Chapter Three

That little gold medal with the family crest was like a key. It unlocked the tomb I’d sealed five years ago, the one called “my marriage.”

Memories came flooding back, bone-chillingly cold, and swallowed me whole.

Five years ago.

In an empty little chapel upstate, it was just Colin and me.

No guests. No blessings. Even the “minister” was an actor he’d paid, who couldn’t get through the vows without stumbling over his lines.

Colin’s lawyer had quietly taken care of the marriage license. Not a single Whitmore showed up, start to finish.

I wore a white dress I’d bought at the mall. He wore a sharp suit.

And in that ridiculous ceremony, we exchanged rings.

After the wedding, I didn’t move into the famous Whitmore estate on Long Island. He set me up in a luxurious house in the suburbs of Westchester.

That house was as beautiful as a magazine cover. It was also a gilded cage.

To the outside world, we were strangers.

I was Jillian Kent, a designer at an architecture firm owned by the Whitmore Group.

He was Colin Whitmore, the group’s future heir, Wall Street’s brightest rising star.

Our worlds were as far apart as heaven and earth.

Once in a while he came home, usually late at night, smelling of whiskey and another woman’s perfume.

He never talked to me. It was like he was carrying out a routine chore. There wasn’t a trace of warmth in his eyes.

Most of the time, there was just endless coldness and long disappearances.

I was like a ghost forgotten in a corner, keeping watch over that empty house and a marriage that only existed on paper.

Until I accidentally got pregnant.

With the ultrasound printout in my hand, I called him for the first time ever.

When he picked up, I clearly heard a sultry female voice on the other end. “Colin, who is it?”

Colin’s voice went cold. “Nobody. A telemarketer.”

In that moment, my heart hit rock bottom.

Later, on one of the rare nights he came home, I finally told him I was pregnant. He was in the middle of a flirtatious phone call at the time.

He listened to me, barely paying attention, then hung up the call right in front of me.

He turned around. In those deep eyes there was no joy at becoming a father. Only cold calculation.

“If you want to have it, have it.” He looked at me coldly, like I was an inconvenience.

“But remember. This kid will not cause any trouble for the Whitmore family.”

In that moment, every illusion I had shattered.

I asked for a divorce.

He just laughed, mocking.

“Jillian, you really think you can walk away?”

He threatened my parents’ jobs and my brother’s future.

He said, “Stay right here and be a good Mrs. Whitmore, and the Kents and I will all get along just fine. Otherwise...”

He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. The viciousness in his eyes made my blood run cold.

I gave in.

For nine months, I went to every prenatal appointment alone and got through every miserable symptom alone.

The day my water broke, I called a car to the hospital by myself.

I labored for more than ten hours and, completely spent, gave birth to Noah.

Colin didn’t show up at the hospital until the third day.

He didn’t hold that wrinkled, wailing, hungry baby even once.

He just took the cold little gold medal out of his suit pocket and tossed it onto my bed.

“That’s what he’s owed,” he said.

Then he turned and walked out without a backward glance.

After that, I could count the times he came back to that house on one hand.

Noah had seen his father, from the day he was born until now, so few times you could count them on your fingers.

For those five years, I worked like a woman possessed at a Whitmore subsidiary, climbing from ordinary designer all the way to lead designer. All so I could pay for formula and bills, so my son and I wouldn’t have to live so small.

At the same time, I raised Noah on my own like any ordinary single mom.

When he spiked a fever in the middle of the night, I carried him to the ER by myself.

When he was learning to walk and fell down crying for Mommy, I was the one who picked him up, my heart aching.

At every preschool parent night, I was the only one there.

I thought I could keep enduring it. Until Noah grew up. Until I was strong enough to take him out of that cage.

But I was wrong.

Colin’s coldness, and the cruelty of the people around him, were like two mountains. In the end, they crushed me.

“Ms. Kent? Ms. Kent?”

Dr. Bennett’s voice pulled me out of those painful memories.

I came back to myself and met his worried eyes.

“We have a diagnosis. Acute pneumonia. The fever’s high enough that he’s showing early signs of a febrile seizure. He needs to be admitted right away.”

He handed Margaret a chart full of medical terminology.

Margaret took it, and her eyes stayed on it for a long time.

Then she lifted her head and looked at me again.

This time, the scrutiny and anger in her eyes had faded. In their place was a deep, bottomless curiosity.

As if she wanted to get to know, all over again, the daughter-in-law she’d technically known for five years but had never truly understood.