Chapter 1 - Thirty Seconds to Name the Father
I shoved the dinner plate away and whispered, "Get it away from me."
Cassian Raldi looked up as Odette froze with the silver serving tray in her hands.
A folded hospital receipt was sticking from my purse.
One number had been circled twice.
Six weeks.
Cassian suddenly understood that dinner wasn't the problem.
I barely reached the bathroom.
The door slammed behind me, and I dropped to my knees in front of a toilet that probably cost more than the car I'd driven through nursing school.
My stomach emptied.
Then it kept trying.
When there was nothing left, I sat on the marble floor with one hand against my mouth.
Six weeks.
Maybe seven.
I counted again because nurses count when they're frightened. Heartbeats. Respirations. Drips. Days.
Numbers were supposed to behave.
These didn't.
When I returned to the dining room, twenty-two people had gone silent.
Cassian remained seated.
Black suit.
White shirt open at the throat.
Dark eyes fixed on me.
His uncle Vittorio was pretending not to stare. His cousin Luca wasn't pretending at all.
Odette touched my elbow.
"Mrs. Raldi?"
"I'm fine."
Cassian's gaze sharpened.
He knew that particular lie.
I lasted another four minutes before leaving the table.
At 12:43 a.m., my friend Camille let me into the employee laboratory at St. Brendan.
She watched the second pink line appear.
"Elena."
"Run blood."
"Elena."
"Please."
Camille had known me for nine years. She knew about my mother. She knew about the debt. She knew I'd married Cassian Raldi under circumstances that made fairy tales look like accounting fraud.
She also knew the one fact everybody in Chicago's wealthiest circles seemed to know.
Cassian Raldi was infertile.
Six specialists had said so.
Camille drew my blood.
The result confirmed the test.
Pregnant.
I drove back to Lake Forest before sunrise.
Cassian was awake in his study.
Of course he was.
He looked up when I entered.
"I'm pregnant."
He closed the folder in front of him.
No shock.
No question.
Nothing.
That frightened me.
"You knew?"
"I suspected."
He opened a drawer.
Six medical reports landed on the desk.
I read the first.
Then the second.
Then all six.
Different hospitals.
Different doctors.
Same conclusion.
Severe irreversible infertility following complications from an adolescent infection and later trauma.
Probability of natural conception: effectively zero.
I put the last page down.
"Then the reports are wrong."
"They aren't."
"One of us is standing here pregnant."
His expression didn't move.
"That's why we're going to establish what is true."
"There hasn't been anyone else."
He studied me.
I hated that silence.
Three months earlier, I had signed a marriage contract because my dead father had somehow left $340,000 hanging around my neck.
My mother's dementia care cost $9,000 every month.
Cassian offered to erase both problems.
Three years.
Separate rooms.
Public appearances.
No children.
No romantic expectations.
A business arrangement wearing wedding rings.
But six weeks before that arrangement began, I had saved his life.
His men had taken me from a hospital charity event after Cassian collapsed.
They brought me here.
To this mansion.
I treated him on the dining-room table.
I drew his blood.
I remembered labeling the tube myself.
C. RALDI.
I remembered giving him fluids.
I remembered his pulse failing.
I remembered climbing over him and performing CPR until he breathed again.
Then somebody handed me water.
After that?
Nothing.
I woke hours later beside him.
My dress was twisted.
My stockings were torn.
My mother's silver hair clip was missing.
Cassian was unconscious.
I left terrified.
Six weeks later, when his lawyer offered me the marriage contract, Ezra Cain returned that hair clip to me.
He said it had been found beneath a sofa.
I'd known immediately that something was wrong.
Now I told Cassian everything.
He listened.
When I finished, his face had changed.
Not much.
But enough.
"You believe someone drugged you?" he asked.
"Yes."
"And me?"
"You were already unconscious."
His fingers tightened around the medical report.
"I drew your blood before I drank that water."
"Where did the sample go?"
"I don't know."
Cassian stood.
He crossed to a locked cabinet and removed a black ledger.
"What?"
He turned it toward me.
It was the mansion's entry log from that night.
My name appeared at 11:47 p.m.
ELENA MARSH — DEPARTED.
My signature followed.
I stared.
"That's fake."
"It matches the signature on our marriage license."
"Because whoever did it had access to my signature."
Cassian watched me.
"I hadn't met you before that night."
"No. But somebody around you knew who I was."
"Why?"
That was the question.
I looked at the six infertility reports.
"Maybe this isn't about me."
His phone rang.
He answered.
Listened.
Then looked at me.
"Tomorrow. Nine."
"What?"
"Paternity testing."
"Fine."
His eyebrows lifted.
"You don't object?"
"I want it."
That seemed to surprise him.
I walked toward the door.
"Elena."
I stopped.
"If you're lying to me—"
"I'm not."
"And if the child isn't mine?"
I turned.
"Then somebody needs to explain how I became pregnant, because I can't."
For the first time since I'd entered, Cassian looked less like a mafia boss and more like a man standing at the edge of something he couldn't control.
The next morning, a private physician drew our blood.
I watched every tube.
Mine.
Cassian's.
I memorized the labels.
Then the doctor put them into a locked transport case.
Cassian left first.
I remained behind.
The nurse reached for the case.
Something on one tube caught my attention.
A tiny white label beneath the barcode.
C.R.-117.
I had seen that number before.
Not here.
Not recently.
I closed my eyes.
The night I'd saved Cassian, I'd written his temporary specimen number on my glove.
The nurse picked up the case.
I grabbed her wrist.
She froze.
"Where did you get that identification number?"
Her face went pale.
Then someone knocked three times on the locked laboratory door.
The nurse whispered, "Don't open it."
May you like
The handle began turning anyway.
Someone on the other side had a key.
