Chapter 3 3

Eleonora folded the pregnancy report into the smallest possible square, sliding it into the Hermès Birkin's hidden interior pocket. The leather lining felt like a coffin lining, soft and final. She stood on the clinic steps, the November wind cutting through her trench coat, and watched yellow cabs splash through puddles at the curb.

Her phone screen showed full battery now, Jace's contact photo staring up at her- taken on their wedding day, his smile practiced, her own radiant and stupid. She should call. Should arrange a meeting, a conversation, some civilized forum for announcing their parenthood.

The Bloomberg article waited in her browser history, the photograph burned into her retinas. Jace's hand on Isabella's chair. Isabella's fingers on his arm. The pink diamond that would rest against her throat, cold and heavy, while Eleonora's anniversary roses wilted in a trash compactor somewhere.

She raised her arm. A taxi swerved to the curb, brakes squealing.

"Vestry Street," she said, sliding into the back seat. "Tribeca. The glass tower with the private entrance."

The driver nodded, adjusting his mirror to avoid her eyes. Traffic locked them on Fifth Avenue, the Met's steps crowded with tourists who had nowhere urgent to be. Eleonora watched a mother wrestle a stroller onto the sidewalk, the baby's face red with protest, and felt something crack in her chest.

Forty minutes later, the taxi deposited her before a building she had entered only twice before. Jace's private residence, his actual home, the place he retreated when the penthouse felt too crowded with her presence. She had never been invited. She had simply known the address, filed it away like all knowledge of him, hoarded and useless.

The security kiosk recognized her face, the algorithm matching her to spousal clearance. The guard's eyebrows rose, but he said nothing as the gate released. She crossed the marble lobby to the private elevator, her fingerprint activating the express ascent to the penthouse.

The car rose silently, floor numbers blurring. Her reflection in the brass doors showed a woman with wild eyes and colorless lips, a stranger wearing her skin. At the forty-seventh floor, the doors opened onto a corridor of subdued lighting, expensive silence, the particular hush of spaces where money had replaced noise.

The fingerprint lock accepted her print with a soft chime. She pushed the door six inches and stopped.

The living room stretched beyond, dimly lit by the city glow through floor-to-ceiling windows. No main lights. No presence she could see. But sound carried, delicate and devastating, from the far corner where a grand piano stood in permanent shadow.

Chopin. Nocturne in E-flat major, opus nine, number two. Jace's favorite, the piece he played when troubled, when contemplative, when needing to remember who he was beneath the armor.

But Jace did not play like this. These hands belonged to someone trained, someone fluid, someone who had learned music as language rather than weapon.

Eleonora pressed her eye to the gap. Isabella Ramos sat at the bench, her back elegant in silk charmeuse, her fingers dancing across the keys with the ease of long practice. She paused, laughed, looked over her shoulder.

Jace approached from the bar, two crystal tumblers in hand, whiskey catching the ambient light. He wore his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow, his tie loosened, the informal uniform of a man at home. He handed Isabella a glass, and she accepted it, her fingers lingering on his.

"Your technique improved in Paris," he said. The voice Eleonora knew, the intimate register he had never used with her, warm as honey, dangerous as smoke.

"I had excellent motivation to practice." Isabella sipped, then set the glass on the piano's closed lid. She stood, turning to face him, and Eleonora saw the necklace. The Tears of Aphrodite, catching streetlight and lamplight and moonlight, a pink fire against Isabella's skin.

Jace's hand rose, not to push her away, but to cup her cheek. His thumb traced her jawline. His head bent. His lips brushed her temple, her hairline, the corner of her mouth in a kiss so tender it looked like prayer.

Isabella laughed again, that particular laugh Eleonora had heard in interviews, in viral videos, in her own nightmares. She tilted her head back, displaying the diamond, displaying her throat, displaying her victory.

Eleonora's fingernails drove into her palms, four crescent moons of pressure, then eight, then the wet warmth of blood. She felt nothing. The pain belonged to someone else, some other body in some other life.

Her bag slipped on her shoulder. The phone inside, neglected and dying, emitted its final warning: a sharp electronic chirp, the low-battery alarm cutting through Chopin's dying notes.

The music stopped.

Jace's head lifted, his eyes finding the door with predator precision. "Someone's there."

Eleonora stumbled backward, her shoulder hitting the opposite wall. The elevator doors stood open, blessedly open, the down button already illuminated from her arrival. She lunged inside, her finger stabbing the close button, the lobby button, any button that would move her away from this place.

The doors began to slide. Through the narrowing gap, she saw Jace appear in the apartment doorway, his expression shifting from surprise to something darker, something that might have been recognition. His mouth opened to speak.

The doors sealed. The car dropped, her stomach rising to meet it.

She did not breathe until the lobby. Did not think until the street. Did not feel until the Uber app failed to load, until she walked six blocks in heels that blistered, until she found a subway entrance and descended into fluorescent anonymity.

The train came. She boarded without checking its destination. Her hands, when she finally looked at them, showed four perfect semicircles of dried blood, her own flesh torn by her own rage.