Chapter 2
"Are you still talking to her?" Vanessa's voice floated through the speaker.
Then Graham asked me something that hurt more than the blood soaking the sheets.
"The baby was born safely, right?"
"Yes," I whispered. "He's healthy."
"Then this is the right time. My attorney already prepared the divorce papers."
Our marriage had never been romantic.
Three years earlier, my father's manufacturing company was drowning in debt. The Ashford family offered to save it, but the Ashfords never gave anything without taking something more valuable. The marriage connected my family's legitimate empire to theirs.
Graham fought it because he loved Vanessa. Then his grandfather threatened to remove him from the succession entirely. And somehow, he blamed me for the choice.
For three years I tried to prove I hadn't trapped him. I defended him to my family. I endured dinners where he barely looked at me. I stopped asking why he came home at two in the morning.
Then one drunken night, our marriage became real. Six weeks later I was pregnant.
He looked at the test and said, "You expect me to believe that?"
Months later, lying in that hospital bed, I still made one last humiliating request.
"You don't want to see him?" I asked, looking at the bassinet.
May you like
"And he'll be better off with you," he said. "Take the baby and disappear. Anywhere outside Chicago. Preferably outside the country. I'll pay for it. Just stay out of my life."
I woke hours later to pale morning sunlight. My son was sleeping beside me. Six pounds, fifteen ounces. When I touched his hand, his fingers wrapped around mine.
