Chapter 3

I went back to that house. I pushed open the door and a familiar scent came drifting out. Medicinal broth. On the stove, the pot of soup I'd set to simmer before the accident had been kept warm by the housekeeper — warm for two full days. The soup was still there. The person it was waiting for had never come home.

I went over and lifted the lid. Steam rose against my face. And suddenly I remembered all the late nights over three years when I'd done exactly this — lifted the lid, checked the heat, set it back, and gone to sit at the table to wait for him. Until the soup went cold. Reheat it. Cold again. I'd never once asked myself how long a person can keep a pot of soup warm, waiting for someone who doesn't come home. The answer, it turned out, was three years. I turned off the flame. This is the last time, I told myself.

I walked into the study. This wall — I'd remade it inch by inch, taking down his cold black-and-white prints and hanging up things with warmth in them. In the spot where a photo of the two of us should have gone — we didn't have one — I'd hung a painting of the sea. Because once, drunk, he'd said that as a boy all he'd wanted was to see the ocean. Just that one line. I kept it for three years.

I used to think a home was something you could warm up, wall by wall, a little at a time. It turns out I was wrong. It turns out that in some people the heating was never once switched on, not from the day they were born. However much wood you burn, you're only striking a single match in the snow.

From the drawer at the very back I took out the old watch. A Vale heirloom, three generations old. The day I signed the contract, he'd pressed it into my hand as if he couldn't help himself. "Take it," he'd said then, impatient, like he was dumping a nuisance. But I knew. A man who calculates everything down to the last decimal does not "accidentally" hand a family heirloom to a contract wife. I'd fed myself that lie for three years.

I opened the case. On the inside was a line of tiny engraving. I'd had it done on one of my sleepless nights, in secret. What it said, I won't tell you yet. That was the last of me — the part that refused, for three years, to admit defeat. I clicked the case gently shut. I set it, with a note, in the most visible spot by the front door. The note said only one thing: The watch is yours again. The baby and I don't owe you anything anymore.

I touched my stomach. "We're leaving," I told him — the little thing not yet born, whose father had already crushed it once under his heel. "Mama's taking you away. Somewhere no one will stand in front of you and say, 'I don't know your mother.' Somewhere with an ocean." I'd made up my mind. At first light I'd get in the car and drive out of the city. Not for revenge — back then revenge hadn't even crossed my mind. I only wanted to live. For myself, for this child, to go on living with some dignity. It was the first time in my life I'd made a decision for myself.

I thought that was already the worst of it. A woman leaving with her child, walking out with nothing, starting over. Surely that was miserable enough. Fate, standing off to one side, gave a cold little laugh.

Meanwhile, across the city, on the top floor of a glass tower. Cressida Locke peeled off the ivory gown and dropped it on the floor. Her stomach was flat. That "bump" was silicone — a piece of theater, bought and staged with two paid-off doctors. She was not pregnant at all. The fake pregnancy was only bait. The real quarry was the Vale Group's port. Get that deed in hand and a long-planned hostile takeover could close its jaws overnight. And the one flaw in the whole game was that woman named Ashcroft.

She leaned into the mirror, taking off her makeup slowly. "A bankrupt little nobody with a signature," she murmured, smiling. "Alaric thinks he picked up a bargain. He has no idea he brought a bomb home and tucked it in beside his own bed."

Her assistant knocked and came in with a file. "Ms. Locke, we got the thing from the hospital." Cressida took it. The woman's medical report. She read down it line by line — and at the last line her fingers stopped. Pregnancy, approximately twelve weeks.

She stared at that line for a long moment. Then she smiled. Not the sweet smile. A cold one — the smile of a hunter who's spotted the flaw in her prey. "So she really is pregnant," she said softly. "A real child. Real blood." She left the next thought unfinished — if the child is born a boy… She folded the report slowly. "Then she doesn't get to leave this city alive."

She picked up the phone and called the man who handled the garage. "Mrs. Ashcroft's car — she'll want it in the morning. Do something to the brakes. Make it soft, make it slow. Make it look like an accident no one could ever fault." She hung up. Outside the window the night was deep. She lifted a glass of red wine toward the city lights and gave it a small swirl. "Goodnight, Mrs. Vale."

Dawn was coming. On the stove the broth still held its last thread of warmth. By the door the watch was still waiting for its owner. And I knew none of it. I lay back against the headboard with my hand on my belly, and for the first time let myself feel a small, frightened flicker of hope for the future. I wondered what to name him, once we reached the sea. I was still wondering when I fell asleep. At first light, Emmeline Ashcroft was going to die.