Eleanor pushed herself off the sofa. Her legs trembled, and a wave of dizziness washed over her, a cruel reminder of her body's recent trauma. She braced a hand against the wall, waiting for the world to stop spinning.
She walked to the desk, her eyes sliding past the billion-dollar check as if it were a piece of trash. She pulled open the bottom drawer. Tucked beneath a stack of old stationery was a small, worn leather pouch. Inside was a fake passport with a name she'd never used, a burner phone, and a thick wad of cash—her entire life savings from before Damien.
She moved silently through the cavernous penthouse, a ghost in the house she had been a prisoner in for two years. In her bedroom, she shed the silk dress Damien had forced her to wear for the meeting and pulled on a pair of black jeans, a plain gray hoodie, and a dark baseball cap. She looked in the mirror and saw a stranger-a pale, gaunt woman with shadows under her eyes. She was invisible. Perfect.
She didn't take the main elevator. Instead, she slipped through the kitchen and into the service corridor, her sneakers silent on the concrete floor. The service elevator smelled of disinfectant and old food. It carried her down fifty floors to the underground garage.
Her car, a beat-up ten-year-old Chevrolet she'd bought with cash and registered under a false name months ago, was parked in a dark corner. It was an ugly, anonymous vehicle, a blemish in a sea of polished Bentleys and Ferraris. It was her chariot to freedom.
The engine turned over with a reluctant cough. She pulled out of the garage and into the sleeping streets of New York City. The city that had been her prison now offered the perfect camouflage, its endless maze of streets a promise of escape.
She drove not away from the city, but deeper into it, heading for the private maternity hospital on the Upper East Side. The Sterling family's hospital.
She parked two blocks away, in a dark alley between a bakery and a laundromat. The air was cold, and she pulled the brim of her cap down low, burying her face in the collar of her hoodie. She walked quickly, her head down, just another anonymous shape in the city's late-night shadows.
She knew the hospital's layout by heart. She'd spent the last month of her pregnancy there, a prisoner in a luxury suite, and had used the lonely nights to plan. She bypassed the brightly lit main entrance and slipped through a side door used for laundry services, a door she knew was often propped open.
The fire escape stairs were cold and dark. She climbed, her breath coming in ragged gasps, her legs burning with the effort. She reached the fourth floor, the location of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat of terror and hope.
She peeked around the corner of the corridor. It was empty, save for a nurse, Maria Sullivan, who was walking away from her, pushing a cart toward the medication room. This was her chance.
Slipping from the shadows, Eleanor pushed open the heavy door to the NICU. The air inside was warm and smelled sharply of antiseptic. The only light came from the soft green and blue glow of medical monitors, their rhythmic beeps the only sound.
She walked directly to the two incubators in the far corner of the room, isolated from the others. Her sons.
Tears she had refused to shed in front of Damien now fell freely, hot tracks on her cold skin. She pressed her forehead against the cool plexiglass, her breath fogging the surface.
In the left incubator, Cody slept soundly. His breathing was even, his cheeks rosy. He was a fighter, strong and whole.
In the right, Leo was terrifyingly small. His tiny chest barely moved. Wires and tubes snaked from his frail body, connecting him to the machines that kept him alive. He was a fragile whisper of a life.
Her hand rested on the glass of Leo's incubator. It was cold, an unbreachable wall between them. A sob tore from her throat, a raw, animal sound of pure agony.
She knew she couldn't take him. Her meager resources, her life on the run-it was a death sentence for a child who needed constant medical care. The Sterling fortune could keep him alive. She could not.
The sound of the cart's wheels squeaking in the hallway jolted her. Time was running out.
She had to choose. It was a monstrous, impossible choice, a choice no mother should ever have to make.
She bit her lip until she tasted blood again, the pain a necessary anchor. She would save one. She had to save one.
With a final, heart-shattering look at Leo, she turned to the other incubator. Her hands trembled as she unlatched the side panel and reached in. Cody's skin was warm, his body a solid, living weight in her arms. She wrapped him tightly in a receiving blanket she had stuffed in her pocket.
As if sensing the separation, a tiny, piercing cry came from the incubator beside her.
Eleanor froze, her blood turning to ice. She whipped her head around. Leo was awake, his impossibly small fists flailing, his mouth open in a silent, desperate wail. He was fighting. He was calling for her.
For a terrifying second, she considered putting Cody back. Staying. Dying with them both.
But the footsteps in the hall were closer now.
Reason, cold and cruel, won. She leaned over Leo's incubator, pressing her lips to the cold glass, a phantom kiss.
"I will come back for you," she whispered, the words a sacred, desperate vow. "I promise."
Then she turned her back on her son.
Clutching Cody to her chest like a shield, she fled through a fire exit on the other side of the room. She ran down the stairs, her lungs screaming, her legs threatening to buckle. She burst out of the side door and into the cold night air.
Back in the car, she secured Cody in the infant carrier she'd installed in the back seat. Her hands were shaking so violently she could barely turn the key in the ignition.
The engine roared to life. As she pulled out of the alley, a deafening alarm began to shriek from the hospital, its red lights flashing, painting the night in strokes of panic.
Eleanor stomped on the gas. The old Chevrolet shot forward into the darkness.
She didn't look back. In the rearview mirror, the glittering skyline of Manhattan receded, and with it, the woman she used to be.
