Chapter 2

Adeline's POV

The door opens again the next morning.

Two uniformed officers walk in.

"Mrs. Merrick, we got a report that you were assaulted at the Merrick estate yesterday and lost your baby. Do you want to press charges?"

I sit up fast, mouth already open to say yes, when a voice cuts across the room from the doorway.

"She doesn't. It was an accident."

Tristan walks in, his attorney one step behind him. He doesn't look at me once. He hands the officers a document.

"Sorry you had to come all the way out here. My wife had a rough night. She wasn't thinking clearly, said some things that weren't true. We've already worked it out between us."

"Are you out of your mind?" I shove the blanket off and try to get out of bed. "I want to press charges. Brielle pushed me. I want her arrested."

The officer frowns and looks at Tristan. "Mr. Merrick, if she's insisting—"

"Could you give us a couple minutes alone? Please." Tristan says.

A beat of hesitation. Then the officers step out and pull the door shut behind them.

The second it clicks closed, the mask comes off.

He crosses the room and grabs my jaw, fingers digging in hard.

"Have you lost your mind?" His voice drops low. "You want to take this public? You want to drag the whole family through the mud over this?"

"Our baby is dead." I hold his stare, eyes burning. "That was your child too. And you're worried about how it looks?"

"Brielle didn't do it on purpose. Do you have any idea what she went through last night? She was so wrecked with guilt she slit her wrists. I almost didn't find her in time."

"Then why didn't it work?" The words tear out of me. "She should be dead. She deserves to be dead."

The slap snaps my head to the side.

My ear rings. The room tilts.

I turn back slowly and look at him.

Something in my expression makes him pause, hand still raised, and for just a second I see it, that flicker of shame. Then it's gone, and what's left is the same cold look I know too well.

"You brought that on yourself. I'm telling you one more time: go out there and drop it. Don't make me say this again."

"Or what?" I laugh, and it comes out ugly. "You'll kill me?"

"No." He leans in close. "I'll pull your mother's medication."

Everything goes quiet.

"What did you just say?"

"Stage four lung cancer doesn't come cheap. Those treatments run tens of thousands a month, and every one of them goes through me. I stop signing off, they stop tomorrow." He lets that land, then adds, "And your brother's on a ventilator. That can be handled too."

My family.

The only people left in the world I can't afford to lose.

The man I once loved more than I loved myself is standing in front of me right now, using my mother's life and my brother's life to make me forgive the woman who killed my child.

"Tristan." I can barely get air in. Tears come, finally, after everything. Not from grief. From hatred so deep it has nowhere left to go. "What is wrong with you? How can you even—"

"I'm doing this for you." He reaches out to touch my hair. I pull back. He doesn't react, just drops his hand like it's nothing. "Sign the settlement. Your mother keeps her medication. You stay Mrs. Merrick. That's the deal."

My hand is shaking before I even take the pen from him.

I have no choice.

My father's people aren't here yet. Until they are, I can't gamble with their lives.

I sign my name.

"Good." He takes the papers back, already satisfied, already done with me. "Rest up while you're here. When you're discharged, go apologize to Brielle. Then we're moving on."

Moving on.

I watch him walk out and press my hand into a fist so tight my nails cut into my palm.

The day I'm discharged, it's pouring.

Tristan skips work, which almost never happens. He drives to pick me up himself. Says it's to make it up to me, that we can stop by the care facility to see my brother on the way home.

I sit in the passenger seat and watch the gray blur of rain against the window.

The silence in the car is the kind that has weight. After a while, Tristan clears his throat.

"The housekeeper made chicken soup. Make sure you eat when we get home. Once you're back on your feet, we can start trying again."