Chapter 3

Lily did not cry. She reached out and adjusted the edge of his blanket, very carefully, so that it covered his shoulder properly. He had always slept cold.

"I'm sorry," she said, to no one in the room and to him. "I'm so sorry, my love. I tried."

She held him until he was cold.

No one asked her to leave the room. No one came in. The nurses who had been so busy an hour ago had apparently found other things to occupy themselves with, and Damian had not appeared, and the house around her was very quiet.

Eventually she laid her son down, arranged the blanket, and walked out.

She wandered the corridor for a while with no particular destination. Her mind had gone somewhere soft and distant, the way it did in the worst moments — a kind of muffled buffer between herself and what was happening. She turned a corner and stopped.

Damian and Celeste were standing near the end of the hall, close enough that their voices reached her clearly.

"Was it enough?" Damian said. He was looking at his phone.

"More than enough," Celeste said. Her voice had lost its trembling entirely. "The matching results came back — it worked. Dr. Harris confirmed this morning." She tilted her head, something satisfied in her expression. "We could have waited for a voluntary donor. But this was faster. And cleaner."

"The nurses—"

"I spoke to them. They understand the situation." A pause. "Damian. It was always going to happen this way. You know that."

A beat of silence. Then Damian turned, and Lily saw his face — the slight easing of tension around his jaw, the loosening of something that had been held very tight.

"Don't let Lily near the boy for the next week," he said. "I'll handle the announcement."

"Of course." Celeste smiled. Then she stepped forward and put her hand against Damian's chest, and he covered it with his, and she tipped her face up, and he bent down, and they kissed.

Lily's phone was already in her hand.

She didn't think about it. The phone's camera was silent — she'd turned off the shutter sound months ago, for reasons that had nothing to do with this — and she stepped back into the shadow of the doorway and filmed for forty-five seconds. Clear audio, clear faces, clear enough.

Then she opened her contacts and found a name: Marcus Webb, The Evening Standard. A journalist who had done a favourable profile of her father's estate three years ago, back when they'd still been trying to court positive press. She had kept his number.

She typed: I have something you'll want to see. Can you talk tonight?

She sent it.

Then she sat down on the floor, right there in the corridor, and waited.

By morning, it was everywhere.

BLACKWOOD HEIR DEAD: INFANT USED AS DONOR, WIFE CLAIMS BETRAYAL — that was the headline she saw first, scrolling on her phone while Damian was still asleep in the next room. The footage had gone viral overnight. Social media was fractured between those who believed her and those who were already calling it a fabrication, but either way the name was trending.

By seven o'clock, the Blackwood Group's share price had dropped eight percent. By eight, three board members had called Damian's personal line. By nine, Damian came into her room and looked at her with an expression she had never seen on his face before.

Fear, she realised. That's what that was.

"You have no idea what you've done," he said.

"I know exactly what I've done," she said.

His hand closed around her throat before she'd finished the sentence.

"You want to tell me what you were thinking?" His voice was very quiet. That frightened her more than shouting would have. His grip tightened. "Answer me."

She couldn't. Breathing was difficult. She was aware, distantly, that her face must be going a particular colour.

She lifted her phone and held it so that the trending headlines were visible. His jaw tightened as he read.

He let go. She exhaled carefully and did not let herself touch her throat.

"You're going to fix this," he said.

"I'm not."

"You're going to hold a press conference." His voice was measured, precise, the tone he used in board meetings. "You'll clarify that the footage was taken out of context. You'll apologise to Celeste for the distress you've caused. And you will do this by this evening, or I will ensure that our son's remains are not released to you."

A long pause.

"You'd use him," she said. "Even now."

He said nothing. That was her answer.

The press conference was held in a function room at the Blackwood Group's London headquarters. Lily sat at the table and looked at the assembled journalists and felt nothing in particular. The lights were very bright. Someone had put a glass of water in front of her.

A journalist in the front row started immediately: "Mrs. Blackwood, reports suggest this is all a rather desperate attempt at—"

Lily opened her laptop.

She had edited the clip herself, early that morning, while Damian's security team was busy managing the front gates. The raw footage was forty-five seconds; she'd trimmed it to twenty — just the part that mattered. The audio was clear. She hit play, and the room's speakers carried it to every corner.

It was always going to happen this way. You know that.

Don't let Lily near the boy for the next week.

For three seconds, the room was perfectly silent.

Then it wasn't.