Chapter 2The Heart She Gave

Three years.

I stared at his face—the face I had once memorized with the devotion of a saint. Not a single wrinkle. Not a hint of gray. He looked rejuvenated, polished by the salt air of the Mediterranean and the high-altitude sun of the Alps. He had lived a lifetime of luxury while his child's bones turned to dust.

"The three-year bet is over, Sienna," Grant said, adjusting his Rolex. "I have to head back to the family. But nothing changes between us. We're still the core."

"Aren't you afraid Elena has forgotten you?" Sienna leaned against his arm, her touch possessive, her tone dripping with mock concern. "You haven't sent a single text. You blocked her on everything. For all you know, she took the kid and moved on with someone else."

Grant let out a sharp, arrogant bark of a laugh. "She wouldn't."

He caught his reflection in a window, looking satisfied. "Elena would have died for me. Literally. Three years is nothing to a woman that obsessed. And honestly? She brought this on herself. If she hadn't made such a scene about me going to that gallery opening with you—using her due date as leverage—I never would have had to teach her this lesson."

In his mind, this was a punishment. A disciplinary measure for my "unreasonable" demands.

I remembered the night before Lily was born. I had reached for his hand, my body aching, my heart heavy with a premonition I couldn't name. "Grant, please. Tomorrow is the induction. Just stay at the hospital with me. Don't go to the gallery with Sienna."

He had wrenched his hand away as if my touch was acid. "Don't be pathetic, Elena. What good is a man in a delivery room anyway? It's work, for God's sake. Sienna needs to build her portfolio, and I'm helping her develop an eye for the market."

I went into labor alone. I hemorrhaged. I nearly died on that table bringing Lily into the world, and Grant didn't walk through the door until the following afternoon. He didn't look at the baby. He glanced at my pale, sweaty face with nothing but irritation.

"It's just a birth, Elena. Women do it in fields. You're being dramatic."

I cried for forty-eight hours straight. Then, on the third day, he changed. He became the man I'd fallen in love with in college—tender, whispering promises, petting my hair. And then, the blow: *I'm dying, Elena. My heart is failing.*

So when the "surgeon" asked for my life, I gave it. Even if it had all been a lie, even if every gentle word was just an act—I still couldn't say no. Because I had loved him truly. And that love was real enough to give everything for.