Andrew V. Thomas

My dead mother's ring left the safe at 2:14 a.m. My husband swore he was at the office. The tracker said he was at a mansion in the hills. So I drove there in my pajamas. And through the floor-to-ceiling window,I watched another woman wear my mother's twelve-carat diamond—at her gender reveal party. I sat in my car at the edge of the driveway,engine off,headlights dead.The mansion blazed with light.Pink and blue balloons floated against the glass.A dozen women in cocktail dresses held champagne flutes around a woman in a skin-tight white dress. Her belly pushed against the fabric.Seven months,maybe eight. And on her left hand,catching the chandelier light,sat the Sterling diamond.The ring my mother wore until the day she died.The ring I kept in a biometric safe that only opened to my fingerprint—and apparently,to a husband who had three years to clone it. My phone buzzed against my thigh. Damien:Still buried at the office,babe.Don't wait up.Love you. I looked up from the screen. Damien walked into the frame inside the mansion.Charcoal suit.The tie I bought him for his birthday.He came up behind the pregnant woman,wrapped his arms around her belly,and kissed her neck.The crowd cheered. Someone dimmed the lights.A projector flashed against the back wall. IT'S A GIRL!WELCOME BABY LILY! Lily. My mother's name. My lungs stopped working.He named his mistress's baby after my dead mother—the woman whose ring was sitting on that stranger's finger,the woman whose money built the company he worked for. The company he thought belonged to my reclusive grandfather. The company that actually belonged to me. For three years,Damien Cole believed he married Eve Carter,a quiet kindergarten teacher with a small inheritance and no family.He believed his charm carried him from junior analyst to Vice President of the Sterling Group.He believed the anonymous majority shareholder who approved his promotions was some old man hiding on a yacht. He had no idea he was sleeping next to her. It was my mother's last wish.Marry a man who loves Eve Carter,she wrote in her final letter,not Eve Sterling.So I hid the penthouse,hid the shares,hid the name.I graded spelling tests during the day and signed billion-dollar acquisitions at night. And this was what my disguise bought me.A husband at another woman's gender reveal,his hands on a belly that wasn't mine,my mother's diamond on a stranger's finger. Inside,the woman turned and kissed him on the mouth.He lingered. I didn't cry.I didn't open the car door.I didn't scream. I picked up my phone and typed back: Of course.Work hard,babe. Then I opened a second contact.Marcus Webb.The Sterling family's lead counsel—the man who only took orders from one person on earth. I typed four words. Begin the takeover.Quietly. I hit send. The phone screen dimmed to my wallpaper—our wedding photo.Damien grinning at the camera.Me looking at him like he was the answer to something. I flipped the phone face down on the passenger seat. Inside the mansion,the crowd released the balloons.Pink confetti rained over my husband and his pregnant mistress.Nobody looked out the window.Nobody knew the owner of everything in his world was sitting in the dark,watching. I shifted into reverse and rolled silently down the hill. He had until the end of the quarter. But as I turned onto the highway,my phone lit up with a text from an unknown number.I glanced down at the preview,and my foot nearly slipped off the gas. You should ask your fertility clinic where your embryos went. I beat him home by four hours. I rinsed the night off my skin,hung my coat exactly two inches from his,and got into bed on my side.When the front door clicked open at 6:40 a.m.,I slowed my breathing and kept my eyes shut. He showered first.Washing her off before he touched me.Then the mattress dipped,and his arm came around my waist,and my husband held me like a man with nothing to hide. I counted his heartbeats against my spine.Slow.Steady.A liar's rhythm. At eight,I stood at the kitchen island flipping pancakes while Damien scrolled his phone at the counter. "You got in late,"I said. "Brutal night.The Hammond merger is eating me alive."He rubbed his eyes—eyes that weren't tired at all."How was your evening?" "Quiet.I graded spelling tests and fell asleep by ten." "That's my girl."He smiled at me.Warm.Easy.Three years of practice. He slid off the stool and opened the cabinet above the coffee maker.The ritual I knew by heart:one glass of orange juice,one small white capsule. "Vitamin time."He pressed the pill into my palm and kissed my forehead."Dr.Feld says consistency is everything if we want a baby." Dr.Feld.The fertility specialist he found.The one who'd diagnosed me—three separate times—with unexplained infertility. You should ask your fertility clinic where your embryos went. I put the capsule on my tongue,raised the juice,and swallowed. Except I didn't.The pill stayed tucked in my cheek as the juice went down.I'd learned the trick from a six-year-old in my class who hated antibiotics. "Good girl,"Damien said,and grabbed his briefcase."Dinner tonight?Somewhere nice?" "Perfect,"I said. The second the door shut,I spat the capsule into a sandwich bag and sealed it. Then I walked to the mailbox,because routine is camouflage,and routine was all I had left. One envelope.Thick cream paper.Gold foil.No return address. You're invited!Baby Shower for Lily—Sunday Brunch—The Voss Residence. The Voss residence.As in Voss Industries.As in the only company on earth that had spent five years trying to gut the Sterling Group from the inside. I flipped the card over.One line of gold cursive on the back. The wife should come too.You deserve to know everything.—A friend. A friend.Someone inside that house wanted me there.Someone had sent the text about my embryos.Someone was lighting a fuse and handing me the match. Back inside,Damien's voice carried from the terrace—he'd forgotten his watch and come back through the garage.He stood with his back to me,phone to his ear,laughing in a register I hadn't heard in years.Soft.Boyish. "No,she has no idea.She thinks I take her to dinner because I feel guilty."A pause."Babe,relax.Eight more weeks.Once Lily is born and the board vote goes through,I file the papers,and Eve Carter gets a settlement and a sad story."Another laugh."Yes,you get the house in Aspen.Greedy girl." He hung up,found his watch,and walked out whistling. I stood in the hallway holding a sandwich bag with a white capsule in it,and an invitation to my husband's other life. Eight more weeks.A board vote.Divorce papers already drafted. He thought he was eight weeks from destroying me. He was three days from finding out who I was. I picked up my phone and called the one number I'd avoided for three years. "Sterling Diagnostics,private line." "This is Eve Sterling,"I said."Authorization Whiskey-Nine-Nine.I need a full toxicology screen today.And pull every record my fertility clinic has ever filed." A pause.Then keys clattering,fast. "Ma'am...your clinic file was accessed externally six days ago.Someone downloaded your entire embryo storage record." My grip tightened on the phone."Accessed by who?" "The request came from inside the Sterling Group.Vice President's office." "Read me the results,"I said. Dr.Osei stood across the steel table in the private lab,gripping the printout hard enough to crease it. "Mrs.Carter—" "Sterling,"I corrected."In this building,my name is Sterling." He exhaled."The capsule isn't a prenatal vitamin.It's a synthetic ovarian suppressant.Custom compound.At this dosage,sustained over time,it mimics natural infertility.Untraceable on a standard panel." "How long has it been in my system?" He looked at my blood work.He looked at the floor."Based on the metabolic buildup...close to three years.Since right after your wedding." Three years. Three years of Damien pressing that capsule into my palm and kissing my forehead.Three years of me crying in clinic bathrooms after negative tests.Three years of him holding my hand while Dr.Feld told me my body was failing me—and then driving home and refilling the bottle. He hadn't just cheated.He'd reached into my body and switched off my future,every single morning,with a smile. "There's more,"Dr.Osei said quietly."The fertility clinic records you requested.Two years ago,you and your husband froze six embryos.Standard procedure before your treatments." "I remember." "Four of them are gone.Withdrawn fourteen months ago.The release form has your signature." "I never signed a release." "I know,"he said."I ran the signature.It's traced.Forged." The room tilted.I put my hand flat on the steel table and made myself breathe. Withdrawn.My embryos.Fourteen months ago.And a stranger in a white dress was seven months pregnant with a baby girl named after my mother. The math sat in my chest like a blade. "Print everything,"I said."Originals to Marcus Webb.Then purge the digital files.If anyone asks,this screening never happened." I walked out of the lab and into the parking garage,my heels striking concrete in a rhythm steadier than my pulse. A black SUV idled across from my car.I didn't recognize it.The driver's door opened. A man stepped out.Tall.Dark suit,no tie.A face I hadn't seen in three years—not since the morning of my wedding,when he resigned as Sterling's Chief of Security by text message and vanished before the ceremony. Adrian Hale. "You're supposed to be in Singapore,"I said. "I came back six days ago."He walked toward me,unhurried,and stopped two feet away."The moment Damien's office pulled your clinic file,the system flagged me.I never stopped watching the alerts,Eve.Not for three years." "You watched.You didn't call." "You didn't ask for help."His jaw tightened."And last night,in that driveway,you didn't look like a woman who needed saving.You looked like a woman loading a gun." "You followed me to the mansion." "I sent you the text about the clinic."He held out a thick manila folder."And the invitation.I'm the friend." I took the folder.It was warm from his hands. "Her name is Chloe Voss,"he said."Only daughter of Richard Voss.She wasn't an accident,Eve.Voss planted her in your husband's path two years ago.Damien thinks he seduced an heiress.She was bait.They've been building him into a weapon—the board vote in eight weeks?Voss wants your company,and your husband is handing them the keys to get his promotion and his new wife." "And the baby?"My voice came out flat. Adrian's eyes changed.For the first time,the soldier's calm cracked. "Open the folder,"he said."But not here.Not standing up." "Tell me." "Eve—" "Tell me." He looked at me for a long moment,the garage humming around us. "The baby Chloe Voss is carrying,"he said quietly,"was never hers."