Chapter 2

I didn't leave the hospital.

Leonard didn't let me. He chased me down the corridor and hauled me into his private lounge.

He pushed a shot of high-dose morphine into my IV, then hung a bag of nutritional fluids with a dark look on his face.

"What are you, a goddamn martyr?" He paced the cramped room like a caged animal, eyes rimmed red.

"After everything she did to you, why didn't you tell her the truth? How'd you get these injuries? How'd your stomach get destroyed? If you hadn't taken the fall so she could get out—"

"Leonard!" I cut him off, but the effort triggered a violent coughing fit.

I pressed my hand over my mouth. When I pulled it away, dark crimson stained my palm.

Leonard froze.

He crossed the room in two strides, dropped to his knees beside the bed, and wiped my mouth with trembling fingers.

"Don't tell her." I gripped his hand, almost pleading. "She's still traumatized. Deeply. If she finds out what happened to me because of her, it'll break her."

"She has a good life now. A new family. A healthy, beautiful daughter. I can't destroy that."

"So what am I supposed to do? What am I, Hazel?" His voice cracked.

He buried his face in the curve of my neck like a cornered animal. "You have less than three months. You think I can just stand here and watch you die?"

I ran my fingers through his hair.

"I'm sorry, Leonard." I closed my eyes, swallowing everything I couldn't say.

The sedation dragged me under.

When I woke, it was afternoon. Leonard was in surgery. I pulled the needle from the back of my hand.

I had to get out of here. Eleanor was donating a new medical building to the hospital—she'd be around for days. I couldn't risk another encounter.

I braced myself against the wall and made my way toward the elevator on shaking legs.

That's when I heard Becky's shrill voice cutting through the open-air garden.

"How do you people do your jobs? My mom is allergic to lilies, and you filled the entire press event with them! Do you want her dead? Is that it?"

I stopped.

In the sunlit atrium ahead, Becky was tearing into a group of maintenance staff.

Eleanor's allergy to lilies—a scar from the slums. Every time Frank finished beating her, he'd toss cheap lilies into the basement.

That cloying scent became a trigger—instant, visceral, inescapable.

I watched the staff scramble to clear the flowers, but one cart lost its balance, tipping toward a towering glass display rack.

Directly beneath it stood Becky.

"Watch out!"

My body moved before my brain caught up. I threw myself forward, slamming into Becky and shoving her clear.

Crash—

The glass rack collapsed. Shards sliced across my arms. The heavy frame slammed into my back. Already-fractured ribs gave a sickening, grinding crack.

I crumpled to the ground, drenched in cold sweat. My vision flickered black. Every breath felt like swallowing shattered glass.

Becky landed on the grass, unharmed.

She blinked, then recognized me. Her expression twisted into something ugly.

"What the hell are you doing?!" She scrambled to her feet. The pointed toe of her stiletto nearly caught my face.

"You psycho, are you trying to attack me?" She jabbed a finger at my nose. "I know you. You're that beggar from the hallway this morning. Are you stalking us? Trying to scam money out of my mom?"

I couldn't speak through the pain. I bit down on my lip until I tasted copper, trying to push myself up, but the agony sent me crashing back into broken glass. Again. And again.

People gathered. Pointed. Whispered.

"I wasn't—" I managed, barely.

"Still lying!" Becky laughed coldly, pulled a stack of bills from her handbag, and hurled them at my face.

"This is what you want, isn't it? Take it! Trash like you will do anything for money. You really thought this sad little act would get you close to my mother?"

Green bills drifted down like snow, settling on my blood-soaked body.

I felt no anger. Only a deep, bone-weary sadness.

So this was the daughter Eleanor raised. Proud. Guarded. Above it all.

She'd been protected so thoroughly that even a single lily sent her into a panic.

Meanwhile, I spent fifteen years in that pitch-black basement, breathing in the smell of lilies mixed with my own blood.

"Pick them up!" Becky ground her heel into my bleeding fingers. "You need money so bad, don't you?"

Pain shot white-hot from my fingertips. I didn't struggle. I just looked at her, calm and steady.

"Your mom… doesn't like lilies," I whispered. "Don't ever… let her see them."

Becky went rigid. The contempt in her eyes snapped shut, replaced by something razor-sharp and defensive.

"Shut your mouth." Her voice dropped low. Her heel twisted harder. "Don't think knowing some old dirt means you can crawl out of the Bronx and show up here playing long-lost family. Bastard."

"Get your foot off her hand."

A voice sliced through the crowd like a blade.

Leonard shouldered his way through the gawkers. Every trace of his composure was gone—jaw clenched so tight it looked ready to shatter.

He shoved Becky back hard enough to send her stumbling onto the grass.

"You pushed me?!" Becky shrieked.

Leonard didn't spare her a glance.

He dropped to his knees in the broken glass and gathered me into his arms. When his hands found the warm slick of blood on my back, when he saw how white my face had gone, his whole body shook.

"Hazel… look at me." His voice was utterly wrecked.

"I'm warning you, don't even dream about crawling back to the Vance family!" Becky screamed behind him. "My mother will never accept a bastard like you!"

Leonard whipped his head around. His gaze cut across Becky's face like a scalpel.

"Get out. If anything happens to her today—even if it costs me everything—I will make sure neither of you can show your face in this city again."

I leaned into the warmth of Leonard's chest, consciousness slipping away.

Just before the darkness swallowed me, I heard Eleanor's panicked voice in the distance, calling out for Becky.

Always Becky. Never me.