Chapter 2 - The Man Beside My Hospital Bed
The second knock was softer.
That made it worse.
I pressed Sophie against my chest and reached for the nurse-call button.
Before I touched it, Roman's voice came from outside.
"Elena. It's me."
I unlocked the door.
Roman entered alone.
One look at my face and his attention dropped to the envelope.
"Where did you get that?"
"Under the door."
He took the paper.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Then he photographed it.
"Mercer?"
"Not unless he can walk through walls."
"Meaning?"
"My men have had him downstairs since I left."
I stared at Roman.
"Your men?"
"Hospital security needed assistance."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the answer you're getting until you've slept."
Despite everything, anger flared.
"Stop deciding what I can handle."
Roman's eyes met mine.
"Fair."
He pulled the chair close.
"Mercer entered the building nine minutes before Grant called you."
My skin prickled.
"So Grant knew."
"Grant suspected."
"How did Mercer know my room?"
"He claims he didn't."
"Claims?"
"Someone texted him the hospital address this morning."
"Who?"
"Burner number."
I looked down at Sophie.
Everything I had done to disappear suddenly felt childish.
Grant had resources.
So did Roman.
And somewhere between those two men was my daughter.
"Why are you helping me?"
Roman's expression didn't change.
"You asked me that five months ago."
"You didn't answer then either."
"I told you I owed your father."
"My father has been dead eleven years."
"Debts don't die with people."
I had heard that sentence before.
It hadn't satisfied me then.
It didn't now.
"My father was an accountant."
Roman looked toward the Manhattan skyline.
"Your father was considerably more than an accountant."
I waited.
He didn't continue.
"Roman."
"Not today."
"Today seems exactly like the day."
A knock interrupted us.
This time a nurse announced herself before entering.
She checked Sophie's vitals and helped me settle her into the bassinet.
For five blessed minutes, the room became ordinary.
Diapers.
Feeding.
Blood pressure.
Pain medication.
The mundane details of motherhood.
Then the nurse left.
Roman handed me water.
I drank half the cup.
"Tell me about my father."
"No."
"Why?"
"Because you're exhausted."
"I'm also apparently being hunted by my billionaire ex-husband."
"Investigated."
"That's comforting."
"Words matter."
"So do secrets."
That landed.
Roman's eyes hardened slightly.
"Yes."
I remembered the first time I met him.
I had been nineteen.
My father's funeral.
Roman was twenty-three, maybe twenty-four, standing at the back of the church in a black suit.
He hadn't introduced himself.
He had simply waited until everyone left and handed my mother an envelope.
There had been enough money inside to pay the mortgage for two years.
My mother refused to explain.
Years later, Roman appeared again.
At my wedding to Grant.
He stood across the ballroom.
Watching.
Grant had disliked him immediately.
"Who invited Vale?" Grant asked.
"My mother."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
Grant had stared at Roman for a long time.
"Stay away from him."
That should have told me something.
Instead, newly married and foolishly in love, I listened.
Now Roman was the only person standing between Grant and my child.
"Was my father involved with you?"
"No."
"With your family?"
Roman's pause was almost invisible.
"Yes."
"How?"
Before he could answer, his phone rang.
He checked the screen.
"Vale."
A man's voice spoke rapidly.
Roman walked toward the window.
"What camera?"
Another pause.
"Send it."
He disconnected.
"What happened?"
"Mercer wasn't the person who came upstairs."
"Then who was?"
"We're checking."
His phone vibrated.
He opened a video.
I watched over his arm.
Hospital security footage.
A figure in pale blue scrubs entered the elevator.
Cap.
Mask.
Badge.
Impossible to identify.
The timestamp showed four minutes before the envelope appeared.
"Hospital employee?"
"No."
"How can you tell?"
Roman enlarged the image.
The badge was backwards.
"Whoever it was dressed quickly."
My pulse climbed.
"Grant?"
"Not personally."
"I know."
Roman scrubbed forward.
The fake employee exited the elevator.
Walked toward my room.
Then disappeared outside the camera angle.
Thirty-eight seconds later, the figure returned.
No envelope visible.
"Can you track them?"
"We already are."
The elevator opened downstairs.
The figure entered a stairwell.
Then vanished.
Roman stared at the screen.
"Professional."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning Grant's investigator isn't the only person interested in your daughter."
Cold moved through me.
"Who else knows?"
"That's what concerns me."
My phone rang again.
Grant.
Roman looked at me.
"Don't answer."
I did.
"Elena."
Grant sounded different.
No bells.
No mockery.
"Where are you?"
"Why?"
"Answer me."
"At your wedding, presumably."
"I postponed the ceremony."
My heart thudded.
Behind him I heard voices.
Someone arguing.
"Because you heard a baby?"
"Because I need answers."
"You forfeited the right to answers when you announced my medical history to two hundred people."
"I didn't announce your medical history."
"You told them I was barren."
"Because that's what your doctor told us."
I went still.
Us.
Not me.
Us.
"Grant, what exactly did Dr. Harlan tell you?"
Silence.
Roman's attention sharpened.
"Grant?"
"That pregnancy was impossible."
"For whom?"
Another silence.
Something opened inside my memory.
Dr. Harlan's office.
Grant sitting beside me.
The doctor's grave face.
The folder.
Grant taking my hand before the doctor spoke.
Then Grant asking me to wait outside while they discussed "options."
I had been too devastated to question it.
"For me?" I whispered.
Grant didn't answer.
My heartbeat became deafening.
"Did he say I was infertile?"
"Elena—"
"Those exact words."
"It was six months ago."
"Answer me."
Grant exhaled.
"He said there was virtually no chance of us conceiving naturally."
Us.
Not me.
Roman saw it too.
"Grant," I said carefully, "did you ever see my actual test results?"
He disconnected.
I stared at the screen.
Roman took the phone.
"Interesting."
My thoughts were racing.
I had believed Grant.
Believed the headlines.
Believed the diagnosis.
Until three weeks after our separation, when I fainted in a grocery store.
The pregnancy test had been positive.
Three tests.
Then an ultrasound.
Nine weeks.
I had conceived while still married.
The doctor had called it completely normal.
I had assumed Dr. Harlan had been wrong.
But what if he hadn't been wrong?
What if I had misunderstood what he said?
"What are you thinking?" Roman asked.
"That Grant lied."
"We know that."
"No."
I looked at him.
"About something bigger."
Sophie began crying.
I lifted her.
Her cries softened immediately against my chest.
Roman watched us.
His expression changed in that subtle way I had learned to recognize.
Not softness exactly.
Something deeper.
Something guarded.
"Why didn't you tell Grant when you found out?" he asked.
"You know why."
"I know what happened publicly."
"Then you know enough."
"No."
I looked at Sophie.
"The night before Grant announced our divorce, I went to his office."
I hadn't told Roman this.
Or anyone.
"He was talking to his father."
Roman became still.
"I heard Charles say something about an heir."
"What exactly?"
"I don't remember."
"Try."
I closed my eyes.
Six months vanished.
I was standing outside Grant's study.
Charles Kingsley's voice came through the door.
If she can't produce one, you replace her.
Then Grant.
And if the problem isn't Elena?
Silence.
Charles again.
Then make certain nobody finds out.
My eyes opened.
Roman was staring at me.
"What did Charles say?"
I repeated it.
For the first time since I'd known him, Roman Vale looked genuinely alarmed.
"Roman?"
He stood.
"Stay here."
"Stop saying that."
"I need to make a call."
"Tell me what it means."
He hesitated.
Then said, "It means we need your old medical file."
"Grant will have destroyed it."
"Maybe."
Roman walked toward the door.
"But doctors don't destroy everything."
He left.
I sat with Sophie in my arms.
My mind replayed Grant's question.
And if the problem isn't Elena?
What problem?
Infertility?
An heir?
Something else?
Twenty minutes passed.
Then thirty.
A nurse brought food.
I couldn't eat.
Finally Roman returned.
He carried a thin blue folder.
My breath caught.
"Where did you get that?"
"Dr. Harlan's former nurse."
"Former?"
"She quit three months ago."
"Why?"
"Because someone paid her to alter patient records."
I stared at him.
Roman placed the folder on my blanket.
My name was on the tab.
ELENA KINGSLEY.
I opened it.
Blood work.
Scans.
Hormone levels.
Everything looked meaningless.
Then I reached the fertility report.
Two names appeared at the top.
ELENA KINGSLEY.
GRANT KINGSLEY.
My results were marked NORMAL.
Grant's page was missing.
"Where is his?"
"Removed."
"By whom?"
"We don't know."
A sticky note remained where the page had been.
One handwritten line.
Patient G.K. requested complete confidentiality.
I looked at Roman.
"Grant knew."
"Maybe."
"He blamed me anyway."
"Maybe."
"Stop saying maybe."
"Because evidence matters."
I slammed the folder shut.
"Six months of people looking at me like I was defective."
"I know."
"He let me believe it."
"I know."
"He married another woman today because she could supposedly give him children."
Roman said nothing.
That silence told me more than words.
"What?"
"Claire Beaumont had fertility testing last month."
"How do you know that?"
"Because Grant's people aren't the only people capable of finding information."
I hated the answer.
But I needed the truth.
"And?"
"She's pregnant."
My stomach dropped.
"What?"
"Approximately eight weeks."
I stared at him.
Grant was marrying a pregnant woman.
A woman he believed was carrying his heir.
Then another thought came.
"If Grant has a fertility problem..."
Roman finished it.
"He may have questions about Claire's baby too."
My phone lit up.
A message from an unknown number.
One photograph.
Grant standing outside the hospital.
Still wearing his tuxedo.
The timestamp was one minute ago.
Below the photograph were six words.
HE ISN'T HERE FOR THE BABY.
A second message appeared.
May you like
HE'S HERE FOR ROMAN VALE.
Then the hospital elevator chimed outside my door.
