Chapter 2

I barely made it back to our penthouse before Caspian walked through the door.

Usually, he would retreat straight to his study.

Tonight, however, he closed the space between us, his hands sliding around my waist.

"It's been a month," he murmured, his breath brushing the curve of my neck in a forced simulation of desire.

"Isn't this what you've been wanting?"

It was a distraction. A sloppy, insulting attempt to silence what I had just witnessed at the gala using the very intimacy he had deprived me of for years.

"Don't touch me." I shoved hard against his chest, my voice trembling.

"I saw Seren Veyra tonight. Are you going to explain why the woman who destroyed my mother's life is clutching a West Coast medical trophy instead of wearing handcuffs?"

In the past, whenever I was upset, Caspian would drop everything to wrap me in his arms and coax me until I calmed down.

Now, a cold, calculated impatience fractured his perfect facade.

He stepped back, adjusting his platinum cufflinks with a sigh.

"Let it go, Liora. Seren is a surgical prodigy. She has a brilliant career ahead of her. Stop making things unnecessarily difficult."

I stared at him, the sheer audacity of his words knocking the breath out of me.

"Difficult? My mother is confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life! Does that mean nothing to you?"

Caspian's gaze hardened into dark ice. He leaned in, his tone dropping to a lethal, velvet whisper.

"And I am the only neurosurgeon in this state capable of performing Hester's monthly nerve-graft surgeries. I suggest you remember that."

A chill seized my lungs. I could hear the implicit threat ringing loud and clear. He was weaponizing my mother's paralysis against me.

Three years ago, when my mother's vitals first crashed, Caspian had stayed in the high-end private surgical suite for seventy-two hours straight.

Afterward, exhausted and shaking, he had spoon-fed me warm soup.

"Everything will be fine," he had promised me then. "I've got this."

I had once believed he was my impenetrable fortress. Now, I realized he was my jailer.

Before Caspian could say another word, his phone rang. He answered it on the first ring, his voice instantly melting into a hushed, tender warmth I hadn't heard directed at me since our wedding day.

"I'm leaving now," he said.

As he turned toward the door, he paused, glancing back at me with a flicker of passing curiosity.

"Your text earlier. What was the surprise you mentioned?"

My hand hovered instinctively over my stomach. The truth of my pregnancy felt like shattered glass in my throat. I looked at the man who was actively protecting the architect of my family's ruin.

"Nothing," I whispered.

Caspian didn't press. Without another word, he walked out into the night.

Ten minutes later, my phone vibrated. A barrage of photos flooded my screen from an anonymous number.

They were uncensored, intimate selfies of Seren.

Seren in a plush bed in Geneva; Seren wearing Caspian's oversized dress shirt in Tokyo; Seren kissing his bare shoulder in a penthouse suite in Paris. Every single location perfectly matched the luxury trinkets Caspian had dutifully brought back for me from his "international medical symposiums"—trinkets I had lovingly displayed in our glass cabinets.

My supposed compensations for his absence were just souvenirs of his infidelity.

Swallowing the violent wave of nausea, I pulled my suitcase from the closet.

My mother had one final stabilization surgery left. Once it was done, I would take her, take my unborn child, and walk away from the Marlow fortune and this toxic marriage forever.

The shrill ring of my phone woke me at dawn the next day.

"Ms. Marlow, your mother's spinal pressure is critically spiking!" the panicked voice of the head nurse from the elite private convalescence wing shouted over the line.

"Her condition flared up a day early. Dr. Thorne is the absolute only one who can operate, but we cannot reach him!"

I broke every speed limit getting to the medical center. Inside the suite, monitors blared frantic, crimson warnings.

Through her oxygen mask, my mother reached for my hand.

"Liora..." she wheezed, her grip terrifyingly weak. "Don't... don't beg him for me."

"No, no," I choked out, shaking my head as hot tears blurred my vision.

A sweating on-call surgeon grabbed my arm, his eyes wide with panic.

"I only have a ten percent success rate with a graft this complex. You're his wife. Call him again. If he doesn't get here, she won't make it."

My fingers shook violently as I dialed Caspian's line.

The subscriber you have dialed is currently unavailable.

Again. And again. I called until the phone blistered against my palm, sinking to my knees onto the floor of the corridor.

Finally, after twenty agonizing minutes, the phone connected. His name flashed on my screen as an incoming call.

"Caspian! Why aren't you answering?!" I screamed into the receiver. "You need to get here, my mother is—"

A soft, smug giggle echoed through the speaker, cutting me off.

"Oh, sorry, Mrs. Thorne," Seren's sickly-sweet voice chimed.

"I sprained my ankle at the hotel, so Caspian is giving me a massage." She let out a breathy, exaggerated moan. "Right there, Caspian... be gentle, it hurts!"

If I hadn't seen the gallery of their hotel encounters just hours ago, I might have been foolish enough to believe he was administering physical therapy.

There was a sudden shuffle over the line, and Caspian snatched the phone. His voice was laced with immediate, volatile rage.

"Your mother's surgery is scheduled for tomorrow, Liora!" he barked impatiently.

"Stop using these pathetic, jealous stunts to fight for my attention. Do not call this number again!"