“Amara—”
“Mr. Wynn! Miss Catrina just collapsed in the lobby!” Cole panted, breath coming fast.
Nathan shot out of the room as if the floor were on fire. I rose, but slowly — not from cowardice, from a cold, deliberate calm.
By the time I reached the corridor, he was on the marble, clutching Catrina to his chest like some tragic movie cliché. Panic painted his face in jagged strokes.
“Why is everyone standing around? Get a doctor here now!” he barked.
The staff scattered. Paramedics arrived in a flurry, and a squad of private physicians — the kind whose hourly rates made CEOs blanch — was ushered into Catrina’s suite. Within minutes Nathan hovered at her bedside, pacing like a bulldog in a failing board meeting.
“You told me she’d follow the regimen! Why did she pass out again?!” he demanded.
The lead physician, silver-haired and composed, gave the kind of practiced smile that never reaches the eyes. “Relax, Mr. Wynn. She’s fine. In fact — congratulations. Miss Catrina is two months pregnant.”
Silence fell, then something like triumph lit up his face as if he’d just signed an impossible deal. He grinned like a man who thought the world had finally bent to his will. I felt nothing but a cold clarity. I had seen enough.
I’d caught them—more times than the small lies they told. In the guesthouse at night. In an elevator when they thought the apartment was empty. Once, when I returned early from a checkup, I heard the soft, guilty laughter behind the guestroom door. I’d told myself comforting lies to survive: It’s stress, it’s hormones, he’s only venting, he still loves you. But love didn’t sound like a woman moaning his name while I clutched our unborn child in a pool of blood.
Now I watched him glow over a child that existed because of what they’d taken from me. Catrina curled against his shirt like a heroine in a soap; he kissed her temple and murmured things I didn’t want to hear. I said nothing. Knowledge, I’d learned, cuts deeper than any cry.
Mrs. Leclair swept into the suite, all pearls and polite malice. “My darling Catrina! Pregnant so soon? How radiant — our miracle!” She clasped Catrina’s hand like she was placing a crown.
Nathan’s face softened in the way it used to for me — that look that once made me feel chosen. I turned my back on them to keep from collapsing.
“Amara,” Catrina cooed from behind me, saccharine with a razor under its tongue. “Aren’t you thrilled for me?”
I paused. She knew exactly what she was doing — the small, smug tilt of satisfaction in her smile. Before I could speak, Mrs. Leclair — ever ready to deliver the final barb — supplied the cruelty I’d been bracing for.
“Oh, don’t play along,” she laughed. “She’s still sore about the whole…stair incident and the baby. Such a shame. The doctors say she may never carry again.” She tutted. “Catrina here? She gets results in one try. Now that’s a real woman.”
They both looked at me with that practised pity. I felt old, raw and ridiculous, and somehow obscene for wanting to live.
Then Catrina lowered her chin, and there it was — my mother’s necklace glinting against her throat.
The pendant. The last tangible thing I had of her: the chain my mother had given me, the piece I’d worn to her funeral and the one that had survived the car crash that took her. It had been with me through everything. And now it dangled on my enemy.
My stomach dropped. I stepped forward, voice thin. “Where did you get that?”
Nathan stepped between us like a shield. “Don’t start, Amara. She’s pregnant. Don’t make a scene over jewelry.”
“You know what that necklace means to me,” I said, voice breaking.
He looked away, flippant. “I’ll buy you another. I’ll get you a hundred.”
“That’s not the point!” I snapped. “It’s the only thing I have left of her.”
Catrina’s smile hardened into something cruel. With bored amusement she let the chain slip, letting the pendant fall once, then her heel came down on it. The metal snapped under the pressure of her Louboutin.
The sound was small, but it landed like a shot.
I moved before thought could bargain. My hand lashed out in a reflex the years of fury had sharpened. Her cheek reddened where my fingers met skin.
“You psycho bitch!” she shrieked, stumbling back.
Mrs. Wynn was on me in an instant. Her manicured hand grabbed my arm and shoved me hard against the wall — the shove of a woman who’d never been denied. “How dare you lay hands on her!” she spat. “No wonder you lost your baby — you probably staged the whole thing for attention!”
I swallowed for air as the words hit. Nathan yanked me away from his mother. For a heartbeat I thought — maybe finally — he'd defend me.
He didn’t.
Instead — the slap rang out, clean and brutal. My cheek burned. I tasted iron.
“You hit me,” I breathed, eyes wide.
His voice was cold as winter glass. “You touch Catrina again and I’ll kill you.”
