Chapter 4
Chloe woke the next afternoon.
Her first thought was that she could not feel the baby move.
Panic surged through her.
She reached for her stomach.
Flat.
Bandaged.
Empty.
“No.”
Her voice scraped out.
“No, no, no—”
A hand caught hers.
“Chloe.”
She turned.
Arthur sat beside the bed.
His tuxedo was gone.
He wore a gray hospital T-shirt and dark pants.
There were bruises beneath his eyes.
He looked older.
Not powerful.
Not dangerous.
Just tired.
“Where is he?”
“Alive.”
Chloe stopped struggling.
Arthur squeezed her hand.
“He’s alive.”
Her face crumpled.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I would never lie to you about this.”
“You lied about everything else.”
The words came automatically.
Arthur flinched.
Good, Chloe thought.
Some small, wounded part of her was glad.
He deserved to.
But then tears spilled down the sides of her face.
“Can I see him?”
“As soon as your doctor clears you.”
“How small?”
“Three pounds, ten ounces.”
Chloe covered her mouth.
Arthur moved closer.
“He has dark hair.”
She laughed through a sob.
“All babies have dark hair.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You know nothing about babies.”
“Correct.”
Another laugh escaped her.
It hurt.
She winced.
Arthur immediately stood.
“What happened?”
“Sit down.”
“I’ll get the nurse.”
“Arthur.”
He froze.
“Sit.”
He did.
Chloe looked at him.
For months, she had rehearsed speeches.
Cruel ones.
Proud ones.
She had imagined seeing him again and being so composed that he would understand exactly what he had thrown away.
Reality had stripped all dignity from the reunion.
She had entered his wedding drenched, swollen, exhausted, and terrified.
She had collapsed in his arms.
Now she was wearing a hospital gown and compression stockings while discussing the premature son he had never known existed.
Life rarely offered the dramatic dignity people imagined in advance.
It gave them messy truth instead.
“Why?” Chloe asked.
Arthur knew what she meant.
He looked at his hands.
“The Crofts had been pushing into Romano businesses for two years. People were getting hurt.”
“People like you?”
“People who worked for me. People who worked for them. Sometimes people who worked for neither.”
“So you married her.”
“I agreed to.”
“You could have told me.”
“I convinced myself that cutting you out would keep you away from all of it.”
“You didn’t cut me out.”
Chloe’s voice trembled.
“You erased me.”
Arthur closed his eyes.
She continued.
“You sat at my kitchen table. You slept in my bed. You told me things you said you’d never told anyone.”
“I know.”
“Then you disappeared like I was something embarrassing.”
“You were never—”
“That is how it felt.”
Arthur fell silent.
That mattered.
He did not defend himself.
Chloe wiped her face.
“You know what the worst part was?”
“What?”
“I thought maybe you finally saw me the way everyone else did.”
Arthur frowned.
“What does that mean?”
She laughed bitterly.
“Don’t.”
“I’m asking.”
“You walked out of my apartment and two weeks later appeared beside a woman who looked like she belonged on the cover of a magazine.”
Understanding crossed his face.
“Chloe—”
“I was pregnant and getting bigger every week. I kept looking at myself in the mirror wondering if I had imagined the way you used to look at me.”
Arthur stood.
She recoiled slightly.
He saw it and stopped.
Then he did something Chloe had never seen him do.
He lowered himself to his knees.
Not romantically.
Not theatrically.
As if he knew he had no right to stand above her.
“You did not imagine anything,” he said.
Chloe looked away.
Arthur’s voice softened.
“I loved you.”
She turned sharply.
“Past tense?”
His eyes met hers.
“No.”
The monitor beside her bed kept beeping.
Neither spoke for several seconds.
Finally Chloe whispered, “Love doesn’t make what you did okay.”
“I know.”
“Love does not excuse cowardice.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get to show up with flowers and guards and decide we’re suddenly a family.”
“I know.”
That irritated her.
“Stop saying that.”
“What would you prefer?”
“I don’t know!”
Arthur almost smiled.
Chloe glared.
“Don’t you dare.”
The smile vanished.
“I’m sorry.”
She stared at him.
Something in Arthur’s face broke her anger open enough to reveal the pain beneath it.
“What happens now?”
“With us?”
“With everything.”
Arthur took a slow breath.
“The Croft wedding was a trap. We have evidence.”
“Are you going to kill them?”
“No.”
Chloe studied him.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Yesterday, I might have.”
He looked toward the window.
“I wanted to.”
Arthur’s voice became quieter.
“Then I spent four hours wondering whether my son would be born into a world where his father solved every wound by creating another one.”
Chloe said nothing.
“I’m getting out.”
“Out of what?”
“All of it.”
She almost laughed.
“Arthur, people like you don’t just retire from being people like you.”
“Maybe not.”
He looked at her.
“But people like me can dismantle what they built.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“What have you done?”
“Since last night? I put Leo and three attorneys in charge of separating my legitimate companies from the rest. We’re preserving records instead of burning them. The men involved in the poisoning are being turned over with the evidence to the Metropolitan Organized Crime Office.”
Chloe blinked.
“The what?”
“A city task force.”
“You’re cooperating with investigators?”
“Eventually.”
“Eventually?”
“I’m still me.”
She gave him a tired look.
Arthur shrugged faintly.
“I said I was changing. I didn’t say I became stupid overnight.”
Despite herself, Chloe laughed.
The sound surprised both of them.
Then a nurse entered with a wheelchair.
“Ms. Henderson?”
Chloe straightened.
“Your blood pressure looks better. Dr. Grant says ten minutes.”
Chloe’s whole body went still.
“The baby?”
The nurse smiled.
“Would you like to meet your son?”
Chloe began crying before the nurse finished the sentence.
Arthur stood back.
He assumed he was not invited.
That was the consequence.
He had accepted it.
The nurse helped Chloe into the wheelchair.
As she reached the doorway, she looked over her shoulder.
Arthur stood beside the empty hospital bed.
She hesitated.
“You coming?”
He stared at her.
“If you want me to.”
“I don’t know what I want from you.”
“I understand.”
“But he should meet his father.”
Arthur nodded.
“Then I’m coming.”
The neonatal unit was warmer than Chloe expected.
Quiet too.
No dramatic rushing.
Just machines humming, soft alarms chiming, nurses moving carefully beneath dim lights.
Their son lay inside an incubator beneath a tiny knitted hat.
Chloe stopped.
“Oh.”
That was all she could say.
Arthur stood behind her.
Their son was so small.
Tiny fingers.
Tiny chest.
A diaper that looked impossibly large on him.
A breathing tube beneath his nose.
Chloe pressed her fingers to the plastic wall.
“Hi, baby.”
Her voice shattered.
“Mommy’s here.”
Arthur looked away.
The nurse opened one of the access ports.
“You can touch his hand.”
Chloe slid two fingers inside.
The baby’s hand curled weakly around the tip of her finger.
Arthur made a sound.
Chloe turned.
His eyes were wet.
“Come here.”
He did.
“Give me your hand.”
Arthur obeyed.
She guided one of his fingers inside the incubator.
Their son’s other hand closed around it.
Arthur froze.
The most feared man in half the city stood motionless because a three-pound baby had grabbed his finger.
“He’s strong,” Arthur whispered.
“He has to be.”
Arthur looked at Chloe.
“What do you want to name him?”
She blinked.
“You’re asking me?”
“I missed seven months. You’ve earned naming rights.”
“That is not how children work.”
“I’m new.”
Chloe looked back at the baby.
She had carried a list in her purse for weeks.
Most names suddenly felt wrong.
Then she thought about the night.
About surviving.
About second chances that did not erase first mistakes.
“Daniel.”
Arthur nodded slowly.
“Daniel Henderson?”
She looked at him.
“Daniel Henderson Romano.”
Arthur swallowed.
“You’d give him my name?”
“One of them.”
“Why?”
“Because pretending you aren’t his father would be another kind of lie.”
Arthur looked at their son.
“Daniel Henderson Romano.”
The baby tightened his grip.
Arthur smiled.
“Daniel it is.”
Three days later, Vivien Croft asked to speak with Chloe.
Arthur said no.
Chloe said yes.
They argued for twelve minutes.
It was the first normal argument they had ever had.
“You nearly died because of her family.”
“I know.”
“She insulted you in front of a cathedral.”
“I remember.”
“She was marrying me.”
“I remember that too, Arthur.”
His mouth closed.
Chloe adjusted the blanket over her legs.
“Ten minutes. Door open. Security outside.”
“No.”
“Then I’ll ask Leo.”
Arthur stared at her.
“You wouldn’t.”
Chloe reached for her phone.
“Fine.”
Vivien arrived one hour later.
Without the wedding gown and diamonds, she looked different.
Smaller.
Younger.
Exhausted.
Her father was in custody.
Several Croft businesses had been frozen.
Her engagement had become the most spectacular public humiliation in Chicago society.
Yet when Vivien entered Chloe’s hospital room, Chloe felt no triumph.
Only curiosity.
Vivien sat.
For several seconds, neither woman spoke.
Finally Vivien said, “I knew there was a plan.”
Chloe’s expression hardened.
“But?”
“I didn’t know about the poison until that morning.”
“And you still walked down the aisle.”
Vivien looked at the floor.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“My father spent my entire life teaching me that obedience was survival.”
Chloe said nothing.
Vivien’s mouth trembled.
“He picked my schools. My friends. My clothes. Every man I ever dated was investigated. When he told me I was marrying Arthur, I thought…” She laughed bitterly. “I thought at least Arthur would leave me alone.”
“You were going to marry someone hoping he ignored you?”
“You don’t understand my family.”
“No.”
Chloe’s gaze sharpened.
“But I understand fear.”
Vivien looked up.
“I wanted to warn him.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I was afraid.”
Chloe absorbed that.
She had risked her baby’s life because she had been afraid Arthur would die.
Vivien had almost let Arthur die because she was afraid of her father.
Fear did not create character.
It revealed it.
“Did you know before I entered the cathedral?”
“Yes.”
Chloe nodded slowly.
Vivien started crying.
“I’m sorry.”
“That won’t undo anything.”
“I know.”
“My son was born nine weeks early.”
Vivien shut her eyes.
“I know.”
“He is breathing through tubes because I ran through a storm to stop something you could have stopped by saying one sentence.”
“I know.”
Chloe watched her.
There was no satisfaction in destroying a person already staring directly at her worst choice.
“You should testify.”
Vivien’s head snapped up.
“Against my father?”
“Against everyone.”
“He’ll never forgive me.”
Chloe’s voice became calm.
“Then perhaps the first decision of your adult life should not depend on whether your father forgives you.”
May you like
Vivien stared at her.
That sentence seemed to enter somewhere deeper than anger could.
