I was halfway through the best fried chicken in town when the man who had once accused me of loving him for his money walked through the door, took the drumstick straight out of my hand, and looked at me as if he still owned the right to judge my life.
Chapter 2
I carried Lily to my car with blood dripping down my sleeve.
Ethan followed.
“Chloe, what did you mean?”
I ignored him.
Clara grabbed my arm before I could close the rear door.
“You’re not leaving yet. You still owe Ethan two hundred thousand dollars.”
That number stopped me.
Two hundred thousand.
I turned slowly.
Ethan looked ashamed, which meant he remembered exactly where the money had come from.
Three years earlier, after I discovered that the husband I believed was nearly bankrupt was actually heir to the Miller manufacturing fortune, Ethan had thrown a check onto our kitchen table.
Two hundred thousand dollars.
Payment, he had called it.
Payment for wasting three years pretending to love him.
“Take it,” he’d said. “Sign the divorce papers, end the pregnancy, and disappear.”
Now Clara folded her arms.
“Pay him back, or leave the child.”
I slapped Ethan.
The crack echoed through the parking lot.
“Lily is my daughter and Marcus Vance’s.”
From the back seat came a choking sound.
I spun around.
Lily’s small body jerked once.
Then became still.
I pressed two fingers beneath her nose.
Nothing.
“No. No, no, no.”
Ethan reached toward her.
I shoved him back so hard he nearly fell.
“Don’t touch her!”
I climbed behind the wheel and drove.
At the hospital, nurses rushed Lily through the emergency doors while I stumbled after them. Someone asked questions. Someone else took my phone. I remember signing a form with a hand so badly shaken that my name looked like a child’s scribble.
Then the operating-room doors closed.
I collapsed.
Ethan arrived minutes later with Clara behind him.
“How is she?”
I stood and grabbed his collar.
“I told you.”
My voice barely sounded human.
“I told you she was bleeding. I begged you to bring her here.”
“Chloe—”
“If she dies because you needed to win another one of your stupid games, I will never forgive you.”
Clara pulled at my arm.
“Stop acting crazy.”
Ethan pushed her away.
“You told me Chloe was lying.”
Clara stared at him.
“How was I supposed to know?”
The operating-room doors opened.
A surgeon hurried toward us.
“She’s lost a dangerous amount of blood. We’re stabilizing her clotting factors, but we need compatible Rh-negative blood immediately.”
Ethan rolled up his sleeve.
“Use mine.”
The doctor hesitated.
“Are you the biological father?”
“Yes.”
“No,” I said.
Everyone looked at me.
“He isn’t.”
Ethan went rigid.
“That’s impossible.”
I turned toward the doctor.
“Test him if you need to. But he is not Lily’s father.”
Ethan grabbed my wrist.
“You were pregnant when we divorced.”
“Yes.”
“Then where is my child?”
For three years, I had wondered how I would feel if I ever got the chance to tell him.
I thought I would enjoy it.
I didn’t.
“Your child died.”
His fingers loosened.
“What?”
“The night you left me.”
He shook his head.
“No.”
“You remember that night.”
Of course he did.
I had been six months pregnant, sick from exhaustion and hunger. After signing the divorce papers, a sharp pain had ripped through my abdomen.
I had begged Ethan not to leave.
Clara had called it an act.
And Ethan, convinced I was trying to manipulate him now that I knew he was wealthy, had stepped over me.
“You brought this on yourself,” he’d said.
Twenty minutes later, I was bleeding on the kitchen floor.
I never made it to the phone.
Marcus Vance found me by accident.
He had come to the building to visit an elderly family friend. Instead, he discovered a pregnant stranger unconscious beside an open apartment door.
He carried me downstairs himself.
He called an ambulance.
He hired specialists.
They saved me.
They could not save my son.
When I awakened, Marcus sat quietly beside the window.
He didn’t offer clichés.
He only said, “You survived something terrible. You don’t owe anyone your destruction.”
Months later, when I was strong enough to work, Marcus offered me a position at his charitable foundation. Friendship came slowly. Trust came slower.
Love took nearly two years.
By the time we married, I understood the difference between a man who tested love and a man who practiced it.
Lily was born the following spring.
She had Marcus’s gray eyes, his stubborn chin, and the blood disorder that ran through one branch of his family.
Ethan stood before me now, looking like the hallway had tilted beneath him.
“You lost our baby?”
“Yes.”
“And Lily…”
“Is Marcus’s daughter.”
At that moment, six men in dark suits entered the hall.
The first approached me.
“Mrs. Vance, Mr. Vance received your emergency alert. He’s returning from Boston now. Three members of the security team are compatible Rh-negative donors. Two have already volunteered.”
My knees nearly gave way.
“Get them tested.”
“Already happening.”
Ethan stared at the men.
Then at me.
“Mrs. Vance?”
Clara scoffed.
“Oh, come on. Marcus Vance? The Marcus Vance? She’s wearing a blouse covered in chicken grease.”
I looked at her.
“My daughter likes the honey-butter biscuits.”
Clara opened her mouth.
The private elevator doors opened.
Marcus stepped out.
He was still wearing the charcoal overcoat he traveled in, and his usually perfect dark hair had been tossed by helicopter wind.
He saw the bruise on my arm.
The blood on my clothes.
Then he saw me.
“Chloe.”
That was all it took.
Everything I had been holding together broke.
I crossed the hallway and fell against him.
“I couldn’t stop them,” I sobbed. “She lost so much blood.”
Marcus wrapped both arms around me.
“I’m here.”
“They poured hot broth on the wound.”
His hand remained gentle against my hair.
His face did not.
He looked past me.
“Who?”
No one answered.
Marcus’s security chief did.
“The woman, sir. Mr. Miller restrained Mrs. Vance while his associates prevented her from reaching the child.”
Ethan swallowed.
“Marcus, this was a misunderstanding. I thought Lily was mine.”
Marcus stepped toward him.
“You thought my daughter belonged to you, so you let her bleed?”
“I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t listen.”
Clara tried to retreat.
A hospital security officer blocked her path.
Marcus looked at his attorney.
“Preserve the restaurant footage. Give copies to the police and Mrs. Vance’s attorney. No one contacts a reporter. Lily’s privacy comes first.”
Then he faced Ethan.
“This is not a business dispute. I’m not going to threaten you, ruin your company, or buy revenge.”
Ethan appeared almost relieved.
Marcus continued.
“I’m going to let the truth do whatever the truth does to you.”
The operating-room light went dark.
The surgeon came out.
I forgot Ethan existed.
“We have good news,” the doctor said. “The transfusion was successful. We controlled the bleeding and cleaned the wound. She’s stable.”
I covered my mouth.
Marcus caught me around the waist.
“Can we see her?”
“She’ll be groggy, but yes.”
When they wheeled Lily into the hall, her face was pale and her leg heavily bandaged.
I took her hand.
“Mommy’s here.”
Her eyelids fluttered.
“Daddy?”
Marcus leaned down.
“Right here, sweetheart.”
A tiny smile appeared.
Behind us, Ethan made a broken sound.
He had finally seen it.
Lily’s gray eyes.
Marcus’s gray eyes.
The same brows.
The same chin.
The same expression when frightened but determined.
Ethan sank onto a chair.
“What did I do?”
I looked back at him.
“You wanted proof that I could love you when you had nothing.”
Tears filled his eyes.
“I was scared women only wanted my family’s money.”
“So you watched your wife exhaust herself proving otherwise.”
“Chloe, please.”
“You wanted to know whether I loved you when you were poor.”
I took Marcus’s hand.
“I did.”
Ethan looked up hopefully.
“And that,” I said, “is the saddest part of all.”
