The concierge medical practice on East 70th was housed in a discreet white-stone townhouse Ash owned the whole of. The receptionist took one look at Tess and decided not to ask for an appointment confirmation.
Tess marched me into a back exam room and sat me on the table.
"Uncle Ash. Help."
The door from the inner office opened.
He was in a white coat over the same kind of tailored trousers I'd seen him in twice now. He was thinner. His face was set on its hardest setting.
He saw me. He stopped moving.
Tess didn't notice. She slapped the test stick down on the counter.
"She got knocked up by some loser. Get her checked. Schedule her for whatever she wants. Today, ideally."
The room compressed.
I stood up to leave.
Ash stepped past me to the door. He turned the deadbolt.
Click.
Tess froze. "Uncle Ash —?"
He pulled off the wire-frame glasses and set them on the counter.
He looked at me. Only at me.
"What loser."
I wouldn't meet his eyes.
Tess huffed. *"Does it matter? Some — "
He cut her off without raising his voice, his eyes still on mine.
"That loser…"
A beat.
"…is me."
Tess made a sound like a chair being pulled across a tile floor.
"What."
My face had gone hot in a way I hated.
"Christian. Don't be theatrical."
He stepped closer. He kept his voice low.
"I tried to come back every day. The Geneva photo was staged. The woman in the red dress is Margaret Chen. She's our lead audit attorney. The angle was sold to a Page Six freelancer."
I laughed without any humor.
"Why are you telling me this."
"Because you stopped picking up."
"And?"
His throat moved.
"And I was scared."
Tess clamped her hand over her mouth and her eyes went the size of dinner plates.
I held the line.
"I haven't decided to keep it."
The color went out of his face for half a beat.
He stepped back.
Not in retreat. He stepped back to give me air.
"All right."
I had not expected that to be his answer.
He said, "We get you examined first. Your body is the priority. The pregnancy is your call."
Tess muttered, "Uncle Ash. You actually count as a person."
The doctor on the second floor came down. Ash stayed in the corner, not in my line of sight, while she worked.
Six weeks. Embryo where it should be. Some risk of miscarriage given my recent stress markers.
When the word miscarriage landed, I saw Ash's hand close around the printout.
I saw it.
The thing in my chest that I refused to name softened a degree it had no business softening.
A fist hit the door from outside.
Helen Vance's voice. "Christian. Open the door."
He folded the report into my bag.
"It's all right."
The door opened.
Helen Vance and Maisie stood on the other side. Helen looked at me. Her eyes dropped to my abdomen, which was still flat under my coat. They came back up.
"Sloane. I'd like to talk."
Helen Vance didn't make a scene at the clinic.
She walked me two blocks to the Carlyle and into the tea room.
Ash tried to come.
She held a hand up.
"If you can't trust me with ten minutes alone, then she doesn't belong inside this family."
I sat down across from her at a small marble table and braced for the script.
I thought she'd slide me a check.
In every show I've seen, the rich mother slides a check.
She slid me a folder of medical records.
I opened it.
Christian Ashford Vance. Long Island Expressway. February 2023. Three rib fractures. Severe ulnar nerve damage to the right hand. Post-traumatic insomnia diagnosis from a Columbia neurologist.
Helen looked at her teacup.
"He was driving back from his father's memorial. He didn't know he'd been the youngest principal of Vance Capital for forty-eight hours when the truck hit him."
I frowned.
"Why are you showing me this."
"Because for three years he has been a machine. He runs his deals on time. He takes his medication on time. He turns down every woman his grandmother sets in front of him on time."
She lifted her eyes.
"Until you."
I didn't answer.
"I had you researched. You aren't a money girl. You aren't entirely indifferent to him either."
The accuracy of the read made me angry.
"Mrs. Vance. What is the point of this."
She slid a second folder across.
A prenatal care plan and a private security detail.
I went still.
"If you keep the child, the family takes care of you both. If you don't, I'll find you the best doctor in the country, and no one will ever know."
I stared.
"You're not pressuring me?"
She smiled at me like she had broken something a long time ago.
"I have pressured my son too many times. Every time, he steps further away."
A small pause.
"And one more thing. Maisie did not arrange Geneva. The photo was not me."
I went cold.
Outside the door, a voice was rising.
Maisie's. Pitched higher than I'd ever heard it.
"Aunt Helen — she's pregnant and you're accepting her? She's a paid actress —"
Then Ash, lethal-quiet.
"Who told you that."
"I —"
"The original of that contract is in my safe. There is exactly one photocopy."
The door opened.
Ash stood in the doorway with his eyes set to a temperature that should not exist indoors.
"Maisie. You went into my safe."
Maisie's face went chalk.
Helen stood up.
I put the pieces together.
The contract leak. The Geneva photo. The Page Six freelancer. The cropped angle.
Maisie had built every one of them.
She broke first.
"I just — I love him. I've loved him since I was nineteen."
He didn't even glance at her.
"Send her to the precinct."
Maisie made a sound like she'd been hit. "For her you'd ruin me?"
He took my hand. His palm was cold.
"Not for her."
He looked at Maisie.
"You touched something that was mine."
Maisie was charged within twenty-four hours.
The Sutton-Pierce family lawyers worked the phones overnight. Helen Vance held her line.
I thought we were done.
Jamie was waiting for me on the sidewalk outside my gallery.
He hadn't shaved in two days. He looked like a man who'd lost an argument with sleep.
"Sloane. We're divorcing."
I almost asked him to repeat it.
"You haven't been married two months."
He laughed without any color in it.
"After the wedding video, Lila wouldn't let it go. She kept asking me. I told her the truth."
I tried to step around him.
He blocked my path.
"I know you're pregnant."
My foot stopped where it was.
His eyes lit up like a man finding a wallet on the sidewalk.
"It's mine, isn't it?"
I looked at him. My stomach turned in a way that had nothing to do with the pregnancy.
"Jamie. You need a doctor."
He latched on like I'd thrown him a rope.
"You can't lie. You and Vance haven't even been together long enough — you loved me, you couldn't possibly —"
I slapped him.
I put my whole arm into it.
My palm rang.
He turned his face into the slap and smiled.
"See. You still care."
I was sick to my throat.
That was when Lila came running across East 64th.
She wasn't here for Jamie.
She came at me. Both hands. She was carrying a small water bottle, the cap off.
The smell hit before the bottle did. Industrial. Stripped-paint chemical.
Drain cleaner.
Jamie shouted "Lila —" a half-beat too late.
Something black came over my head and shoulders. A coat. A body in front of mine.
Liquid hit fabric. The fabric began to smoke.
Sidewalk pedestrians screamed.
Ash had me clamped to his chest. His breathing was uneven.
"Did it touch you?"
I shook my head against him.
He let go.
The right sleeve of his coat was pocked white where the cleaner had eaten through. The back of his right hand was livid red.
Security from the gallery had Lila pinned face-down on the concrete.
"It's all her fault!" she screamed. "If it weren't for her, Jamie wouldn't have left me!"
Jamie stood there with his mouth open.
He was finally understanding what his late-blooming sentiment had done.
The sirens came up the block.
As Lila was loaded into the cruiser, she fixed her eyes on my coat over my abdomen.
"He doesn't love you. The Vances will never let you have that baby."
Ash, very calm:
"Whether or not she has it isn't the family's call. It certainly isn't yours."
In the ER, he didn't speak.
I watched the doctor clean the burn on the back of his right hand. The skin was already cracked over the knuckle of his ring finger. The same hand the medical file had said was nerve-damaged.
I said, very quietly, "Does it hurt?"
He said, "No."
The doctor swiped antiseptic across the wound, and I watched his fingers grip the rail of the gurney until the knuckles went white.
I lost it.
"Christian. Stop being brave at me."
He looked at me.
"Then stop pushing me away."
I had no answer.
He said it lower.
"Sloane. I don't want you because of the baby."