Chapter 4

Everything that had brought me here had started months earlier, on the night Sloane came back.

Ethan had decided I was capable of anything that night.

Our company held a gala that evening. Ethan brought her as his date.

I watched my husband walk through the guests with another woman on his arm, while people glanced my way to see how much I would take.

I moved to a quiet corner near the stairs. Sloane found me there and started talking to me as though we were old friends.

She asked how I had been. She said she hoped her return wouldn't make things difficult.

I couldn't stand there and help her pretend. I turned away.

She screamed.

When I looked back, she was falling down the stairs.

I saw her strike the floor below, saw blood spreading beneath her head, and couldn't move.

Ethan pushed through the crowd and dropped beside her. Then he looked up at me.

"I didn't—"

He stared as if I had admitted it.

I hadn't touched her, but the way he looked at me made me understand what he had already decided.

By morning, the story had made every gossip column: [CEO's Wife Accused of Pushing Mistress Down Stairs.]

I kept staring at the words, at how easily they turned my marriage into a motive.

Ethan spent heavily to make the scandal disappear from public view. He was protecting the family's reputation.

At home, he still treated the accusation as a fact.

He took me to visit Sloane in the hospital. I carried flowers he had chosen for her and tried to think of something I could say that he might hear.

Sloane smiled when he came into the room. Then she saw me behind him and drew back against the pillows.

"Mara, I understand why you're upset. You think I came back to take him away."

She clutched the sheet. "I don't blame you for pushing me. None of this would have happened if I'd stayed away."

"That isn't what happened." I stepped toward the bed.

"Please don't!" she cried. "I'll leave you both alone. Just don't hurt me."

The woman beside the bed — one of Sloane's set, all jewelry and quiet money — shoved me.

I went down hard on the floor. The flowers slipped from my hands.

"You should be on your knees begging her forgiveness," the woman said.

Sloane reached out weakly. "Don't be cruel to her. She didn't mean to do it."

I caught the edge of a chair and tried to stand. Ethan put both hands on my shoulders and pushed me down again.

"You heard her," he said. "Apologize."

I twisted, but he held me in place. "I never touched her. Ethan, look at me."

He looked past me toward the bed.

"Please. Why won't you listen?"

His hands pressed harder. Then the chair was under my fingers and the flowers were on the floor, and my knees were giving out.

The room blurred, and I lost consciousness.

When I woke, I was in a different room, and a doctor was telling me I was two months pregnant.

For a moment, I forgot where I was.

I put a hand over my stomach. There was someone here with me, someone I hadn't even known to protect.

Whatever he wanted, it included the baby.

After that, Ethan stopped making me visit Sloane to apologize. He came home earlier and spoke to me without snapping at every question. He never said he believed me about the stairs.

I accepted the quieter days anyway.

I began imagining our child in the house. Perhaps Ethan would hold the baby and remember what we had wanted when we married. Perhaps the three of us could still become a family.

By the time I was six months pregnant, I had allowed myself to want that future without immediately feeling foolish.

Then one evening he came home carrying a folder.

He sat beside me on the couch and put an arm around me. It had been so long since he had held me like that.

I leaned into him before I knew why he was there.

"Sloane's kidneys are failing," he said.

I stopped moving.

He placed the folder beside us. "They ran the tests. You're a match."

I looked from the papers to his face. "A match for what?"

"You can help her."

My hand went to my stomach. His arm was still around me.

"Ethan. I'm pregnant."

He moved back far enough to look at me directly.

"End the pregnancy and give her a kidney. You owe her."

I waited for him to take it back.

He watched me, impatient for an answer, while I tried to understand that he meant our baby too.

"You nearly killed her." His voice never rose. "This is how you make it right."

There had been no change of heart. He still believed I deserved punishment. I had mistaken the absence of shouting for safety, and now he wanted me to thank him for the chance to earn it back.