nurses at the nearby station to hear. “Because you need support right now.”
One of the nurses, Grace, who’d worked with Lily for six years, looked up sharply. She recognized Marcus from the hospital charity events, and she definitely noticed the very pregnant woman standing possessively close to him. Grace’s eyes narrowed. She pulled out her phone and sent a quick text to the surgical team’s group chat: Dr. Chen’s husband is in the waiting room with another pregnant woman. Heads up.
The Tragedy
Inside the operating room, the situation was deteriorating rapidly. Dr. Sarah Tan had opened Lily’s abdomen and immediately saw the problem. Lily’s placenta had partially abrupted, separated from the uterine wall. The baby was in severe distress, its heart rate dropping dangerously low.
“Get that baby out now,” Dr. Tan commanded. “Somebody page hematology. She’s bleeding too much. I think she’s got DIC.”
DIC—disseminated intravascular coagulation—a catastrophic condition where the blood simultaneously clots and hemorrhages, a condition with a mortality rate over forty percent.
The surgical team worked with desperate precision. They delivered the baby—a boy, tiny but breathing—and handed him immediately to the NICU team waiting in the corner.
But Lily was bleeding. Despite the surgeon’s best efforts, blood was pouring from her uterus, her surgical site, even from her IV sites. The DIC had triggered a cascade of organ failure.
“Blood pressure’s dropping. 80 over 40. She’s crashing.”
Dr. Tan worked frantically, trying to stop the bleeding. They gave Lily unit after unit of blood, pushing medications to help her blood clot, doing everything in the emergency protocol. But sometimes, despite everything medicine can do, the body just gives up.
Lily Chen’s heart stopped at 7:47 p.m.
The code team rushed in. CPR, defibrillation, epinephrine. They worked for 37 minutes, trying everything to bring her back. But at 8:24 p.m., Dr. Sarah Tan looked at the clock and called it.
“Time of death: 2024.”
The room fell silent, except for the soft crying of one of the younger nurses. Dr. Tan pulled off her bloody gloves and pushed through the double doors to the waiting area.
The Mistress’s Fall
Marcus saw her coming. The expression on Dr. Tan’s face told him everything before she said a single word.
“Mr. Chen,” Dr. Tan said, her voice heavy with grief and exhaustion. “I’m so very sorry. We did everything. Transfusions, resuscitation, everything. But the DIC was too severe. Lily didn’t make it.”
Marcus’s world stopped. Sound disappeared. The fluorescent lights seemed to brighten until they were blinding. He heard a sound coming from somewhere far away, broken, animal wail of grief. It took him a moment to realize the sound was coming from him. He collapsed into a waiting room chair, his body folding in on itself, his hands covering his face as sobs tore through him.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. Lily was supposed to survive. They were supposed to divorce, yes, but she was supposed to live. She was supposed to raise their child. She was supposed to have a future, even if it wasn’t with him.
And then, from behind him, came a sound that made Dr. Tan’s blood run cold. A laugh. It was quiet, sharp, and utterly unmistakable—a single bark of triumphant laughter.
Dr. Tan’s eyes snapped to the source. Vanessa was standing there, one hand covering her mouth, but her eyes were dancing with barely concealed victory. She’d won. The obstacle was gone. Marcus was hers now—his fortune, his name, his future. She would be the only mother of his children. The only Mrs. Chen.
Marcus’s head came up slowly. He stared at Vanessa in absolute horror.
“Did you just—” he choked out. “Did you just laugh?”
Vanessa’s expression shifted, trying for sympathy, but the damage was done. Several nurses had heard it, too. Grace was staring at Vanessa with open disgust.
Dr. Tan walked past Marcus, her face like carved stone, and stopped directly in front of Vanessa. She was a small woman, barely five foot three, but in that moment, she seemed ten feet tall.
“Who are you?” Dr. Tan asked, her voice dangerously quiet.
“I—I’m Marcus’ friend,” Vanessa stammered, suddenly realizing she might have made a catastrophic mistake.
“His friend?” Dr. Tan repeated, her eyes dropping to Vanessa’s pregnant belly. “His pregnant friend who just laughed when I announced his wife’s death.”
Vanessa’s face went pale. “I didn’t—it was just—I was in shock. I didn’t mean—”
“Mr. Chen,” Dr. Tan said, turning back to Marcus. Her voice was still cold, but there was something else there now. Something that cut through Marcus’s grief and made him look up. “There’s something else you need to know.”
Marcus stared at her, his eyes red and swollen. “What?”
Dr. Tan took a breath. She’d been debating whether to add this information now or wait. But the presence of this callous, laughing mistress made her decision easy.
“We delivered your son,” Dr. Tan said. “He’s small—just four pounds, two ounces—but he’s breathing on his own. The NICU team is with him now.”
A flicker of hope, terror, crossed Marcus’s face. “My son—is he—will he be okay?”
“The neonatologist will brief you shortly,” Dr. Tan said. Then she paused, her next words dropping like a bomb. “But there’s something unusual that we discovered during the delivery.”
“What?” Marcus whispered.
Dr. Tan looked him directly in the eyes. “Mr. Chen, your wife was carrying twins. One baby was positioned directly behind the other in every ultrasound we did. It’s rare, but it happens. We didn’t know until we opened her up.”
The words hung in the air for three seconds of absolute silence. Then Dr. Tan delivered the killshot.
“You have a son. And you have a daughter. It’s twins.”
The sound that came from Vanessa was unlike anything human. It started as a gasp, then morphed into a choked, strangled noise as all the blood drained from her face. Twins. Not one inconvenient, crying baby that she’d have to tolerate. Not one heir that could be managed, molded, eventually sidelined. Two—two permanent, unbreakable living links to the perfect dead wife, two heirs to the Chen fortune, two constant reminders that she would always be second place.
Vanessa’s hand flew to her mouth, not in sympathy now, but in horror. Her carefully constructed victory had just transformed into her worst nightmare. She’d orchestrated a death. She’d pushed and manipulated and stressed a pregnant woman until her body gave out. She’d laughed at that woman’s death. And her reward was to spend the rest of her life raising her child in the shadow of two others—two babies who would inherit everything, two babies who would be the legitimate heirs, while hers would be forever tainted by scandal.
Marcus wasn’t even looking at her anymore. His grief had been temporarily suspended by shock.
“Twins,” he repeated, numb. “We were having twins.”
Dr. Tan nodded. “A boy and a girl. They’re in the NICU now. They’re fighters, Mr. Chen. Just like their mother was.” The emphasis on “their mother” was deliberate.
Dr. Tan looked past Marcus at Vanessa, her eyes filled with cold contempt. “Mr. Chen will need to come to the NICU,” Dr. Tan continued. “The twins need their father. They need someone to advocate for them, to love them, to be there as they fight to grow strong.”
She turned to walk away, then paused and looked back at Vanessa. “As for you,” Dr. Tan said quietly, “I suggest you leave this hospital now, before I call security and have you removed for disrupting a medical facility.”
“Grace,” she nodded to the nurse. “Please escort this woman to the elevator.”
Vanessa found her voice, panicked, rising. “You can’t throw me out. I have every right to be here. Marcus, tell them. Tell them I have a right to be here.”
Marcus slowly turned to look at her. His face was no longer grief-stricken. It was empty, dead. He looked at her like she was a stranger. No, like she was something worse than a stranger. Like she was a monster he’d somehow never seen clearly until this moment.
“Get out,” he said, his voice flat and cold. “Get out of this hospital. Get out of my life.”
“Marcus, I’m pregnant with your child—”
“I don’t care.” The words exploded out of him with such force that several nurses jumped. “You laughed. You laughed when they told me my wife died. You laughed when the mother of my children—my twins—died trying to bring them into this world safely.”
He stood up, taking a step toward her, and Vanessa actually backed away.
“I know about the emails,” Marcus said, his voice shaking with rage. “I know you were trying to stress her to death. And it worked, Vanessa. You killed her. Maybe not with your hands, but you killed her as surely as if you’d pushed her off a building.”
“I didn’t—that’s not—you can’t prove—” Vanessa was backing toward the elevator now, her carefully constructed facade crumbling.
“Get out,” Marcus repeated. “I will provide for the child, because it’s innocent in all this. But I never want to see your face again. If you come near me, if you come near my children, I will get a restraining order. Do you understand me?”
Vanessa’s mouth opened and closed. She looked around desperately, but every face in that hallway was looking at her with disgust or contempt. The nurses, the orderlies, even the janitor had stopped his work to stare at the woman who’d laughed at a death announcement.
Grace, the nurse, stepped forward. “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to leave right now or I’m calling security.”
Vanessa looked at Marcus one last time, searching for any crack in his resolve, any opening she could exploit. She found none. The man looking back at her was someone she didn’t recognize, someone who’d finally woken up from a nightmare.
She stumbled to the elevator, stabbing the button with a shaking finger. When the doors finally opened, she practically fell inside. As the elevator doors closed, Vanessa saw her reflection in the polished metal. She looked destroyed—her makeup smeared, her face blotchy, her expensive dress wrinkled from the stress. But worse than her appearance was the creeping realization of what she’d just done.
She’d spent eight months carefully constructing a trap. She documented everything, recorded everything, positioned herself as the victim and Lily as the obstacle. And then, in one moment of triumphant carelessness, she’d laughed at a woman’s death in front of a dozen witnesses.
Aftermath and Redemption
The next 72 hours were a blur for Marcus Chen. He barely left the NICU, standing watch over two tiny incubators containing his son and daughter—Oliver and Olivia. They were both on breathing support, their tiny chests rising and falling with the help of machines. But they were alive. Against all odds, they were alive.
A hospital social worker named Janet Lee came to speak with him. She was kind, direct, and practical. “Your twins are doing remarkably well considering their circumstances,” Janet said. “But they’ll need to stay in the NICU for at least six to eight weeks until they’re strong enough to go home. That means you need to prepare.”
Marcus nodded numbly. He had no family left—his parents had died in a car accident five years ago, he was an only child. Lily had been his entire world.
“I’ll hire help,” he said hoarsely. “Nannies, whatever they need.”
Janet nodded, but there was something else. “There’s another matter. The hospital administration has asked me to speak with you about an incident that occurred the night of your wife’s death.”
Marcus looked up sharply. “What kind of incident?”
“There was a woman with you in the surgical waiting area—a pregnant woman. Several staff members reported that she laughed when Dr. Tan announced your wife’s death. They also reported that you and this woman appeared to be involved.”
Marcus felt his chest tighten. “Vanessa Lynn… she… she was…”
“Mr. Chen,” Janet said carefully. “The hospital has a duty to report suspicious circumstances surrounding patient deaths. Dr. Tan has reviewed your wife’s medical records and she’s concerned about the rapid deterioration of Dr. Chen’s preeclampsia, combined with the presence of a pregnant mistress who displayed inappropriate emotions at the death announcement.”
She let the implications hang in the air.
“You think Vanessa had something to do with Lily’s death?” Marcus said flatly.
“I think the hospital wants to make sure they’ve covered all their bases,” Janet replied. “They’ve filed a report with the police—not an accusation, just a precautionary documentation. If there was any kind of harassment or stress campaign that contributed to your wife’s medical crisis—”
Marcus closed his eyes. The emails, the stress campaign. He’d been too cowardly to stop it, and now Lily was dead.
“I want to cooperate,” he said quietly. “I’ll tell them everything.”
That evening, two police detectives came to the hospital. Detective Sarah Lim and Detective James Wang from the criminal investigation department. Marcus told them everything. The affair, the pregnancy, Vanessa’s blackmail, the threats, the emails discussing ways to increase Lily’s stress levels. He gave them access to his laptop, his phone, his email accounts, everything.
Justice
What Marcus didn’t know was that Vanessa Lynn had already fled Singapore. The moment Vanessa had ended the call with her lawyer, she’d made a decision. Singapore was done. Marcus was done. This entire disaster was done. She’d gone back to her apartment, packed two suitcases with essentials, and booked a flight to Bangkok for the next morning.
But she’d underestimated how fast the Singapore police moved. Detective Lim and Detective Wang showed up at her apartment at 6:47 a.m., just as she was loading her suitcases into a taxi.
“Miss Vanessa Lynn?” Detective Lim called out.
Vanessa froze, her hand on the taxi door. Slowly, she turned. “Yes?”
“We need you to come with us to answer some questions regarding the death of Dr. Lily Chen.”
Vanessa’s face went white. “I have a flight to catch. Can this wait?”
“I’m afraid not,” Detective Wang said. “This is a preliminary investigation into potential criminal harassment and rash acts causing death. You’re not under arrest, but we strongly advise you to cooperate.”
The taxi driver, sensing drama, quickly pulled away, leaving Vanessa standing there with her suitcases. She had no choice. She followed the detectives to their unmarked car.
At the police station, they put her in an interview room—a small, windowless space with a metal table and uncomfortable chairs. They questioned her for six hours. They asked about her relationship with Marcus, about the pregnancy, about the emails, about the anonymous letters sent to Lily’s workplace, about the phone calls, about every single action she’d taken to increase Lily’s stress.
Vanessa tried to lie at first. She claimed she was just an employee having a consensual relationship with her boss. She denied knowing Lily was pregnant. She denied any harassment campaign. But then Detective Lim placed a folder on the table. Inside were printouts of the emails—the ones Marcus had given them access to.
“These emails,” Detective Lim said quietly, “show premeditation. They show deliberate intent to cause emotional and psychological distress to a pregnant woman with a known medical condition.”
Vanessa stared at the emails—her own words staring back at her. “The stress campaign is working. If she goes into early labor, the risks skyrocket. Mother and baby could both… well, you know.”
“I didn’t write that,” Vanessa said desperately. “Marcus must have. He’s
