Chapter 6

Eliana's face drained of colour. "No. We're already divorcing — you have no right —"

"We're not divorced yet." Adrian's voice was ice over steel. "Until the papers are processed there's a cooling-off period. You're still Mrs. Wyndham. That means I have every right."

"Take it away. Come with me."

"It's yours," she screamed. "Adrian — listen to me — it's yours!"

Serena cut in, voice perfectly steady.

"Eliana, you've been obsessed with Maxwell Thorne for years. This child is his. Everyone here can see it."

She opened her phone and slid it in front of Adrian.

"Adrian, I don't want to watch you be fooled again. I had someone take these. Look."

Photographs. Eliana and Maxwell, caught close together — too close, her neck showing marks that had never existed in any real moment between them.

Eliana grabbed the phone. The images were convincing. They were composites, every one of them — fabricated with skill and delivered at exactly the right moment.

Adrian's expression was beyond contempt now.

"Still nothing to say?"

"Seven years married to me, and the whole time you were with him. You had the nerve to —"

"Stop it." Maxwell stepped forward, jaw clenched. "Don't do this to her, Adrian. I'll take her out of here."

Adrian launched at him like something had snapped. The two of them crashed into each other — fists, bodies, all of it. Adrian's eyes were a colour she'd never seen in them: red at the edges.

"Touch what's mine and I'll end you."

"Adrian —" Eliana pushed into the melee, trying to get between them. "Stop. Please —"

His arm swung back without looking and sent her crashing to the floor.

"Ah —"

The impact was violent. A sharp, tearing pain detonated low in her abdomen. Then heat.

"The baby — my baby —"

The sound that came out of her was something no one in the corridor forgot. She looked down. There was blood.

Adrian went still for exactly one second. She saw the confusion in his face — the flicker of something human — and he took a step toward her.

"Serena — I'm hurting —" Serena's voice floated over, broken and helpless. "Come to me, please —"

Adrian stopped.

He stood between them.

He chose.

"Get her to the operating theatre immediately," he said to the men at his back.

The words were quiet. Terrible.

Two members of his security team moved to Eliana before she could crawl to her knees. She fought. She screamed. They carried her anyway, down a white corridor, into a white room, and pinned her to a cold table with restraints that cut into her wrists until they bled.

Adrian came back. He stood in the doorway and watched.

"Adrian —" She could barely get the words out. Her hands were shaking. "Please. Please don't. It's your child. I know you don't believe me but it's yours — I swear —"

He didn't move.

"Eliana." His voice, impossibly, was almost gentle. "I know how badly you never wanted my child."

"Go ahead."

She stopped fighting. She closed her eyes. The tears came silently, and she let them.

A needle went into her arm.

As the drugs pulled her down, her mind went somewhere else — back to a Saturday morning early in the marriage. Adrian on his knees in front of her, pressing his lips to the small, not-yet-visible swell of her belly.

I want a daughter who looks like you. I want her to have everything.

He'd gone to a stone chapel on the grounds of an old estate — climbed the steps on his knees in pouring rain to pray for their child. He'd slipped on the wet stone and fallen badly. When she'd found him, he was laughing, limping.

Don't be angry. I just wanted us to have something good.

She made a sound that was not quite a scream.

Adrian's voice came through the fog. "It's almost over. Hold on."

Then a nurse appeared at the door.

"Mr. Wyndham — Miss Holloway says her cramps are bad again, she's asking for you —"

Adrian turned, and walked out.

In the room behind him, the procedure continued.

And at the moment it ended, the last piece of anything that had ever tied Eliana Ashford to Adrian Wyndham was simply — gone.