Chapter 3Drowning The Woman Who Saved You

Alyssa rose slowly, her trembling demeanor instantly vanishing beneath a gleam of predatory triumph.

I took an instinctive step back, panic spiking in my throat.

"Everett!" I cried. "You swore to God you would never let anyone lay a hand on me! Look at the ceiling—there’s a security camera right in the corner! Just check the feed!"

Everett glanced up at the small black dome, his brow twitching slightly.

Then he signaled two of the private security guards standing by the stairwell.

A breath of relief caught in my chest. I thought he was finally going to look.

"Restrain my wife," Everett said, his voice dropping into a flat, clinical register. "She's having an episode. Make sure she doesn't hurt Alyssa."

The sheer, staggering absurdity of it hit me like a physical blow. A breathless laugh escaped my lips, tumbling into tears before I could stop them.

Two burly men stepped forward and locked my arms behind my back with iron grips.

Alyssa stepped into my personal space, wound up her arm, and brought her palm down with everything she had.

"Crack."

The impact snapped my head to the side, fire blooming across my left cheek.

"That," Alyssa whispered, "is for the slap you gave me."

"Crack."

My right ear rang violently.

"That is for calling me a whore."

On the third strike, her heavy diamond ring caught the hairline above my temple. Skin split. Warm, thick blood welled up and began to crawl down my cheekbone.

"And that," she hissed, leaning in so only I could hear, "is for making Everett wear another man's shadow for ten fucking years."

My knees buckled, but the guards held me upright.

The heat in my eyes was unbearable, but I bit the inside of my lip until the metallic tang filled my mouth, forcing the tears back. "Don't cry," I told myself. "Don't give them a single tear."

Three days. In three days, I would be gone.

The crimson streak dripping down my jaw finally caught Everett's attention.

When his eyes met mine—hollow, completely devoid of life—something flickered across his face. A momentary spasm of panic. He took an involuntary step forward, reaching a hand toward my bleeding temple.

Alyssa moved faster. She threw both arms around his waist, burying her face in his shirt.

"Everett, the way she looked at me... it terrified me," she sobbed, clutching her flat stomach. "If I stay here tonight, will our baby even make it to tomorrow? Maybe I should just leave. I don't care what she does to me, but I can't let anything happen to your child..."

Everett froze.

His hand dropped from mid-air and wrapped protectively around Alyssa's shoulders. His gaze softened completely as he looked down at her abdomen.

"Don't talk like that," he murmured, his voice infinitely gentle. "I'm here. Nobody is touching our baby."

He didn't look at me again as he gave the order to the guards.

"Take her to the attic over the south wing. Lock the door. She doesn't come out until I say so."

Alyssa snuggled deeper into his embrace, a smirk curling beneath her tear-streaked eyelashes.

My fingers curled around the small silver pendant resting against my sternum.

He had forgotten.

He had completely forgotten that we had a baby once, too.

We were twenty-one, living in a windowless basement apartment, splitting ninety-nine-cent cans of soup. We couldn't afford prenatal vitamins, let alone hospital bills. The night after I had the procedure, Everett had dropped to his knees on the linoleum, sobbing until he hyperventilated, begging me to beat him, swearing on his mother's grave that one day he would drape me in diamonds, that we would have a house full of children.

Those vows, which once carried the weight of the world, were nothing more than soap bubbles in the wind.

A gust of drafty night air swept down the hall. Everett turned his head, watching the guards drag my slight, bleeding frame down the corridor.

For a fraction of a second, his chest tightened strangely. A sudden, inexplicable emptiness opened inside him, like a thread snapping somewhere deep beneath the surface.

In the attic, the draft whistled through the loose window panes.

I curled into a ball in the corner, shivering violently as the fever took hold.

Beneath my trembling fingers, my phone pulsed silently in the dark. On the encrypted map, a small green beacon was crossing the Atlantic, moving at five hundred miles an hour, hurtling toward the coast.