Chapter 2

I drove myself to the clinic on East 74th.

A private practice. Discreet.

Dr. Ostrowski examined me in silence, then sat back with a long exhale.

"Mrs. Marchetti, given your prior termination—if you proceed with this, the likelihood of future conception is... extremely low. I want to make sure you understand what you're choosing."

I understood perfectly. I will never bring a child into a family of violence, humiliation, and infidelity.

I signed the consent form.

They gave me sedation. But I still felt everything. The cold metal. The pressure. The specific, hollowing pain of something being taken from the inside out.

Dry-eyed, I stared at the ceiling tiles—and thought about a boy with dark eyes pressing his tear-streaked face against my hair nine years ago.

That love was real. His anguish was real.

But the man he had become loved someone else. Pities someone else. Protects someone else.

The nurse helped me sit up afterward. My legs were cotton, my abdomen a throbbing agony. I leaned against the corridor wall, inching toward the exit.

And that's when I saw them.

Cassian. His hand at the small of Camille's back, guiding her through the clinic's front entrance with that expression I hadn't seen directed at me in years—soft, attentive, concerned.

I watched from the corridor like a ghost. He murmured something close to her ear, squeezed her arm, then strode toward the pharmacy counter.

Then Camille spotted me.

Her eyes widened—a flash of surprise, then calculation, then performance.

She pressed her fingers to her lips. "Celeste? You're here too? Are you... following us?"

A delicate pause.

"Cass only brought me because I had no one else. Don't read into it. Please."

No one else.

I'm the one who has no one.

I couldn't say anything. I turned to leave.

That's when Camille dropped.

Knees hitting the polished floor with a theatrical crack, fingers clawing at the hem of my coat.

"Please!" Her voice pitched upward—loud enough to carry. "That money is all I have! The doctor says my heart can't survive another winter without the full treatment protocol! You can't make Cass take it back—you can't! I just want to live! I just want to see my daughter grow up!"

She wailed. Tears, mucus, heaving sobs. Every patient in that waiting room turned to stare.

An elderly woman in a fur collar shot me a look of pure venom. "What kind of person—"

"Have you no shame?" Another voice. "She's begging on her knees!"

My abdomen seized with a fresh wave of cramping. Cold sweat poured down my temples.

Then Cassian appeared through the crowd, took one look at Camille crumpled on the floor, and his face went to stone.

He hauled her up, tucked her behind him. Then turned on me.

"What the hell is wrong with you, Celeste? You followed me here? Are you a stalker? You can't let it go for one goddamn day? She's weak and has to raise her child alone. Is there nothing left inside you?"

Alone?

Third anniversary. My birthday. Camille had the "episode" again and again. He'd left me, always. And came home at dawn, asked why I couldn't just be more understanding.

I was tired of hearing those words year after year.

It happened fast. I didn't even open my mouth. He grabbed my shoulder—"Answer me!"—and shoved.

In that moment, my spine connected with the marble column behind me and the pain in my lower belly detonated like a grenade.

The waiting room gasped.

I folded in on myself, forehead slick, hands clamped over my stomach.

Cassian stared. He didn't understand why I'd gone down so easily. Why I was curling into a ball on a clinic floor, white-faced and shaking.

He didn't know that, two hours earlier, the child he'd wanted more than anything was already gone. In a room down the hall.

He reached for me—instinct, guilt, maybe.

I twisted away from his hand like it burned.

"Cassian." My voice was gravel. "Give her whatever you want. However much. I won't say another word about it."

"Never.”He looked frozen, as if those words had deeply shocked him.

But I didn't look at him.

I braced myself against the column and walked out of that clinic on sheer spite alone.

I had an appointment to keep. The best divorce attorney in Manhattan worked out of an office on East 65th.

I wasn't going to miss it.