Chapter 4

I never made it to the airport the next day.

The last thing I remembered was dark, sticky blood soaking through the sheets and the warmth draining from my fingertips, degree by degree.

When my eyes opened again, there was nothing but blinding white light and the shrill flatline scream of a heart monitor.

"Get the coagulant in! Now! Her pressure's still dropping!" Leonard's voice was raw, scraped hollow.

My vision struggled to focus. His white coat was smeared with half-dried blood. Those steady, unshakable eyes were threaded with red.

He'd caught the nosedive in my condition and forced my transfer into a sterile ICU room.

"The splenic hemorrhage won't stop." He gripped the critical condition notice so hard his knuckles went white. "If we don't remove it now, you won't make it through the night."

"Leonard, it's no use." Every breath tore through me like a blade. "The cancer's already spread. Even if you take the spleen, I won't survive the table."

"That's not happening." He leaned down, tone fierce, bordering on a command. "I'm your doctor. As long as you're still breathing, I fight for you."

"Let me go..." I managed a ghost of a smile.

If I don't disappear, Eleanor will destroy your career.

This is all I have left to give you, Leonard.

He stared into my empty eyes and swallowed whatever had been building behind his teeth.

A few seconds of silence, then he turned and snatched a syringe from the nurse's tray.

No discussion. The cold rush of sedative hit my vein.

When I woke again, it was evening.

Beyond the door, the muffled strains of a cello drifted in, tangled with the hum of a crowd.

Tonight was the dedication ceremony for the new medical wing Eleanor had funded. The ground-floor atrium transformed into a glittering stage for Manhattan's elite.

I waited for the shift change. The moment the nurses swapped stations, I peeled the IV line from the back of my hand.

Blood welled up instantly. I pressed my thumb over the puncture and let it seep into the thin cotton of my hospital gown.

I had to see her one last time. Not to be recognized — just to watch her standing in the light from a distance, before the end.

I braced against the cold wall and inched toward the atrium, one agonizing step at a time.

Each one ripped something loose inside my abdomen. Cold sweat hit the floor. My vision flickered black at the edges.

The atrium blazed with light.

I hid behind a pillar at the top of the staircase and watched Eleanor at the center of the crowd.

A black couture gown. Diamonds at her throat catching cold fire. She was laughing with a cluster of politicians, every inch the woman who belonged there.

Becky stood beside her in an exquisite cocktail dress, basking in the admiration as though it were her birthright.

Beautiful.

She finally had the life she'd always wanted. No mildew from that basement in the Bronx.

No Frank, no fists, no fear. Just champagne and applause.

That was enough.

I closed my eyes and turned to leave — to slip away and die quietly somewhere no one would have to look.

"I knew you hadn't left."

The voice came from the shadows behind me.

I opened my eyes. Becky stood there with a glass of red wine, her face twisted with spite.

"Mom already wrote you a check. What are you still doing here?" Her heels cracked against the marble as she stepped closer. "Planning to make a scene? Shake her down in front of the press?"

"I'm not—" Instinct pulled me back a step. My heel caught the edge of the top stair, hovering over nothing.

My legs shook. My vision smeared, faces doubling and splitting apart.

"Don't even try." Becky's lip curled. "I've seen your kind before — gutter rats, every one of you. Playing the dying card, thinking you'll squeeze out some sympathy?"

She closed the distance in one stride and grabbed a fistful of my collar.

"Let go—" I tried to push her off. I couldn't even lift my wrist.

"Get out of here. Now."

She shoved me.

It wasn't much force. Maybe not enough to move a healthy person. But for a body already hollowed to the bone, it was more than enough.

The instant I felt myself go weightless, even the instinct to grab for something was gone. My foot met air, and I tumbled down the steep marble staircase.

Crack.

Crack.

Bone meeting stone — each impact dull and sickening, swallowed by the noise of the crowd below.

The world shattered into spinning light and white-hot pain.

The music stopped. Every conversation died mid-sentence.

With one final, gut-churning thud, I hit the center of the first-floor atrium.

Right at Eleanor's feet.

The pain swallowed me whole — every organ crushed to pulp in a single, annihilating instant.

"Oh my God!" Screams erupted from the crowd. Reporters lunged on reflex, flashbulbs strobing in a frenzy of white light.

Eleanor stumbled back a step.

Then she saw who was lying in the blood.

The mask she'd spent years perfecting cracked wide open, and what surfaced beneath was raw fury.

"Hazel! What the hell do you think you're doing?!" Her voice ricocheted off the atrium walls. "You dare make a scene here?"

I lay on the cold marble, vision dissolving. All I could see were her white heels, inches away.

I opened my mouth to tell her I was sorry.

What came up wasn't words.

My body heaved, and I coughed up a mouthful of dark blood. It splattered across her heels, soaked into the hem of her gown, spreading like ink through silk.

Eleanor's fury choked off mid-syllable. Her pupils blew wide. Every muscle locked, as if the floor had turned to ice beneath her.

Drip... drip...

More blood — uncontrollable now, streaming down my chin and across the polished marble.

The camera flashes turned each streak blinding, surreal. A nightmare lit in white.

I didn't have the strength left to convulse.

Through the red haze, I looked up at her face — drained of every last trace of color, white as bone.

I gathered the final scrap of life left in me and gave her a smile. A real one. Unburdened.

"Don't worry... you won't have to look at me anymore..."

The darkness rushed in — total, absolute, all-consuming. My eyes closed, and I let myself fall.

Willingly, into the abyss.