Chapter 2 2

The silence in the Maybach had weight. It pressed against Denice's eardrums, filled her mouth, made every breath a conscious effort. She huddled against the door, as far from Jasper as the seat allowed, her knees drawn to her chest, her wet skirt clinging to her thighs.

She turned her head. Jasper's eyes were closed, his face tilted toward the window, the passing streetlights strobing across his cheekbones. He looked exhausted. He looked cruel. He looked like everything she'd spent five years trying to forget.

"Please." The word tore her throat. "Take me to the hospital. I need to see him. I need-"

His eyes opened. He didn't turn his head. "There's nothing you can do."

"I need to be there-"

"Be where?" Now he looked at her, and the contempt in his gaze was a physical blow. "In the hallway? Crying? Contaminating the sterile environment with your-" He waved a hand, dismissing her. "Useless sentiment."

Denice lunged for the door handle. Her fingers found the cold metal, yanked-

The locks engaged with a soft click.

Jasper's hand shot out, fingers closing around the back of her neck, pulling her back into the seat. His thumb pressed against her spine, a pressure point that sent sparks down her arms. He leaned close, close enough that she could see the faint scar above his eyebrow, the one she'd kissed when it was fresh and new and their secret.

"Listen carefully," he said, his voice pitched low, intimate in the worst way. "Without hematopoietic stem cells, your son will die. Not eventually. Soon. Weeks. Days." He released her, wiped his hand on his coat as if she'd contaminated him. "The hospital has nothing for you. I have nothing for you. Not yet."

The car turned onto the Long Island Expressway, leaving Manhattan behind. Denice watched the skyline shrink in the side mirror, her city, her life, her son's life, all of it receding into darkness. She pressed her fist against her mouth, biting down until she tasted copper.

The gates of the Montgomery estate opened with a whisper of hydraulics. Denice had been here once before, five years ago, for Elek's funeral. She'd worn black and stood in the back and felt Jasper's eyes on her like a brand, though he hadn't spoken a word.

The Maybach crunched over gravel, circling the fountain-a marble Neptune with his trident raised, water arcing from the tips-and stopped at the main entrance. The door opened. Jasper exited without looking back.

Denice's legs wouldn't hold her. She gripped the door frame, pulled herself upright, and stumbled onto the drive. The November air cut through her wet clothes. She followed Jasper up the steps, through doors held by silent staff, into a hallway that smelled of old money and lemon polish.

The study was exactly as she remembered. Dark wood. Heavy curtains. Bea Edwards Montgomery sat in a high-backed chair that resembled a throne, her silver hair coiled at her nape, her hands folded over a document thick as a phone book.

"Denice." Bea's voice was pleasant. Warm, even. The voice of a woman who'd never had to choose between rent and antibiotics. "Please, sit."

Denice remained standing. Her teeth had begun to chatter.

Bea smiled. She lifted the document, let it fall to the desk with a sound like a gavel. "Medical assessment. Legal contract. I've had my attorneys review it twice." She paused, head tilting. "You look cold, dear. Shall I have someone bring you tea?"

"I want to see my son."

"Your son is in the best possible hands." Bea's smile didn't waver. "Dr. Cromwell is monitoring him personally. But we need to discuss the future, Denice. Ansel's future."

She opened the document, turned it to face Denice. Denice saw blocks of text, signatures, medical terminology she recognized from her own abandoned training. Savior Sibling. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Umbilical cord blood harvesting.

"No." The word escaped before she could stop it. "IVF takes months. The hormones, the cycles-Ansel doesn't have-"

"Exactly." Bea closed the document with a snap. "Which is why we won't be using IVF."

Denice's head turned. Jasper stood in the shadows by the window, his face unreadable. He'd removed his coat, rolled his sleeves to the elbow. The veins in his forearms stood out, blue and precise, the hands of a surgeon, a man who made his living cutting into other people's bodies.

"Natural conception," Bea continued, as if discussing the weather. "Faster. More reliable. The Montgomery bloodline has always been... potent."

Jasper's jaw tightened in the shadows. The plan was barbaric, a medieval transaction that violated every ethical boundary he possessed as a physician. But the clinical reality remained a cold, hard fact: bone marrow matches were a numbers game, and Elek's son was rapidly running out of time. If this was the only guaranteed, immediate method to procure a viable donor... he would pay whatever moral price was required. He kept his silence, his lack of objection a tacit, heavy agreement.

Denice laughed. The sound startled her, high and broken, escaping from a throat raw with suppressed screams. "You want me to-to sleep with my dead husband's brother? For a-a breeding program?"

"I want you to save your son's life." Bea's voice hardened. "And I want you to understand the cost of refusal." She reached for a second document, thinner, stamped with the seal of New York-Presbyterian. "This is the funding agreement for Ansel's private suite. The specialized nursing. The experimental protocols." She held it over the wastebasket. "One phone call, Denice. One signature, and your son moves to the charity ward. Shared rooms. Overworked staff. The kind of place where children die of infections they shouldn't have caught."

Denice's knees buckled. She caught herself on the chair arm, lowered herself into the seat. The leather was cold through her wet skirt.

Bea extended a pen. Montblanc. Black resin, gold trim. The kind of pen that cost more than Denice's monthly rent.

"Sign," Bea said. "Then go upstairs. Shower. Prepare yourself." She glanced at Jasper, still standing in shadow. "My son will join you when you're ready."

Son. The word echoed wrong in Denice's skull. Jasper wasn't Bea's son. He was Elek's twin, born seven minutes later, denied the inheritance by accident of birth order. But Bea had always claimed them both, owned them both, and now she was offering Denice to him like a dish to be consumed.

Denice took the pen. Her fingers shook so badly she could barely form the letters. D-e-n-i-c-e. C-o-p-e-l-a-n-d. The ink blurred where her tears fell.

Bea retrieved the document, examined the signature, nodded. "Martha will show you to your room." She rose, paused at the door. "And Denice? Don't keep him waiting. Time is, as you've noted, in short supply."

The door closed. Denice sat alone in the study, the pen still in her hand, her signature drying on the page. She didn't remember standing, didn't remember following the housekeeper up the stairs, down a hallway lined with portraits of Montgomery ancestors who all seemed to be judging her with the same green eyes.

The room was beautiful. Four-poster bed, silk sheets, a bathroom larger than her entire apartment. The door clicked behind her. The lock turned.

Denice stood under the shower until her skin turned pink, then red. She scrubbed with soap that smelled of jasmine, the scent Elek had preferred, the scent that made her want to vomit. She wrapped herself in a robe that cost more than her car and sat on the edge of the bed, her wet hair dripping onto the silk, and waited.

The lock clicked at 11:47. She knew because she'd been staring at the antique clock on the mantel, watching the minute hand jerk forward in mechanical increments.

Jasper entered without knocking. He wore black silk pajama pants and nothing else. The scar she'd seen in the shower-long, jagged, running from his left shoulder blade to his ribs-caught the lamplight. She knew that scar. She'd traced it with her fingers, her tongue, had pressed her cheek against the jagged ridge of it and felt the deep, steady warmth of his body and the rhythmic rise and fall of his breath.

He didn't look at her. He moved to the window, drew the curtains, extinguishing the view of the fountain. "Get on the bed."

Denice didn't move. "You don't have to do this."

He turned. In the dim light, his face was all planes and shadows, beautiful and terrible. "I don't do anything I don't choose to do." He crossed to the bed, stood over her. "Unlike some people."

He reached down. His fingers found the belt of her robe, pulled. The silk parted. The air was cold on her skin. She crossed her arms over her chest, a futile gesture of modesty that made him smile-that terrible, empty smile.

"Covering yourself?" He leaned close, his breath warm against her ear. "After everything you've sold?"

He pushed her back. The mattress absorbed her weight, swallowed her. He followed, knees bracketing her hips, hands pinning her wrists above her head. His body was heavy, hot, familiar in every cell of her skin. She turned her face away, bit her lip until she tasted blood, and endured.

There was no kiss. No whispered name. No tenderness of any kind. He moved with the efficiency of a medical procedure, clinical and detached, and when it was finished he rolled away immediately, his back to her, the scar a pale ridge in the darkness.

Denice lay still, staring at the ceiling, her body aching, her lip throbbing. She thought of Ansel, of the cells dividing in his marrow, of the child that might be conceived tonight, of all the ways love could be twisted into something unrecognizable.

She didn't sleep. Neither did he.