Chapter 2

"Oh," Celeste said. She put a hand to her mouth. Her eyes were wide and filling, and she swayed just slightly, and every man in the hallway moved instinctively toward her. "I didn't mean to — I only came to check on the baby — I didn't realize—"

Lily looked at the performance. Then she stepped forward.

"You knew exactly what you were coming to check on," Lily said.

Celeste flinched. It was beautifully done. She stumbled back — just enough — and her shoulder caught the railing, and she made a soft sound of pain.

Damian crossed the distance in four strides. He caught Celeste with both hands, steadying her, turning his back completely on Lily. "Are you all right? Did she touch you?"

"I'm fine, I'm—" Celeste pressed a hand to her eyes. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to cause—"

Lily felt something hit the back of her head. The floor came up to meet her. She heard the crack of her skull against the baseboard and then a long, ringing silence.

When she woke, there was blood in her hair, and Damian was still holding Celeste.

She lay where she'd fallen and watched him smooth the hair back from Celeste's face, murmuring something low and reassuring. Not once did he look at Lily on the floor.

She understood then. Completely and finally.

She dragged herself upright and walked — carefully, so carefully — back to her own rooms. She needed to get to Ashford Estate. Her father kept the safe with her marriage documents in the study on the second floor.

Her father poured himself a scotch and did not offer her one.

"You've come about the divorce," he said.

"I've come about the safe."

He set down his glass. "Lily. Think carefully about what you're doing."

"I have thought carefully. I need the documents—"

"The Blackwood connection is worth more to this family than you seem to understand." His voice was patient, almost gentle. "Your grandfather's debts. The estate's maintenance costs. The trust fund restructuring. All of it rests on our relationship with Blackwood Group."

"Dad—"

"Your son will recover. Children are resilient. And Damian—"

"Damian doesn't care whether our son lives or dies."

A silence. Then her father picked up his scotch again.

"I need you to think," he said, "about what's best for the family."

That night, Lily lay in the guest room she'd grown up in and felt something go very quiet inside her. She had almost fallen asleep when she heard the door open. The smell reached her before the darkness did.

Sleeping pills in the tea, she thought, and then thought nothing at all.

She woke in her room at Blackwood Manor. Outside the window, it was morning. The guard outside her door had changed shifts.

She was back.

Damian was waiting for her in the entrance hall.

"Your own parents returned you," he said. "Think carefully about what that tells you."

Lily looked at him. She had known this man for four years. She had shared his bed, his name, his silence at breakfast and his rare, controlled smiles. She had told herself those smiles meant something.

"It tells me," she said, "that I was wrong to love you."

Something moved behind his eyes — too quickly to name. Then it was gone.

Celeste appeared at the top of the stairs, breathless and trembling, one hand clutching the railing. "Damian — the baby — the doctors are saying he needs a transfusion tonight, they're saying it can't wait—" Her voice broke on a sob. "Please. My poor child. He's suffering."

Lily was already moving. "No."

She put herself between Damian and the staircase. She was not a particularly large woman, and Damian's security team was very large indeed, but for a moment she held the hallway by sheer force of will.

"You will not take any more blood from my son," she said. Her voice was steady. She was distantly amazed by that. "I am his mother and I'm telling you no. You will not touch him."

Damian looked at her for a long moment. Then he nodded to the men behind her.

They took her by the arms. She fought them — properly fought, not the polite resistance she'd managed in the corridor upstairs — twisting and pulling and making them work for every inch. It didn't matter. There were four of them, and they held her against the wall while the nurses filed past with their equipment, while the doors swung open and shut, while the sounds from the room beyond went from thin and reedy to terrifyingly quiet.

She screamed until her throat gave out. No one came.

She came back to consciousness in an armchair with monitoring equipment beeping steadily around her. The room was very still.

She already knew. She had known from the quality of the silence.

She pushed through the cluster of nurses and doctors with more strength than she should have had, and she stood over the small bed, and she looked at her son's face, peaceful and unmoving.

The monitor had flatlined.