The black SUV hummed smoothly as it crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. Inside the cabin, the silence was suffocating, thick enough to choke on.
Karson sat rigidly in his corner. He had placed noise-canceling headphones over his ears, piping in a dry, monotonous Wall Street financial brief. He kept his eyes shut, deliberately building a sensory wall to block out the woman sitting three feet away.
On the other side of the seat, Hazel was fighting a losing battle against her own body.
Serena had fallen fast asleep, her head resting heavily against Hazel's chest. The adrenaline that had kept Hazel going through the confrontation with Ermina, the paparazzi, and Karson was finally crashing.
A deep, physical exhaustion seeped into her bones.
The dead weight of the sleeping child pulled constantly at Hazel's arms. Her bicep muscles began to tremble involuntarily. The dull ache started in her wrists and slowly crept up to her shoulders, turning into a sharp, burning sensation.
She adjusted her grip, trying to relieve the pressure, but it only made the muscles spasm.
The SUV hit a sudden, harsh speed bump. The heavy vehicle bounced.
Serena shifted in her sleep, whining softly as she threatened to wake up.
Panic flared in Hazel. She didn't want Serena waking up in this tense, hostile environment. Instinctively, Hazel clamped her arms tighter around her daughter, absorbing the shock of the bump with her own body.
The sudden, violent contraction of her exhausted muscles was too much.
A sharp, breathless groan slipped past Hazel's tightly pressed lips. It was a tiny sound, barely a whisper of pain.
But in the dead silence of the car, it was enough.
The tiny sound was completely swallowed by the active noise cancellation of Karson's headphones. But as he reached up to adjust the volume dial, he caught a sharp, erratic flicker of movement in the polished reflection of the privacy divider.
His brow twitched. He snapped his eyes open, turning his head sharply, expecting to catch her putting on another pathetic act for his benefit. Instead of a performance, his eyes landed on her trembling frame.
Hazel wasn't looking at him. Her face was pale, her skin slick with a thin layer of cold sweat. She was biting her bottom lip so hard it was turning white, her arms shaking violently as she stubbornly held the heavy child.
The passing streetlights flickered through the tinted windows, casting harsh shadows across her face. She looked fragile, exhausted, and incredibly stubborn.
Karson stared at her trembling arms.
Suddenly, a violent spasm seized his chest.
It wasn't an emotion. It was a physical strike. His heart hammered against his ribs, skipping a beat before racing out of control.
Without warning, a jagged, terrifying image flashed across his retinas.
A crushed car. Shattered glass glittering in the rain. Hazel, her face covered in dark, wet blood, her eyes staring blankly into nothing.
The image vanished as fast as it appeared, leaving Karson gasping for air. A phantom pain ripped through his sternum, so sharp he instinctively raised his hand to press against his chest.
His breathing turned shallow and erratic. What the hell was that?
Hazel felt his gaze. She snapped her head toward him. Her eyes were wide, fierce, and highly defensive, like a mother leopard ready to attack if he dared to criticize her.
The raw hostility in her stare acted like a bucket of ice water. Karson's rational brain violently rebooted.
He dropped his hand from his chest. He ripped his gaze away from her, staring blankly out the window at the passing traffic.
It's just stress, he told himself frantically. Sleep deprivation. The board meetings. It's a hallucination.
He refused to acknowledge the bizarre urge he had just felt-the urge to reach across the seat and take the heavy child from her shaking arms. It was absurd.
To prove his indifference, Karson reached up and aggressively cranked the volume dial on his headphones to the maximum. He squeezed his eyes shut.
But the physical distance couldn't save him. The faint, clean scent of baby powder mixed with chamomile drifted across the leather seats, invading his lungs with every breath he took.
Hazel watched him practically vibrating with tension and rolled her eyes. She shifted her weight, gritting her teeth against the burning in her shoulders.
For the next thirty minutes, neither of them moved.
Finally, the massive wrought-iron gates of the Long Island estate appeared in the window. The SUV rolled up the long driveway and stopped at the base of the main steps.
The bodyguard pulled the door open.
Karson practically bolted from the vehicle. He stepped out into the cold night air, desperate to escape the suffocating, confusing atmosphere of that cabin.
Hazel slowly slid across the seat, her arms screaming in protest as she carried Serena out into the dark, bracing herself for whatever the King family had waiting for her inside.
