Chapter 1 — The Ultrasound He Tore Apart

"Tell me you didn't buy my apartment."

Mara Bennett stood outside the children's hospital with her phone pressed to her ear. On the other end, Jules made a sound that might have been a laugh if either of them had been amused.

"I told you to call your landlord," Jules said. "I didn't tell you to call him from the sidewalk in November. Get inside."

"I haven't called him yet."

"Then why did you say that?"

Because a black sedan had slowed across the street. Because a man in a dark coat had stepped out and was looking directly at her.

Three months ago, Adrian Vale had torn her ultrasound photograph in half. Mara had spent every day since practicing what she would say if he came back. None of the speeches began with her standing in the cold, one hand over the gentle curve of her stomach.

"I'll call you," she told Jules, and hung up.

Adrian crossed at the light. His security chief, Damon Price, remained beside the car. At least Adrian had learned not to send another man to summon her.

"You followed me from work?" Mara asked.

"I asked Damon to keep an eye on the street."

"That's a prettier sentence. It describes the same thing."

Adrian stopped several feet away. He wore a charcoal overcoat, no gloves, and the exhausted expression of a man who had rehearsed an apology without once imagining its recipient could walk away.

"I was wrong about the pregnancy."

Mara laughed once. It hurt her throat. "You were certain enough to call me a liar."

"Fourteen years ago, after I was injured, a doctor told me I couldn't father a child. A specialist reviewed my records last week. The conclusion wasn't supported by the tests."

He said it like a statement to a boardroom. His hand betrayed him; it opened and closed against his coat seam.

Mara remembered the marble foyer, the paper tearing, and the way she had bent to pick up the pieces because leaving them on his floor had felt like leaving her child there.

"You could have asked for another opinion before deciding who I was."

"I know."

"Do you?"

He glanced at her stomach and immediately looked back at her face. "How are you?"

"That's information I share with people I trust."

A bus sighed to the curb behind her. She could have boarded it and ended the conversation, but the sight of Damon beside the sedan made one question impossible to ignore.

"How long have you had someone watching me?"

"Since yesterday."

"Stop. Now."

Adrian looked toward Damon. "Take the car home."

Damon hesitated, then climbed into the driver's seat. Mara watched the sedan pull into traffic before she spoke again.

"I didn't say send him around the block. I said stop."

"He won't follow you again."

She wanted to believe the promise. That frightened her more than the car.

"I'm not asking you to forgive me," Adrian said. "I want to know whether the child is mine. If the child is, I want to be responsible."

"You are responsible for what you already did. Start there."

"I can pay for anything you need."

"There it is."

"Mara—"

"I brought you the first picture of our baby. You tore it up because you thought I wanted your money. And your first idea today is to offer me money."

For once, he had no answer.

Mara stepped away. A gust tugged at the hospital badge she had forgotten to remove. Adrian noticed it, then the tired shadows beneath her eyes.

"You shouldn't have to work through this alone," he said.

"I don't."

She walked to the bus stop, then changed her mind. Her apartment was twelve blocks away and she needed the walk to steady herself. She did not turn to see whether he remained there.

At home, she found Jules waiting on the front steps with a paper bag of soup and a face full of questions. Mara let her in and told her everything except the part where hearing Adrian's voice had made her want to cry.

"He admitted he was wrong," Jules said.

"That doesn't make me safe with him."

"I know. I just wanted to hear you say it."

Mara sat at the kitchen table. She had learned of the pregnancy at ten weeks. She was nearly twenty-three weeks now. Three months had been enough time to build a life around the fact that Adrian would not be in it. It was too little time to make his reappearance feel harmless.

Jules opened the soup. "What's your next move?"

"My appointment is Thursday. I'll ask the clinic to put a privacy note on my file. Then I'll find a lawyer who knows family matters."

"Good."

"And I'll call my landlord. Adrian was looking at me like he'd already solved something."

Jules's phone lit up. She turned it toward Mara. A photograph of them outside the hospital had appeared on a local celebrity account: the reclusive Vale heir speaking to an unidentified nurse. The caption asked whether the family empire had acquired a new secret.

Mara studied the angle. The picture had been taken from the opposite side of the street, near the black sedan.

"Damon?" Jules asked.

"Maybe."

Mara enlarged the image until it blurred. Behind Adrian's shoulder, reflected in the hospital's glass doors, was a second person holding a camera.

Someone else had been waiting for her.