I never told my mother-in-law I was a judge. To her, I was just an unemployed gold digger. A few hours after the C-section, she burst into my room with the adoption papers and said mockingly, “You don’t deserve the VIP room. Give one of the twins to my infertile daughter; you can’t handle two anyway.” I hugged the babies and pressed the panic button. When the police arrived, she yelled at me that I was crazy. They were about to arrest me… until the chief recognized me… The recovery room at St. Jude Medical Center was more like a luxury hotel room than a hospital. At my request, the expensive orchids that the District Attorney’s office and the Supreme Court had sent me were hidden away; I needed to maintain the “unemployed wife” image with my in-laws. I had just survived a complicated C-section, given birth to twins Leo and Luna, and seeing them sleeping peacefully, I knew all the pain had been worth it. And then the door burst open. Mrs. Sterling, my mother-in-law, entered the room with a firm stride, exuding a strong scent of expensive perfume and furs. She surveyed the luxurious room with obvious disdain. "VIP room?" she snapped, kicking the leg of my bed so hard I flinched. "My son works himself to the bone so you can spend money on silk pillows and room service? Are you really a useless leech?" She threw the crumpled document onto the table. "Sign this. This is a relinquishment of parental rights. Karen, your sister-in-law, is infertile. She needs a son to continue the family line. Besides, you can't handle two babies." Give Leo to Karen and keep the girl. I froze. "What are you talking about? They're my children!" "Don't be selfish!" she barked, heading for Leo's crib. "I'm taking him now.

“Hands off the child!” the security chief said so calmly it was even more terrifying.

The mother-in-law froze for a second.

Leo cried in her arms.

Image

I heard that scream as if through water.

After a cesarean section, your body still doesn't completely belong to you.

The pain comes in waves.

The head is heavy.

My mouth is dry.

But there is one sound that any mother recognizes immediately.

When your child is held incorrectly.

When it is taken to the wrong place.

And when the problems had already entered the room.

I tried to get up.

The stitching felt like my stomach had been cut open again.

The nurse ran towards me.

- Don't move.

But I could no longer stay still.

The mother-in-law, Galina Petrovna, pressed Leo against her fur coat as if he were not a baby, but an object she was about to take out.

Her lips did not tremble with horror.

Out of anger.