Chapter 3

Kiera POV:

I woke to the smell of antiseptic and the muted beeping of machines. A thin, grey light filtered through the blinds of the hospital room window, painting stripes across the sterile white sheets.

For a blissful, foggy moment, I didn't remember.

Then, I moved. A dull, aching emptiness in my womb sent the memory crashing back down on me.

My hand flew to my abdomen. It was flat. Devastatingly, irrevocably flat.

The baby was gone.

A single, hot tear escaped and traced a path to my pillow. Then another. And another. Soon, I was shaking with silent, wracking sobs, a grief so profound it felt like a physical weight crushing my chest.

He was gone. My baby, the one I had prayed for, the one I had loved with every fiber of my being from the moment I saw those two pink lines, was gone.

I thought of the years of trying. The condescending looks from Ethan' s mother, who' d made it clear she thought I wasn' t good enough for her brilliant son, and my "infertility" was just further proof. The child was supposed to be my olive branch, my way of finally securing a place in their cold, wealthy world.

Now, without the baby, I had nothing. I was nothing.

The door creaked open and Dr. Evans came in, his face etched with sympathy. "Mrs. Barlow. Kiera. How are you feeling?"

I couldn' t speak. I just shook my head, my hand still pressed against my empty stomach.

He sighed, a sound heavy with a weariness that went beyond a long shift. "I' m so, so sorry for your loss."

He checked my chart, his brow furrowing. "We tried to reach your husband again throughout the night. His phone was off. Has the... has the father of the child been notified?"

The question hung in the air. The father of the child. The man who had pushed me down the stairs. The man who had called my desperate pleas for help a "pathetic act."

A cold, hard fury began to burn through the fog of my grief.

"No," I said, my voice surprisingly steady. "The baby doesn't have a father."

Dr. Evans looked up from the chart, his expression confused. "But the records say... Ethan Carlson?"

"He' s not the father," I repeated, the words tasting like ash and iron. "He never was."

The doctor looked at me, then back at the chart, flipping through the pages. He was a kind man, but he was thorough. "I see here Mr. Carlson wasn' t present for any of your prenatal appointments."

The comment, meant to be an observation, was another twist of the knife. Ethan had been there for the first one, his eyes glued to the grainy black-and-white image on the screen. He' d even seemed happy, in his distracted, self-absorbed way.

But then Chanel had come back to town.

Suddenly, he was "swamped with work." A "critical board meeting" kept him from the twelve-week scan, the one where we heard the heartbeat for the first time. I went alone, listening to that tiny, thrumming rhythm, and cried in the car afterward.

I later saw a photo on Instagram. Chanel had posted a story from a rooftop bar downtown, a man' s arm with a familiar watch draped around her shoulder. The timestamp matched my appointment exactly.

He had lied. Again, and again, and again. I had found receipts for lunches I wasn't at, hotel rooms booked for "meetings" that were never on his calendar. Each discovery was a small cut, another chance I gave him, another promise I made to myself that I would leave if he did it again.

Five chances. That was the stupid, desperate rule I' d made for myself. Five major betrayals. The public proposal was the fifth. The push, the phone call... they were just the epilogue to a story that was already over.

I would not give him a sixth chance to hurt me.

"I want a divorce," I said, the words clear and cold in the quiet room.

I had given up everything for him. I came from a family whose name was etched onto the stone facades of libraries and museums across the East Coast, a world of quiet, old money that dwarfed Ethan's flashy tech fortune. But he' d been insecure about it, so I hid it. I became Mrs. Kiera Carlson, the supportive, unassuming wife. I cut off friends he found intimidating. I decorated our home to his taste, learned to cook his favorite meals, suppressed my own ambitions to fuel his.

For three years, I had made myself smaller and smaller, hoping that if I took up less space, he would finally have room to love me.

It was a fool' s errand.

The doctor cleared his throat, bringing me back to the present. "Kiera, your insurance information isn' t on file. We need you to settle the bill for the emergency services and your stay before you can be discharged."

Of course. Ethan handled the insurance. He handled everything. And now, he was gone, and I was left to clean up his mess, just like always.

Slowly, painfully, I pushed myself into a sitting position. Every muscle screamed in protest. The emptiness inside me was a raw, gaping wound.

But for the first time in a very long time, I felt a flicker of something other than pain.

It was resolve.