But I couldn't let myself black out. The pain low in my belly was wrong, too sharp to be anything ordinary, and Wallace wasn't coming back to take care of me. In a Family built on the word protection, there was no one to lean on but myself.

It took a long time before I could gather enough strength to grip the marble railing and pull myself up.

Afraid of what might come out of me on the way, I didn't dare send for a car or trust any of the soldiers posted at the gate. I walked to the hospital.

The night-shift nurse in the ER took one look at me, blood soaking my lower body, doubled over from the cramps, and rushed to get me admitted.

The doctor read through the chart from my visit earlier that day and clicked her tongue. "Honey, who performs an amniocentesis at three weeks? The pregnancy hadn't even settled yet. Your uterus was already irritated and contracting, and then you fell down a flight of stairs. I doubt we can save the baby."

After the exam she came back furious, scolding me. "You've got some tolerance for pain. Hemorrhaging like this and you wait this long? Do you have a death wish?"

I only let out a long breath and laughed. "Doctor, just go ahead and do the abortion."

From the moment I'd learned the truth, every second had filled me with revulsion toward the unfeeling thing inside me.

Gone. Good.

This child had come like a dream, and now I was awake, and it was over.

A day later I went home to the estate. Just as I'd expected, Wallace had carried Ivy off and hadn't come back since. No guard at the door asked where I'd been. No one in this house asked anything of the bride brought in on a blood-alliance.

The floor, the bed, everything still bore the wreckage they'd left behind.

I stepped around the stains, ran into the bathroom, and scrubbed myself raw, dozens of times.

I kept thinking I smelled of something. The moment things went quiet, the smell would swell until it was all I could sense.

The smell of a man. The smell of a dead child. As if no amount of washing could ever get it off.

I broke. I hurled everything to the floor and sobbed with my face pressed down into the tub.

As the water closed over me and my breath ran out, I thought of my parents.

Back when I learned I'd be married off to Wallace to seal the pact between the Pruitt and Baxter bloodlines, I'd been beside myself with joy. I chose every piece of my dowry myself; my father paid for all of it. Only the folder at the very bottom had been placed in my hands by them.

I remembered the day I left to be married, my mother handing it to me.

"Dora, I know this union has its purpose, what it buys the Family. But your father and I still hope you'll be happy. And if the day ever comes when you aren't, remember, your blood is always your way back."

"If it's possible, we hope you never open it."

I stood up and ran to the study, digging out that folder.

Inside was a dissolution of the alliance my parents had drawn up for me, a way out drafted in advance. By some means I didn't know, my father had already gotten Wallace to put his name to it. The division of everything protected my interests one hundred percent. That was Ned Pruitt. He had foreseen this house for what it was long before I ever set foot in it.

Without a flicker of hesitation, I signed my name.

The pen had barely lifted when Wallace called, his voice careful. "Are you... all right?"

My tone was flat. "Is there something I should be?"

"Good, as long as you're fine. The other day was my fault, I shouldn't have yelled at you. I just lost my head when I saw Ivy hurt, that's why I said those harsh things."

"I went back to find you afterward, and you'd already gone, so I figured you must be okay."

That thin, coaxing note in his voice, coaxing and resentful both, made me want to laugh.

"Is there anything else?"

Two cold words from me and his patience snapped right back. "I already apologized, what more do you want? Don't tell me you did nothing wrong. I'm calling to tell you that Ivy says she forgives you for shoving her that day. She's even inviting you to the auction, the underground den down by the wharf. They want to put together a gift to congratulate you on the pregnancy."

"Unbelievable. The belly's barely showing and the temper's already up. Could you try learning something from Ivy for once?"

I stayed silent at my end of the line.

When I said nothing, Wallace ran out of steam, and his tone softened.

"All right, enough. Ivy hurt her leg, I'm here looking after her. I'll send the driver to pick you up in a bit."

I'd barely set the receiver down when Ivy's message lit up the screen.

"Sis, don't you dare skip out on me. I've got a special little gift waiting just for you!"

"Those late-night photos of you and the four of us? They're going up as the grand finale lot at the den tonight. Crystal-clear. Totally uncensored~"

Then came the pictures. Dozens of them, one after another. Pictures of me.

My phone started ringing on top of it all, the ringtone shrieking like a man come to collect a debt that could only be paid in blood.

I flinched so hard the phone hit the floor, and something inside me dropped with it.

Every scrap of courage the dissolution pact had given me crumbled.

I'd been so naive. I'd actually believed that ending the pregnancy and burying the past would close the door on all of it.

It wouldn't. Wallace, Ivy, and those two men would hold on to me with everything they had, dragging it back, reminding me every single hour. Omertà cut both ways. They would never let me go quietly. It would never be over.

Shaking all over, I knelt and picked up the phone, and called my father's estate.

That warm, familiar voice came down the line, asking if I'd been eating well, dressing warm, if anyone under the Baxter roof had been treating me badly, and the tears just broke loose. I told them everything, start to finish, every last thing.

In the end I begged through the crying. "Papà, can I break the union now? Can I come home? I can't stay with him anymore!"

When my father had heard it all, a trembling breath came back over the line. In the quiet behind it I could almost hear the soft clink of a bottle, the grappa he poured when something had to be settled.

"Dora, tesoro, you've suffered enough. A car will come for you tonight. The Family will handle the rest. Just come home and get some real sleep. Everything's going to be all right."

Wallace's driver came first. I handed the soldier a file and told him to take it on ahead to the den.

Then I got into the car going home, the ringtone slicing through the quiet, on and on.

Wallace. Those two words kept buzzing across the screen. I pulled the SIM card out and threw it from the window into the dark.

The auction at the underground den was nearly over and I still hadn't shown. Wallace's face had gone darker by the minute, the men around him going still the way men do when the heir-apparent's mood turns, and only now did his soldier finally bring the file over.

"Half the night gone, no wife, and what I get is a sheet of paper?" He let the words hang, and the table held its breath.

The soldier's head dipped lower and lower. "It's... it's true, sir. Madam said what's inside is something she wants. She asked you to keep an eye on it for her. She said she'd be along a little later."

A doting little laugh curved at Wallace's mouth. He glanced sideways, the way he always did, hunting for someone to share the cruelty of it. No one met his eyes. His long fingers slowly slid the file open.

Two words met his eyes, and the smile froze on his face.

Dissolution pact.

At that exact moment, the auctioneer struck the gavel twice across the smoke-thick room. "And now, the final lot of tonight's wager..."