Chapter 3

After the clinic patched up my leg, I asked the hospital’s administration for the afternoon off and went straight to the inpatient wing to sit with my mother.

“This VIP room is far too expensive. I should just check out early and go back home.” Propped up in bed, my mother looked around the noisy eight-bed ward and fretted.

My mother has a tumor in her brain, in an extremely dangerous spot. There are only a handful of neurosurgeons in the entire country who can perform this operation. I popped a segment of orange into her mouth. “Absolutely not. I’ve asked around — that top neurosurgeon is coming to our hospital for a short consulting stint next month.”

At noon, when I went to get food, the head nurse stopped me with a troubled face.

“Nora, a Private Suite opened up, and I was saving it for your mother.” She sighed. “But a new patient came in with connections coming out of her ears, and she took the room outright. I heard her daughter’s boyfriend runs one of the top conglomerates. The director himself said she’s to get special treatment.”

Before she finished speaking, I caught a flash of a familiar white skirt disappearing around the corner of the corridor.

The same one she’d been wearing when she hit me this morning.

I pulled my eyes away and gave the head nurse a grateful smile. “It’s fine. As long as my mom gets a slot for the consultation.”

That evening, back at the villa, Ethan was standing at the kitchen island making coffee — a first.

I gave him a slight nod and was about to head to my room when he spoke. “How’s the leg?”

“I put medicine on it.”

He glanced at his watch. “We’re having dinner at the family house tonight. Are you free?”

Under the agreement, I had no right to refuse.

I changed into a proper suit, did my makeup carefully, and walked into his parents’ estate in Brookline on his arm.

At the table, his mother suddenly went on the attack. “When are you two going to start trying for a baby?”

I was in the middle of my soup and choked, coughing hard. Ethan calmly handed me a napkin and patted my back. “She’s still young. No rush.”

“She’s twenty-five already. Time to start thinking about it!”

A sudden downpour got us stranded overnight at the estate.

After my shower, I sat on the sofa changing the dressing on my knee. Ethan looked at me, and for once there was something like apology in his tone. “Sorry. I didn’t get to take you to the hospital myself today.”

He seemed to be weighing how to explain Stella’s existence to me.

I cut him off. “It’s fine. The agreement doesn’t say you owe me any obligations. Whatever’s between you and Miss Stella, I will never ask about. I’ll keep cooperating with you until two months from now.”

His fingers, working at his shirt buttons, paused. The emotion in his eyes went cold. “Two months from now?”

“Yes. When the agreement expires, we can get divorced.”

Ethan set down his glass, his tone flat. “You’ve got the date memorized, I see.”