Chapter 2 - THE TWELVE MESSAGES HE NEVER RECEIVED
Nothing moved.
Not Celeste.
Not Mara.
Not either of Roman’s security men.
For one strange second, even the hospital seemed to go silent.
Roman’s face emptied.
“What did you say?”
Mara closed her eyes.
Dr. Mercer’s voice softened.
“Your wife is pregnant.”
Roman looked down at Mara’s stomach.
His mouth opened.
No sound came out.
Mara had imagined this moment a hundred times.
She had imagined him smiling.
She had imagined him lifting her off the floor.
She had imagined him dropping to his knees.
Once, during the lonely hours after midnight, she had even imagined him crying.
She had never imagined telling him under fluorescent lights while wearing a maid’s uniform beside his mistress.
“Mara.”
She opened her eyes.
He looked devastated.
Not happy.
Not angry.
Devastated.
“You’re pregnant?”
“I tried to tell you.”
Four words.
Roman recoiled as if she had struck him.
Celeste recovered first.
“She didn’t try very hard.”
Roman slowly turned his head.
Celeste continued quickly.
“She’s had months. She lives in your house. If she wanted you to know—”
“I sent him twelve messages.”
Celeste stopped.
Mara reached into the apron pocket.
She pulled out a battered phone.
Roman stared at it.
“You changed phones?”
“I didn’t.”
His eyes narrowed.
“That isn’t the phone I bought you.”
“No. That one disappeared six weeks ago.”
Celeste’s face had gone pale.
Mara handed him the device.
“The gardener found this old one in a drawer and gave it back to me. I used it because it was the only phone I had.”
Roman unlocked the screen.
He read.
The color drained from his face.
March 8.
Roman, please come home. I took two tests. I need to tell you something.
March 11.
The doctor confirmed it. We’re having a baby.
March 16.
I know you’re angry with me about something, but please don’t punish the baby for it.
March 20.
Celeste says you don’t want children. Is that true?
March 29.
Someone has been inside my room.
April 2.
I keep getting dizzy after dinner. Please call me.
April 5.
I am scared.
Roman stopped reading.
His thumb hovered over the final message.
Yesterday, 11:47 p.m.
If you really want me gone, tell me yourself and I will leave. But please let me hear it from you, not from her.
Roman lifted his eyes.
“I never received these.”
Mara’s expression barely changed.
“I know that now.”
Celeste stepped backward.
Roman turned toward her.
“Where is Mara’s phone?”
“I don’t know.”
“You told me she blocked my number.”
“She did.”
Roman raised the battered phone.
“She sent me twelve messages.”
“She could have fabricated them.”
“Enough.”
Celeste flinched.
Roman did not shout.
That was the frightening thing about him.
He became quieter when rage settled into something dangerous.
Dr. Mercer stepped between the emotional current and his patient.
“There is one more issue.”
Roman looked at him.
The doctor held up a folded intake form.
“When Mrs. Sloane arrived, a woman identifying herself as a family representative tried to authorize her transfer to another facility.”
Mara frowned.
“What facility?”
“A private recovery center in Connecticut.”
“I never requested that.”
“We know.”
Roman extended his hand.
The doctor did not give him the paper.
“Mrs. Sloane is the patient. I need her permission before I show you.”
Roman froze.
Then looked at Mara.
For years, people had handed Roman whatever he asked for.
Documents.
Keys.
Phones.
Names.
Doors opened because he approached them.
Now he waited.
Mara studied him.
Then nodded.
“You can show him.”
The doctor passed over the form.
Roman read it.
His face became frighteningly calm.
At the bottom was Mara’s signature.
Almost perfect.
Beside the scheduled transfer time was a name Roman knew.
Silas Creed.
One of his oldest security advisers.
The same man who had been standing beside Roman’s younger brother the night Owen Sloane died.
Roman looked up.
“Where did this come from?”
Dr. Mercer answered.
“It was submitted electronically at 4:12 this afternoon.”
“By whom?”
“We’re reviewing that.”
Roman stared at the forged signature.
Then at Celeste.
Celeste shook her head.
“Roman, whatever you’re thinking—”
His phone buzzed.
One of the men behind him glanced at his own screen.
“Mr. Sloane.”
Roman didn’t turn.
“Speak.”
“We checked the hospital cameras like you requested.”
“And?”
The man hesitated.
“Miss Harrow arrived forty-seven minutes before Mrs. Sloane.”
Celeste stopped breathing.
Roman’s gaze never left her.
“She wasn’t alone.”
“Who was with her?”
The guard turned his phone around.
Mara saw the image from six feet away.
Celeste in her cream coat.
Standing beside a man with graying hair and a heavy black overcoat.
Silas Creed.
Roman stared at the photograph.
Then at the woman who had spent six months telling him his wife no longer wanted him.
Mara watched something terrible happen behind her husband’s eyes.
Not an explosion.
An awakening.
Celeste whispered, “Roman, I can explain.”
He lowered the phone.
May you like
“Then start with why the man who watched my brother die was arranging to take my pregnant wife out of this hospital.”
And for the first time since Mara had known Celeste Harrow, the woman had no answer.
