Chapter 3

After the divorce, every other week when we handed Leo off, Damon would casually ask, "Want to get back together?"

My answer was always "No."

After enough rejections, he ran out of patience. He used the Moretti family's connections on the medical board to have my license revoked for "mental instability."

He froze every account in my name, trying to cut off any way for me to survive and force me to give in.

So when he asked me that question again, I nodded.

Damon stared at me, as if he were trying to find a crack in my face.

A few seconds later, the corner of his mouth twitched, and his eyes turned predatory.

"I knew it," he scoffed softly, his voice full of mockery. "In the end, you're still playing hard to get. Fine. Sign the papers, and I'll take you to City Hall."

I looked at him, but I didn't take the document. Instead, I said coldly, "I'll sign, and I'll go to City Hall. But I have one condition."

Damon raised an eyebrow, telling me to go on.

I stared into his eyes. "Unless Leo tells me himself that he wants me to come home."

Damon didn't get angry. Instead, he let out a low laugh.

He suddenly lunged forward, grabbed the back of my neck, and forced a kiss on me.

"Vivian, you're most attractive when you do as you're told."

"Three days from now, City Hall. If you dare play me again, I'll make sure you can't even find a street corner in New York to beg on."

I watched his car disappear around the corner, then scrubbed at my lips until they split.

He didn't know that I'd only ever told two lies in my life.

One was today.

The other was the day I forgave him for cheating.

That day, I was already lying on the table at the clinic, about to end the pregnancy.

Damon burst in like a madman and shoved the doctor aside.

He grabbed my wrist, his eyes red, his voice almost breaking into sobs. "Vivian, I swear it was an accident! I was drunk! Please, forgive me just this once. It'll never happen again!"

Before we married, I knew Damon was a complete bastard who always had women around him.

But after the wedding, he hid it so well. He played the perfect husband.

He squeezed out a few crocodile tears, and I let myself believe I'd gone soft.

"Fine. I forgive you," I heard myself say.

After that, Bianca was fired and left New York.

The day Leo was born, Damon rented out the giant screens in Times Square and ran a celebration of his son's birth for a whole week.

The christening party went on for three days and nights. Every big name in New York politics and business showed up.

With a child, we really did get along for a few years.

Until Leo was about to start preschool.

Damon said my surgical schedule was too full, so he'd hired a high-end governess to take care of our son.

When the door opened and that woman smiled and said "Damon," the blood in my veins turned to ice.

It was Bianca.

I slapped Damon across the face as hard as I could, grabbed Leo, and ran for the door.

Damon watched me coldly.

Two bodyguards rushed forward and pinned my shoulders. He walked over, pulled Leo out of my arms, and pushed him into Bianca's.

He looked down at me like I was a hysterical madwoman.

"Vivian, when are you going to understand? A man in my position can't have just one woman."

"I thought you were smart enough to learn to look the other way. You've disappointed me."

From that day on, I was completely forbidden to see Leo.

Damon wanted me to bow my head and apologize. He wanted me to learn to ignore my husband's affairs. He even wanted me to smile and sit at the same dinner table as Bianca.

I couldn't do it.

During our worst fight, I drove a number ten scalpel straight through his left forearm.

Blood sprayed across the floor. Damon went white with pain.

I think I really did hate Damon.

But under that hatred, what I hated most of all was this: why couldn't he love only me, the way I loved him?

After I finished packing, I gave up the basement and collected my last bit of pay from the convenience store.

By the time I'd wrapped everything up, it was the third day.

I bought a one-way ticket to London for that night and got ready to leave.

When I opened the door, Bianca was standing in the doorway.

She wore a limited-edition couture suit from this season. A woman who'd been with Damon for years naturally never lacked money.

"Vivian, I'd give up on remarrying him if I were you." Bianca's lips curled into a sneer, full of a winner's pity. "You think you can use your son as a bargaining chip to get back into the Moretti family? Leo only thinks of me as his mom now. As for Damon..."

She leaned in slightly and lowered her voice. "Maybe he still feels a little guilty about you. But men love something new. How much interest do you think he has left in an ex-wife?"

"And don't forget, you have nothing now. And I have plenty of ways to run you out of New York."

I looked at her pretty, perfect face, and for a moment my heart felt like a hand was squeezing it, a dull ache.

I found myself remembering the time Damon, trying to force me to give in, had sent his men straight into the OR and dragged me away from the operating table under the surgical lights.

He used his family's power to have my license revoked, until all I could do was wipe up blood and change bandages for wounded gangsters in an underground clinic.

One day, I was crouched on the floor cleaning up bloody sheets when Bianca walked up in her heels and blocked my way.

She looked down at the blood on my hands and covered her nose in disgust. "So you've finally hit bottom."

"Tell me, if you could never hold a scalpel again... would you spend the rest of your life here wiping people's asses?"

She shoved me hard, and her stiletto came down on my right hand without mercy.

She ground the heel down and twisted it.

When the pain was at its worst, I clearly heard the bones in my right hand snap.

For a surgeon, it was a devastating blow.

But disasters never come alone.

My mother was suddenly in a terrible car accident. Her life was hanging by a thread.

I ran into the ER like a madwoman and begged them to get her into surgery right away, but no one dared to touch her.

Because Damon was standing at the end of the hallway, watching coldly.

He walked up to me, his voice calm and unspeakably cruel. "Just say you're sorry and agree to come back to me like a good girl, and I'll have the best surgeon in the country go in and save her right now."

I've always been stubborn. I never back down.

I gritted my teeth. With the right hand whose bones had just been broken, I put on scrubs, picked up a scalpel, and stepped up to the operating table myself.

But my mother's blood was so warm, and my hand was shaking so badly.

The pain of the broken bones made it impossible to suture with any precision. Too much time slipped away...

The monitor let out a long, piercing tone. The line went flat.

I couldn't save her.

In that moment, my heart died with her, right there on that operating table.