The budget hotel in Midtown smelled like bleach and stale cigarettes. Outside my window, the cheap neon sign buzzed all night long, blinking red against the cracked ceiling.
I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat.
Every time I looked at the nightstand, the divorce papers stared back at me. Crisp white paper. Fresh black ink. My own signature at the bottom, sealing away my children, my father’s name, and my entire life.
Whenever I closed my eyes, memories ambushed me. They had no mercy.
I remembered being five years old, sitting on an overturned bucket in the corner of my dad’s gym. Dad had carried a scrawny, ten-year-old Dominick inside from the cold Southie streets. The boy’s left shoulder was completely out of its socket. Dad rolled up a gray gym towel and shoved it between Dominick’s teeth.
"Bite down, kid," Dad had said softly.
Dominick bit down until his knuckles turned white, tears streaming down his bruised cheeks. But he didn’t scream. Dad popped the bone back into place with his thick, scarred hands. Dominick looked up, spitting out the towel, his eyes wide and wild. I had handed him a plastic cup of tap water. From that exact second, I was his shadow.
Years slipped by in cold basements. When we were teenagers, I wrapped his hands before every fight. I still remembered the scratchy white gauze, the sharp rip of athletic tape. I wrapped each knuckle tight, weaving the fabric between his long fingers. In the cracked gym mirror, his eyes caught mine.
"Don't worry," I had whispered.
"I'm not scared," he told me, his voice rough. "Not when you're in my corner, Lori."
I remembered standing outside a pawnshop on Washington Street when we were twenty. Winter wind cut through my thin jacket. Inside my pocket, my fingers clutched my mother’s pearl earrings. They were the only real jewelry she ever left me. I walked in, sold them for two hundred dollars, and ran to the parking lot. I stood under a flickering streetlight, counting the wrinkled bills twice just to be sure we had enough for Dominick’s first regional tournament fee.
I gave him everything I had. Every single drop.
And in the end, he traded it all for a slick suit and a pair of scissors to cut my throat.
The betrayal in Finnegan’s office hadn't been the start of it. The real knife had gone in four years earlier.
Back then, I was eight months pregnant with the twins. My body was completely broken. The doctor had ordered strict bed rest. That afternoon, my routine home monitor showed my blood pressure through the roof. My head pounded like someone was hitting my temples with a mallet. Black spots danced across my eyes.
I was terrified. I grabbed my phone and dialed Dominick.
It rang four times, then cut to voicemail.
I called again. Voicemail.
Panic crawled up my throat. He was supposed to be at a private media brunch. I had to reach him. So, with shaking hands, I dialed Solana Medina. She was his new personal assistant. Sweet-faced, soft-spoken, always smiling at him.
The phone rang twice.
Then it clicked.
"Dom?" I gasped out, clutching my swollen belly. "Dom, please, something’s wrong—"
I stopped.
No one answered me. The call had connected, but it wasn't on speaker. The phone rustled against fabric. Crisp hotel sheets.
Then came a woman’s breathy laugh. Solana.
"Dom, wait..." she whispered, her voice husky and teasing. "Your phone just buzzed."
A low, deep groan rumbled through the speaker. A voice I knew better than my own heartbeat.
"Forget the phone," Dominick murmured. His breath hit the mic, warm and heavy. "Look at me, baby. You're so good to me. Just like that."
The exact words he used to whisper against my neck in the dark.
My heart didn't just break. It detonated.
The shock hit my body like a physical blow. A violent cramp ripped through my lower stomach. It felt like someone had driven an iron hook into my womb and twisted it.
I gasped, dropping the phone. It clattered onto the hardwood floor of our Brooklyn kitchen.
I tried to stand, but my legs gave out. I slid off the kitchen chair and crashed down hard onto the floor. Pain blinded me. White-hot, tearing agony.
Between my thighs, a sudden rush of warmth soaked through my sweatpants.
I looked down. Blood. Thick, dark red blood was pooling beneath me, spreading fast across the pale oak planks.
Placental abruption.
"No," I choked out, clawing at the floorboards. "No, no, God, please..."
I reached for the phone, but my fingers were slick with sweat. Dominick was still on the other end, laughing softly with another woman, while our unborn babies were dying inside me.
Darkness crept in from the edges of my vision. I couldn't scream. My lungs wouldn't hold air.
Then, the heavy front door rattled.
Ruth Calloway, our seventy-year-old neighbor, was walking past on her way to the mailbox. She had seen the kitchen light flickering wildly through the front window.
"Lorelai?" her voice echoed from the hall. "Lori, is that you?"
She turned the corner into the kitchen and froze. The mail dropped from her hands, scattering white envelopes over the red floor.
"Oh, sweet Jesus," Ruth screamed.
She dropped to her knees beside me, pressing a kitchen towel against me with trembling hands. She yanked out her cell phone, punching three numbers.
"Stay with me, Lori!" she yelled, her voice breaking. "911! Send an ambulance right now! She’s bleeding out!"
I lay there on the cold wood, staring up at the white ceiling as everything went black.
My husband was tangled in hotel sheets. And my babies were slipping away into the dark.