Chapter 1Exposing My Husbands Blood Debt

During the interview, the host caught me off guard with a deeply personal question.

What is your biggest regret in this life?

“My child,” I blurted out. It was an instinct, a reflex born of muscle memory and phantom pain.

Beside me, Jonathan fell utterly silent.

For the remainder of the segment, his jaw was locked, his expression a stormy, unreadable mask.

I assumed he was mourning the baby we never got to meet.

When the cameras stopped rolling, I went to his dressing room to comfort him. The door was cracked open. I was just about to push it wide when I saw him staring down at his phone, his thumb tracing the screen with a devastating tenderness.

“Nessa,” he whispered to the photograph, his voice thick with a sorrow I hadn't heard in years. “My biggest regret is that I couldn't be with you. Just because I felt guilty... I threw away the life we were supposed to have.”

I froze in the hallway. The air evacuated my lungs, leaving me hollowed out, suspended in a terrible, ringing silence.

The ghost haunting Jonathan’s heart wasn’t our poor, lost son.

It was the woman who had killed him.

* * *

By the time we left the studio, a fine Seattle drizzle had begun to fall.

Jonathan seamlessly slipped into his role as the perfect husband. He draped a cashmere throw over my knees the moment we got into the car and cranked up the heat.

Seeing my lingering silence, he leaned over and gently covered my hand with his.

“Are you still upset about Norton?” he asked softly. “I’ll have my PR team speak to the network. They need to train their hosts better. I promise you, a blindside like that won’t happen again.”

Ever since we lost Norton, Jonathan had treated my emotional state like spun glass—fragile, precarious, requiring constant, delicate management.

I honestly thought I had moved past the darkest of the grief. But hearing our son’s name aloud today... it still felt like taking a serrated blade straight to the ribs.

I looked up at Jonathan’s handsome profile, illuminated by the rhythmic passing of the streetlights. I hesitated, chewing the inside of my cheek, before letting the words slip out.

“You know what happened to Norton wasn’t just an accident, Jonathan. If you had the chance to do it all over again, to make a different choice... would you—”

“Natalie.”

Jonathan frowned, his brow pulling taut. Half of his face was swallowed by the shadows of the passing downtown skyline, making him look like a stranger.

“It’s been eight years. You have to stop clinging to ghosts. Look at our life. Aren’t we living beautifully now?”

I didn't answer. He didn't push.

Outside, the rain began to come down in sheets.

His executive assistant was waiting at the garage entrance with a massive umbrella. The headlights of our car cut through the murky night, fracturing the raindrops into glittering diamonds.

He was right, in a way.

We were living beautifully. Or at least, expensively.

We rode in a $150,000 Porsche. We lived in a $15 million penthouse overlooking Elliott Bay. Everywhere we went, doors swung open and people bowed their heads. I wore sweaters that cost more than my first car.

Just as the TV host had gushed: “Mr. and Mrs. Mercer have the perfect marriage and a booming empire. You are the ultimate aspirational couple.”

In the grand, sweeping narrative of our flawless lives, that one little tragedy was supposed to be a footnote. To bring it up felt almost vulgar to them, like a wealthy woman complaining about a papercut.

But... was it really just a papercut?

Could what happened back then truly be swept under a Persian rug?

I turned my face toward him again, my throat tightening against my will.

“I’ve been dreaming about him lately,” I whispered, my voice breaking. “I keep dreaming about Norton. And in the dreams, he tells me... he tells me we made the wrong choice back then.”

Jonathan slowly withdrew his hand from mine.

He turned his head to look out the rain-streaked window.

“It’s in the past, Nat. Medical technology is lightyears ahead of where it was. We’ll have another baby. First thing tomorrow, I’ll have David set up an appointment with that top-tier therapist in Bellevue. You just need to stop overthinking. People have to look forward, not backward.”

This was who he had been for the last eight years.

Clinical. Rational. Breaking down the calculus of our lives into neat little columns of risk and reward, always choosing the path of maximum return.

Just like right now. He chose to look away. He chose to end a conversation that offered no tangible ROI.

I was just about to reach for him, to force him to look at me.

Then, as we approached the intersection, blinding high beams flooded the cabin.

A red Porsche—the exact same model as ours—ran the light, barreling straight toward my side of the car.

Crash.

In the fraction of a second before the airbags deployed, before gravity inverted and metal screamed against metal, I saw the face of the driver in the red car.

Vicky Kensington.

The nightmare that had haunted my entire adult life.

The murderer of my unborn child.

After eight years, she was back.