By the time the ambulance doors burst open at Mercy General, Ethan Whitaker had already died once.

The flatline tone sliced through the chaos of the trauma bay like a razor.

Dr. Mara Ellison’s head snapped toward the monitor. "Asystole! No pulse! Start CPR, twenty compressions now! Charge to two hundred! Get two milligrams of atropine and prepare Digibind—we need cardiac glycoside antibody fragments right now!"

Through the glass window, Nora Whitaker watched the medical team drop onto her husband’s chest like a wave of frantic blue scrubs. The rhythmic, mechanical thudding of compressions echoed through the glass, matching the terrifying cadence of her own hammering pulse.

Detective Caleb Ross didn't hesitate. He took Nora’s right wrist, wrapping a cold steel cuff around her skin with a sharp, heavy click.

"Nora Whitaker, you are being detained in connection with the attempted murder of Ethan Whitaker," Caleb said, his voice stripped of all warmth. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."

"No! Wait!" Nora cried out, her thirty-two-week pregnant belly pressing against her oversized coat as she stumbled forward. "Look at him! He’s dying! Please, let me stay!"

Vanessa Cole stepped back, her hands pressed over her mouth in orchestrated horror. "Nora... how could you? The baby... Ethan’s own child..."

"Vanessa, I didn't do this!" Nora sobbed, her dark eyes flashing with desperate fury as she turned to face her husband's supervisor. "You know me! You know how much I love him!"

"I thought I did," Vanessa whispered, taking another step away, her eyes darting toward Detective Ross. "Detective, if there's anything I can do... any financial records from the foundation you need..."

"We'll need all of it, Miss Cole," Caleb said, guiding the weeping, heavily pregnant woman toward the double exit doors.

Behind them, the defibrillator charged with a high-pitched whine. Clear! The thump of Ethan’s lifeless body jumping off the gurney was the last thing Nora saw before the heavy doors swung shut, locking her out of her husband's life and into a living nightmare.

At the 4th Precinct interrogation room, the fluorescent lights hummed with a low, maddening vibration.

Nora sat on a cold metal chair, her hands handcuffed in front of her to accommodate her rounded belly. Her feet, still bare inside her soaked leather boots, were numb from the icy rain outside. Across the scarred wooden table sat Detective Ross and his partner, Detective Vance—a gruff, grey-haired investigator who looked at Nora not as a grieving wife, but as a calculated murderer.

"Let’s review the facts, Nora," Vance said, slapping a manila folder onto the table. "Your husband has a three-million-dollar life insurance policy through the Whitaker Foundation. Two weeks ago, the beneficiary was changed from the foundation’s trust directly to you."

Nora blinked through her swollen eyes. "What? No. That’s impossible. Ethan handled all our finances. I don't even know who his insurance provider is!"

"The paperwork bears your signature, Mrs. Whitaker," Caleb said, pulling a scanned document from the file. "Notarized twelve days ago."

Nora leaned over her pregnant belly, staring at the cursive ink. The signature looked remarkably like hers—the swooping 'N', the sharp 't'—but the date was impossible. "Twelve days ago I was admitted to Mercy General for severe pre-eclampsia symptoms! I was on bed rest at my mother's house in Connecticut! Check the hospital logs! I wasn't even in the state!"

Caleb exchanged a subtle look with Vance. Vance merely sneered.

"It’s easy to pay a notary when you're planning a murder," Vance said coldly. "Now let's talk about the paprika. The lab confirmed the jar from your spice rack was laced with digitoxin—a potent cardiac glycoside extracted from Digitalis purpurea, better known as foxglove. Your kitchen was pristine. No break-ins. No forced entry. You cooked the soup. You seasoned it. You handed him the bowl."

"I took a spoon of that soup myself!" Nora shouted, her voice breaking.

"And you're pregnant," Caleb noted sharply. "A full lethal dose would have killed your baby within thirty minutes. You took a microscopic taste to make it look like an accident, or maybe you didn't swallow it at all. The toxicology report shows trace amounts of digitoxin on your dish towel."

Nora felt the air leave her lungs. The room seemed to tilt. Every piece of evidence was an airtight trap, forged and tightened around her neck while she was distracted by nursery paint colors and baby cribs.

"I need a lawyer," Nora whispered, her head bowing as a fresh wave of contractions tightened across her lower abdomen. She gasped, grabbing her belly with her cuffed hands. "Ah—God..."