Chapter 1 - One Word —
I was one signature away from divorcing my husband when I threw up in his lawyer’s silver trash can. Dorian Cross canceled the meeting with one word. “Hospital.” Before noon, I would learn I was pregnant, someone had forged my medical records, and the doctor responsible had disappeared.
“I’m fine. It was carsickness.”
“The drive took eleven minutes.”
“Traffic was bad.”
“There was no traffic.”
Six months of treating me like furniture, and he could still hear a lie in my voice. “We’re in the middle of a divorce.”
“Not anymore.”
“You don’t get to cancel a divorce because I got sick.”
He looked at the security men by the elevator. “Bring the car around.” Then he faced me. “You’re shaking.”
“I’m angry.”
“You almost collapsed.”
“And you almost noticed.”
That landed. His mouth tightened, but he held out his hand. I ignored it and walked to the elevator on my own.
In the SUV, he finally asked how long I’d been sick.
“Two weeks.”
“Every morning?”
“Most.”
His eyes moved toward my stomach.
“Don’t,” I said.
At the hospital, Dr. Elaine Mercer ordered blood work. Twenty minutes later, she closed the exam-room door behind her.
“Your pregnancy test is positive. We’ll need an ultrasound for dating, but approximately nine weeks.”
I gripped the table. Dorian went pale.
Then she looked down at her tablet. “There’s a fertility prescription listed after a hormonal consultation three months ago.”
“I never had that consultation.”
She showed me a consent form. ALINA CROSS curled across the bottom.
“That isn’t my signature.”
“There’s a physician authorization,” she said.
“Whose?” Dorian asked.
“Adrian.”
My husband went still.
“You know him,” I said.
“He had access to the medical network my family uses. I trusted him.”
He called Noah, his security director. Minutes later, the answer came back: Adrian’s phone was disconnected. His office had been emptied overnight.
Then my phone buzzed. An unknown number had sent a photograph of a woman outside my apartment building.
DON’T LET DORIAN TAKE YOU HOME.
A second message followed.
THE BABY IS WHY I CAME BACK.
I held the screen toward Dorian. For the first time in our marriage, fear stripped every trace of control from his face.
“That’s Mara,” he said.
“Who is Mara?”
May you like
He stared at the photograph.
“The woman I paid to disappear.”
