Naomi West had been sleeping with my husband for less than four months when she decided she was qualified to teach me how to be his wife. She sent me messages every few days, reminding me that I was childless, that Sebastian rarely slept at home, and that some other woman would eventually give him the heir his family expected. By the time she showed up at my front door uninvited on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, I had stopped wondering whether she was bold, foolish, or simply too much in love with the wrong man to understand the danger she was in.
Chapter 2
When I opened my eyes fully, Naomi was sitting beside my bed.
We were in Sebastian’s private medical facility outside Lisbon, a place his family had quietly funded for years. My wrists were not restrained, but I was weak from sedatives, and two nurses waited outside the door.
Naomi held a cup of tea.
“I used to think you were special,” she said. “I thought no matter how many women he slept with, you were still different.”
I stared at her without answering.
She leaned closer. “Turns out you’re just convenient. He doesn’t even need your eggs. He only needs your body.”
Her satisfaction was almost painful to watch.
“Naomi,” I whispered, “do you really believe he’ll treat you better?”
“I’ll give him children.”
“So will five other women, apparently.”
Her mouth tightened.
I almost pitied her.
Almost.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway.
Naomi glanced toward the door. Her entire face changed. She dropped the cup, threw herself onto the floor, and began crying just as Sebastian entered.
He froze.
“What happened?”
Naomi looked up through tears. “Nothing. Clara’s upset. Please don’t blame her.”
Sebastian looked at me.
I started laughing.
It was not a pleasant laugh. It came from someplace beyond fear.
“You two deserve each other.”
His expression darkened. “What did you do?”
Naomi grabbed his hand. “Sebastian, don’t get angry. She said terrible things because she’s frightened.”
“Such as?”
Naomi hesitated theatrically. “She said she would make sure the babies weren’t yours. She said she’d bribe the doctor and replace your genetic material.”
Sebastian’s face changed.
He crossed the room and grabbed my shoulders.
“Did you say that?”
“No.”
Naomi lowered her eyes.
Sebastian’s fingers tightened. “Don’t lie to me.”
Something broke inside me then, not from fear but from exhaustion.
“Believe whatever you want.”
He stared at me.
“You’ve always done that anyway.”
For several seconds neither of us moved.
Then he turned to the doctor standing near the door.
“Do the procedure today.”
“Mr. Miller, we have not completed the recommended—”
“Today.”
I was sedated again.
The anesthesia did not erase everything. Voices moved in and out of the darkness. I heard machines, metal instruments, and the doctor repeatedly warning Sebastian about the strain of carrying several embryos.
At one point the physician said, “Six would be dangerous.”
Naomi answered before Sebastian could.
“Six sounds lucky.”
Even half-conscious, I remember thinking how strange it was that something so monstrous could be decided with such stupid words.
When I woke again, Sebastian was smiling.
He kissed my forehead.
“It’s done.”
I turned away.
“We’re going to have a family,” he said.
“No. You’re going to have consequences.”
He laughed as though I were being dramatic.
That laugh saved me.
If he had shown remorse, perhaps some old part of me would have hesitated. But Sebastian still believed he could write my future because he had always been able to buy the pen.
So I gave him one last performance.
“I want to recover at the beach house,” I whispered.
His expression softened.
“You like it there.”
“Yes.”
The property sat on a remote stretch of Portuguese coastline. Sebastian loved it because the sea was private, the cliffs dramatic, and the security nearly impossible to penetrate.
He did not know Maya had penetrated it months earlier.
He moved me there the next morning.
Dozens of staff members followed. Nurses checked my blood pressure. Security guards watched the gates. Sebastian hovered around me with a tenderness so grotesque it made my stomach turn.
That evening he went upstairs to shower.
Naomi followed him.
I put on a white robe and walked toward the beach.
The guards had been instructed to let me walk because Sebastian believed fresh air would be good for me.
The Atlantic was freezing.
I stepped in anyway.
Water climbed over my ankles, knees, hips.
Behind me, the house glowed golden against the darkening sky.
For a moment I thought about the woman I had been when I married Sebastian. I had believed his intensity was devotion. I had mistaken possession for love and jealousy for passion.
Then the water reached my shoulders.
I kept walking.
When the waves finally pulled me beneath the surface, I counted to ten.
At twelve, a hand caught mine.
Maya’s divers lifted me toward a submerged rescue craft waiting beyond the property’s underwater cameras.
An hour later I was wrapped in thermal blankets, shaking uncontrollably while Maya held hot broth to my lips.
“You did it,” she whispered.
I could barely speak.
“Not yet.”
She understood immediately.
I put my hand over my abdomen.
“Get them out.”
Her expression hardened. “The medical team is waiting.”
By sunrise, the procedure was over.
Two days later I woke in a private clinic in Switzerland.
The physician told me Sebastian’s reckless plan could have killed me. My body was already showing signs of severe inflammatory stress, and attempting a high-risk multiple pregnancy under those circumstances could have ended catastrophically.
I closed my eyes.
For the first time in years, my body belonged only to me.
Maya sat near the window with her laptop.
“We should talk about what happens next.”
“Is he looking for me?”
She gave a humorless smile.
“He’s tearing the world apart.”
She turned the computer toward me.
Security footage showed Sebastian at the beach house.
He stood in the surveillance room watching the recording of me entering the ocean.
The water rose.
I disappeared.
He stared at the screen.
Then he ran.
He crashed through the house, sprinted across the sand, and plunged into the surf fully dressed. He screamed my name until the recording microphone distorted his voice.
Three days later, the house looked destroyed.
Broken furniture covered the living room. Sebastian sat on the floor holding a scarf I had deliberately left behind.
Naomi entered.
Even after everything, she still did not understand him.
She sat beside him.
“Sebastian,” she murmured, “you have to accept that she’s gone. You still have me.”
He slowly lifted his head.
“We can still have our children,” Naomi continued. “Maybe this is our chance to finally—”
Sebastian exploded.
He swept a lamp from the table and shouted for her to get away from him.
“You wanted her place?” he screamed. “You wanted to be my wife?”
Naomi backed away.
“You blamed her for everything. You kept pushing her. You said six babies would be fine.”
“You agreed!”
Sebastian flinched.
For one moment, truth reached him.
Then, as men like Sebastian often do, he found someone else to punish for what he could not bear to admit about himself.
He ordered his security staff to remove Naomi from the room.
Maya closed the laptop.
“He’s offering a fortune for information about your body,” she said. “He has boats searching the coastline. Private divers. Sonar teams. He refuses to hold a funeral.”
I stared through the window at the Alps.
“Let him search.”
“What about Naomi?”
I thought of her standing in my kitchen, telling me I did not deserve to be Mrs. Miller.
“She’ll eventually learn what the title costs.”
Maya studied me.
“And Sebastian?”
“Sebastian thinks Clara Miller drowned.”
I looked at my reflection in the dark window.
“He’s right.”
