Chapter 1 - THE HEARTBEAT
“Leave her,” Celeste said.
Then a nurse inside Trauma Room Four shouted, “She’s thirty-two weeks pregnant!”
Dominic Vascari forgot how to breathe.
Through the glass, he could see his wife on a hospital bed, rainwater shining in her dark hair. Mara had been gone for eight months. Now her coat was cut open, blood stained her dress, and a nurse held an ultrasound probe against her stomach.
“One-forty-two,” the nurse called. “Fetal heartbeat is one-forty-two.”
Eight months.
Dominic stared at the screen. He had spent those months believing Mara had walked away from him. He hadn’t known she was carrying their child.
Beside him, Celeste touched his arm. “Dominic, you couldn’t have known.”
He pulled away.
Inside the room, Mara’s body jerked beneath the surgeons’ hands. A monitor began to shriek.
“Pressure’s dropping.”
“Get blood. Move her to the OR.”
Dominic pushed through the doors. “That’s my wife.”
A doctor stepped in front of him. “Then give us room to save her.”
They wheeled Mara past him. Her eyes stayed closed. An empty newborn bassinet followed the team down the hall.
Celeste came up behind him. “I’m sorry.”
Dominic turned to her. “Did you know she was pregnant?”
“No.”
Her answer was quick. Her eyes weren’t. They dropped to the cream handbag on her wrist.
“What’s in the bag?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“Open it.”
Celeste drew back. “You’re upset. You’re not thinking clearly.”
Dominic was thinking clearly for the first time in months.
“The crash happened twenty-two minutes ago,” he said. “How did you get here so fast?”
“Your driver called me.”
“My driver was with me.”
“He must have called when—”
“He handed me his phone before we left the restaurant. His battery was dead.”
Celeste tightened her grip on the handbag.
At the far end of the corridor, a hospital security guard approached. Celeste saw him too.
Then she ran.
Dominic went after her, but before he reached the corner, an operating-room nurse called his name.
“Mr. Vascari? Your wife was conscious when the ambulance found her.”
He stopped.
“She kept saying one thing.”
May you like
“What?”
The nurse swallowed. “She said, ‘Don’t let Celeste near my baby.’”
