Scars Of His Ruthless Contract Pregnancy

The crystal chandelier above Denice Copeland's head cast fractured light across the white tablecloth, each prismatic shard reflecting a different angle of her forced smile. She kept her hands folded in her lap, fingers digging crescents into her palms, while Arthur Fletcher droned on about his yacht in Long Island Sound.

"Thirty-two feet, custom teak deck," Arthur said, his tongue wetting his lower lip. He reached across the table, his hand hovering over hers. "You should see it in the summer, Denice. The sunset-"

She shifted her hand to the water glass, ice clinking against crystal. The cold numbed her fingertips. "That sounds lovely, Arthur."

His eyes dropped to her collarbone, then lower. She felt the weight of his gaze like oil sliding down her skin. The salmon on her plate had gone gray at the edges. She hadn't touched it.

The maître d' stood at the entrance of Le Bernardin, his spine rigid, hands clasped behind his back. When the heavy mahogany doors swung open, a gust of November wind swept through the dining room. Conversations dimmed. Heads turned.

Denice didn't look up. She was counting the seconds until she could claim a migraine and escape to the subway, to her apartment that smelled of mildew and the neighbor's cooking.

Then she saw the shadow.

It fell across her table, long and angular, cutting through the fractured light. Black wool coat. Italian leather shoes that struck the marble with a sound like judgment. Her heart seized, a fist closing around the muscle, squeezing until her vision spotted at the edges.

She knew that walk. She knew the set of those shoulders, the angle of that jaw.

Jasper Garrison Montgomery stopped three feet from her table. The chandelier caught the planes of his face-Elek's face, but harder, carved from something colder than marble. The same green eyes, but where Elek's had held warmth, Jasper's held nothing. Ice over deep water.

Denice's water glass slipped. Her fingers had gone numb, trembling, the surface rippling in concentric circles that matched the chaos in her chest. She couldn't breathe. The room had lost its oxygen.

"Mrs. Montgomery." Jasper's voice was low, pitched for her ears alone. He didn't look at Arthur. He didn't look at the room. His gaze pinned her to the chair like a specimen under glass. "I have news about your son."

Arthur cleared his throat, sitting straighter, his chest puffing with indignation that smelled of expensive cologne and insecurity. "Excuse me, this is a private dinner-"

Jasper's eyes flicked to him. One look. That was all it took. Arthur's patronizing smile froze. He recognized the man-Jasper Montgomery, a name that carried the weight of a warning in this city. He opened his mouth, trying to salvage some semblance of pride, but under Jasper's glacial stare, the words died in his throat. He prudently snapped his mouth shut, sinking back into his seat as his posture shifted from arrogant display to rigid self-preservation.

Jasper leaned forward, both hands flattening against the white linen. The distance between them collapsed. She could smell him-antiseptic and something darker, something that triggered a Pavlovian ache in her sternum. His breath warmed her ear.

"The bone marrow registry," he said, each word precise as a scalpel. "No matches. Terminal failure."

The glass fell.

It didn't shatter-the tablecloth was too thick-but the sound cracked through her skull like a gunshot. Ice water exploded across her lap, soaking the cheap polyester skirt she'd bought for this date, the one that was supposed to help her make rent. She didn't feel it. Her blood had turned to slush in her veins, heavy and slow, freezing her from the inside out.

Ansel.

She tried to speak. Her throat had closed, a fist of panic gripping her windpipe. She couldn't get air. The room tilted, the chandelier spinning into a kaleidoscope of meaningless light.

Jasper straightened. His expression didn't change. He might have been discussing a stranger, a patient he'd never met, a case file closed and filed away.

"The leukemia cells are infiltrating his organs," he continued. "Liver, spleen. He's bleeding internally. Without intervention-"

Denice stood. The chair scraped backward, a shriek of wood against marble that turned heads at neighboring tables. She didn't care. She grabbed her bag, the strap digging into her shoulder, and stumbled toward the exit. The hospital. She had to get to the hospital. She had to-

A hand closed around her wrist.

The heat of it shocked her. Five years of absence, of memory buried so deep she'd convinced herself it was dead, and his palm still fit the same, still burned the same, still triggered the same cascade of neural fireworks in her skin. She jerked against his grip, but his fingers tightened, bones grinding, pulling her back toward his chest.

"Let go-"

"Mrs. Montgomery." Arthur had found his voice, rising unsteadily from his chair. "Do you need assistance? Should I call-"

Two men in black suits materialized from the shadows by the door. They didn't touch Arthur. They didn't need to. They simply stood, shoulders squared, blocking his path. Arthur sat back down.

Jasper didn't look back. He was already moving, his grip on Denice's wrist propelling her forward like a leash. She tripped on her wet skirt, caught herself, her free hand flailing for balance. The maître d' stepped forward, opened his mouth-

Jasper's eyes found his. The maître d' retreated.

The automatic doors hissed open. November air hit Denice's face like a slap, carrying the smell of exhaust and distant rain. Her hair whipped across her eyes, blinding her. She couldn't see the street, couldn't see the black Maybach idling at the curb with its hazard lights pulsing like a warning.

Jasper yanked the rear door open. His hand shifted from her wrist to the back of her neck, not gentle, not cruel-simply efficient, the way he might handle a patient resisting anesthesia. He pushed.

She folded into the leather seat, her bag tumbling to the floor. The door slammed. The sound was final. Absolute.

Through the tinted glass, she watched Arthur's face shrink in the restaurant window, pale and confused and already forgetting her. The Maybach pulled into traffic. The divider between front and back seats was raised, a wall of privacy glass that reduced the driver to a silhouette.

Denice pressed her palm against the window. Her breath fogged the glass. She watched Manhattan blur past, the hospital in the opposite direction, her son dying in a sterile room she couldn't reach, and the man beside her-she couldn't look at him, couldn't bear to see Elek's face on this stranger's body-said nothing at all.