Chapter 1
I was four months pregnant when the truck hit my side of the car.
Drifting in and out on the way to the hospital, I heard my husband Dorian's voice somewhere above me, tight and shaking. Save her. Whatever it costs, save my wife. My right hand was numb from the wrist down, but my father was already on the phone, pulling in the best surgical team in the city.
I thought—okay. They've got me. I'm going to be okay.
Then I heard more.
Through the half-open OR door, I heard my husband's voice.
"Doctor. The baby's already gone. Her right hand is finished—she won't be drawing again. Her career's over either way."
Flat. Not a trace of a man who'd just lost a child.
"Mia's kidney failure can't wait anymore. Nora's still under. Just take her right kidney now and put it in Mia."
My heart slammed against my ribs. The monitor next to my head jumped with it.
What is he saying?
He wants to cut the kidney out of the wife who just lost his child and hand it to my sister?
Then my mother's voice came through, rushed, almost impatient. "He's right, Dorian. Nora won't be drawing anything anymore. Two kidneys are wasted on her. Mia is the daughter we raised—she cannot die."
"And that draft of Nora's." My father, quieter. "The one that just got nominated for the Grand Plaza award. Dorian, switch the signature to Mia's name before Friday. If Mia pulls through, she walks straight into the top of this industry."
I thought the morphine was messing with my head.
This is my family.
This is the man I've loved for five years.
Seven years. Seven years of trying to earn my way into a family that had lost me at birth. Seven years of drawing through the nights, putting every award and every bonus in their hands like a kid begging to be kept. I thought if I tried hard enough, one day they'd love me the way they loved Mia.
And here I was, on a gurney outside an OR, and my own parents and my husband were in the hallway splitting me up like leftovers. My organs, my life's work, the whole thing.
"But—this isn't how it works. I need family consent on record, and the patient herself—" The surgeon was stalling.
"I'm her legal husband. I'll sign." Dorian cut him off. "Whatever happens, it's on me. If it saves Mia, what's a little of Nora's health? She owes Mia this much."
Owes her what? Owes her for stealing my name for twenty years? Owes her for faking a fainting spell every time Dorian looked at me too long?
A cold tear slid sideways into the cut on my cheek. It burned.
Then I felt my phone buzz in my coat pocket.
The screen was a starburst of cracks, but it was still on. I'd been recording ambient audio at the Grand Plaza site that morning. The voice memo had never stopped running—not through the crash, not through the ambulance, not out here in the hallway.
Every word they'd said. All of it.
I woke up three days later.
The pain on my right side told me everything before I opened my eyes. Something was missing there. Something they'd taken out.
Dorian was at the bedside holding my left hand. His eyes were red.
"Nora. Thank God. You're awake." His voice cracked right on cue. "I'm so sorry. I couldn't protect you. I couldn't save the baby."
He wiped his face with the back of his wrist.
"The crash was worse than they told you at the scene. Your right kidney ruptured on impact. They had no choice, baby. It was that or lose you."
I looked up at him. At this face I'd loved for five years.
What a beautiful lie.
If I hadn't heard him through that door, I would've bought every word. I would've reached up and wiped his tears for him.
"It's okay." I dropped my eyes so he couldn't see what was in them. "I'm alive. That's what matters."
He kissed my forehead. I didn't feel a thing.
My phone buzzed again under the blanket. A new message.
Still thinking about my offer?
Soren Voss. He'd lost the International Summit bid to me two years ago and stood up to clap before anyone else in the room. He'd been trying to hire me away from my father's firm ever since.
I'd said no four times.
I stared at the screen. Then I typed with my left thumb.
I'm in.
