Chapter Four

Margaret’s reach was enormous.

One phone call, and the top private hospital the Whitmore family had built, Whitmore Medical Center, had its best VIP suite ready for Noah.

No waiting room. No line. Green lights all the way.

So this was what power felt like.

Noah lay in a snow-white hospital bed, hooked up to an IV. A little color had finally returned to his pale face.

I sat by his bed holding his cold little hand. The weight hanging over my heart finally settled, at least for now.

Margaret sat on the sofa not far away, the gold medal clenched in her hand, saying nothing. Her expression was impossible to read.

The room was so quiet I could hear the IV dripping.

Just then, the door slammed open from outside.

A blast of road-weary fury swept into the room.

Colin Whitmore, my husband, who’d been missing for thirty-two days, had finally shown up.

He wore a perfectly tailored custom suit, his hair combed without a strand out of place. Only the bloodshot eyes and the violence in his brow ruined his usual polished look.

When he stormed in, he didn’t even glance at his sick son lying in the bed.

His eyes shot straight at me like two poisoned blades.

“Jillian! Who told you to do this?”

He crossed the room in a few strides and grabbed my wrist so hard it felt like he’d crush the bones.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve ruined today?”

His voice came through gritted teeth, thick with hatred and rage.

I looked at his handsome, twisted face and smelled expensive cologne mixed with some stranger’s perfume, and I felt sick.

I wrenched my wrist free. It was ringed with an angry red mark.

“What I’ve ruined?”

I pointed at Noah in the bed, and five years of hurt, anger, and disappointment finally exploded.

“All I know is that my son is being ruined by his deadbeat father!”

“When his fever hit a hundred and four, where were you?”

“When he cried for his daddy, where were you?”

“Colin, this whole month you’ve been missing, which woman’s bed were you having so much fun in that you forgot you even have a son?”

My questions landed on his face like one stinging slap after another.

He was so furious his handsome face turned red.

“Shut up!”

Humiliated and enraged, he raised his hand to hit me.

I closed my eyes on instinct.

The blow never came.

A well-kept hand, one that was surprisingly strong, had caught Colin’s wrist in midair and was holding it in an iron grip.

It was Margaret.

“That’s enough!”

Her voice wasn’t loud, but it carried absolute authority.

Colin froze with his hand in the air. Seeing his mother suddenly standing there, the rage in his eyes turned to shock, and a touch of guilt.

“Mom? What... what are you doing here?”

Margaret flung his hand away coldly, her eyes going to the bed behind him.

“If I weren’t here, would I just be standing by while you laid hands on my grandson and his mother?”

“Grandson?” Colin laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “Mom, don’t let this woman fool you! She’s trying to destroy me!”

He pointed at me and tried to plead his case. “Mom, I’m in the middle of negotiating a deal that’s critical to the company, and today was the most important board meeting of all! She timed this on purpose. She brought this little bastard from God knows where to the office to make a scene, just to ruin my reputation!”

“Little bastard?”

When I heard those words, it felt like my heart was being sliced to pieces, one cut at a time. It hurt so much I couldn’t breathe.

I looked at this man I had loved for so many years. The man I’d had a child for, the man I’d endured everything for.

He’d actually used a word that vicious to describe his own son.

In that moment, my heart died for good.

There wasn’t a trace of warmth left in it.

I raised my head, met those eyes that cared about nothing but himself, and said, slowly, clearly, and with total finality:

“Colin, I want a divorce.”

I said it calmly, but it weighed a thousand pounds.

Colin froze.

So did Margaret.

The room fell into another dead silence.

Margaret watched the tension between us with cold eyes, her sharp gaze moving back and forth between the two of us.

After a long time, she suddenly said something no one expected.

“There doesn’t have to be a divorce. Not yet.”

She turned to me. The look in her eyes was no longer a mother-in-law looking at her daughter-in-law. It was a shrewd businesswoman sizing up a potential partner.

“But to shut everyone up, and for the sake of the Whitmore name...”

Her eyes finally landed on Noah in the bed, sharp as a knife.

“Tomorrow, you and Noah will go with Colin for a paternity test.”

“I’m going to throw that report in the face of every board member who has doubts!”

My heart sank.

A paternity test?

On the surface, she was clearing my name and protecting my position and Noah’s.

But I knew perfectly well that for a businesswoman like Margaret, there was no such thing as kindness without a reason.

It was more like a test.

And her first move toward bringing the two of us, this “wild card” that had burst into her life, completely under her control.