Chapter 5

Maya POV

Consciousness returned in jagged waves, bringing with it the sterile sting of antiseptic and the muffled sound of weeping.

My head throbbed, a dull, rhythmic hammer striking against my skull.

I forced my eyes open.

My mother was sitting by the bed, her face buried in her hands, her shoulders shaking.

"Mom?" The word scraped against my dry throat like sandpaper.

Her head snapped up. Her eyes were rimmed with raw, swollen red.

"Maya!" She lunged forward, grabbing my hand and squeezing it with a desperation that almost hurt. "Oh, thank God."

She brushed a stray lock of hair away from my forehead. My skin felt tender, and my fingers grazed the rough texture of a bandage.

"What happened?" she whispered, her voice trembling. "The news... they said you fell."

"I didn't fall," I said. My voice was raspy, but the clarity of the memory was razor-sharp. "He pushed me."

Mom's face hardened, grief instantly calcifying into anger. "Liam?"

I nodded. A single tear slipped out, hot and stinging against my cheek.

"He pushed me to protect her. He shoved me aside to save his mistress."

I told her everything. The necklace. The party. The baby.

I didn't cry. I was past crying. I had cried enough tears for a lifetime in the span of one night.

A strange, icy calm settled over me, numbing the physical pain.

Mom shot to her feet, her hands trembling with rage. "I'm going to kill him. I'm going straight to the police."

"No," I said.

She froze. "Maya, he assaulted you!"

"If we go to the police now, he'll bury us in litigation," I said, my voice flat. "He has the money. He has the power. He'll drag this out until we're bankrupt and broken."

I pushed myself up, gritting my teeth against the sudden wave of dizziness.

"I don't want his money. I don't want his apology."

I looked my mother dead in the eye.

"I want to disappear. I want to vanish before he even realizes the extent of what he's lost."

Mom looked at me for a long, heavy moment. Then, slowly, she nodded.

"Okay," she said softly. "My nightingale. Wherever you go, I'm with you."

I spent a week in that hospital bed, watching the sun crawl across the linoleum floor.

Liam didn't come.

Not once.

Instead, he sent flowers. Huge, ostentatious arrangements that filled the room with the cloying, suffocating scent of a funeral parlor.

I told the nurses to throw every single one in the trash.

My lawyer came.

We drafted the papers efficiently. I waived my right to spousal support. I waived my claim to the Goldstein shares.

I wanted nothing that carried the stain of his name.

"He's shocked," my lawyer told me over the phone a few days later, his tone wary. "He's refusing to sign. He says he wants to explain."

"Tell him there's nothing to explain," I said.

Two days later, Liam formally requested a meeting.

My lawyer advised against it.

"I need to do this," I said, staring at the blank wall. "I need to look him in the eye and end it."

We met in a private conference room at the hospital.

I wore a simple white dress. No jewelry. No makeup to mask the ugly bruising blooming on my forehead.

Liam walked in. He looked haggard, his designer suit slightly rumpled.

He stopped dead when he saw me. His eyes locked onto the bandage.

"Maya," he breathed. He reached out, as if to touch a ghost.

"Sit down," I commanded.

He flinched at the glacial temperature of my voice. He sat.

"I'm so sorry," he started, the words tumbling out in a rush. "I didn't mean to push you. It was a reflex. Ava... she's pregnant, Maya. I was just scared."

"I know," I said.

He looked up, a flicker of hope in his eyes. "You know? So you understand? It's a mess, but I can fix it. I can set her up in an apartment. She won't bother us."

He was rewriting reality in real-time. He truly believed he could keep his wife and his mistress in separate, tidy boxes.

"You really believe that?" I asked. "You think I'm going to stay?"

"You love me," he said. It wasn't a question. It was an arrogant statement of fact, born of a lifetime of getting his way. "We have a history. You gave me your kidney, Maya. We are inextricably bound."

I reached into my purse.

I pulled out the blank check he had given me on our anniversary-the price tag he had put on my devotion.

I slid it across the table.

"I donated the amount to a women's shelter," I said. "In your name. It seemed poetic."

Liam stared at the check, his jaw tightening.

"You can't leave me," he said, his voice dropping. A threat masked as a plea. "You have nothing without me. You're just a former librarian."

"I'd rather be nothing than be yours," I said.

I stood up.

"Sign the papers, Liam. Or I release the medical records from the night of the party to the press."

He scrambled to his feet, panic finally flashing in his eyes.

"Maya, wait! Think about our future! Think about... think about the family we could have!"

He was grasping at straws, desperate to regain control.

"Don't you want children?" he shouted as I walked to the door. "I can give you a child! We can try IVF again!"

I stopped. My hand hovered over the cool metal of the door handle.

The cruelty of his offer took my breath away.

I turned slowly.

"We don't need IVF, Liam."

He frowned, confusion clouding his features.

"I was pregnant," I said.

The color drained from his face, leaving him ashen. "Was?"

"I terminated it," I said. My voice didn't waver. "Last week."

He staggered back as if I had physically struck him. "You... you killed my child?"

"No," I said. "I saved it from having you as a father."

"And by the way," I added, twisting the handle. "The baby has nothing to do with you anymore. It's gone. Just like me."

I walked out.

I didn't look back at the man crumbling behind me.

I walked down the sterile hallway, toward the exit, toward the sun.

I was broken. I was bleeding.

But for the first time in years, I was free.