Chapter 1

Seven years had passed since I purchased that small white casket meant for a child too young to have needed one at all.

I was only twenty-two then, still recovering from a pelvis shattered in pieces and an abdomen that had been hollowed out by surgery after surgery. I'd thrown my body across the console to shield Edmund in the instant before the truck slammed into us. He'd walked away with nothing worse than bruised ribs, while I lost my uterus and, along with it, our six-month-old son.

The grief pressed down on me until I could hardly draw breath. On the day they buried him—a day Edmund forbade me from attending, insisting I was too fragile to witness it—I slipped out of my hospital room anyway. Down in the morgue's basement I found an empty display casket, and I climbed inside it, hoping the darkness might simply close over me and never let go.

That was where Edmund found me. He hauled me out bodily, his tears falling onto the thin fabric of my gown.

"Camila, please, stop this," he had begged, holding me so tightly that my broken bones throbbed in protest. "Children don't matter to me. It's you I need. You're everything I have. Just—live, for my sake."

So I lived.

And three years after that, he got his twenty-four-year-old secretary pregnant.

"An heir is something the Voss family requires, Camila. This isn't news to you."

There wasn't a trace of unease in Edmund's tone as he flicked the glossy sonogram photograph across the kitchen island toward me. No shame colored his voice, no hesitation slowed him down—only the flat, businesslike certainty of a man closing a deal.

I found myself staring down at that grainy black-and-white image of the small curled shape inside it, and something inside my chest caved in, the old ache of my own lost child flaring back to life in my veins.

"Vienna's young, her body's cooperating beautifully," he went on, straightening his tie in front of the mirror without so much as glancing my way. "The moment the child arrives, we'll bring it into the house. It'll grow up calling you Mother. Practically a replacement for the one we lost."

A tremor started in my hands.

A replacement for the one we lost.

He'd said it with such ease, as though our dead son were nothing more than a faulty item he was finally getting around to swapping out. Every vow he'd whispered to me on that frozen morgue floor had turned to nothing but dust in that moment.

I didn't scream. I didn't weep. The sheer scale of the betrayal simply left me hollow.

Reaching into my bag, I drew out the divorce papers I had already signed that morning and pushed them across the cold marble.

"Just sign these," I said quietly. "I've only ever had one child, Edmund, and being his mother is the only thing I want to be. You and Vienna deserve each other—go live your perfect life together. I want my freedom. And I want you to finally tell me where my son rests."

For a decade he had kept that grave hidden from me, insisting it was for my own good, that knowing would send me spiraling into another breakdown. I had pleaded with him on my knees more times than I could count, asking only for the chance to leave a single flower at my son's resting place. Every single time, he'd refused.

Edmund seized the papers from the counter. His knuckles went bloodless as he tore them once, then again, scattering the pieces across the floor at my feet.

"Do you actually believe you can just leave me?" he snarled, closing the space between us. "Playing the wounded party now, are you, Camila? Fine—let's find out how badly you really want that grave."

His hand clamped around my arm hard enough to bruise, and he wrenched me out into the bitter Seattle downpour.

He kept driving until we arrived at the VIP wing of Seattle Grace.

Then he shoved me through the double doors of a luxury maternity suite, a room heavy with the scent of expensive vanilla mixed with sterile alcohol.

Vienna was stretched out on the plush hospital bed, picking at a bowl of imported grapes while she scrolled idly through her phone. She glanced up at us, and her mouth curved into a smile that was sweet on the surface and poisonous underneath.

"You actually brought her, baby?" she purred.

Edmund shoved me forward with enough force that I dropped to my knees at the foot of her bed.

"Listen closely, because I won't repeat this," Edmund said, his voice sinking into something cold and threatening. "You'll remain here. You'll wait on Vienna hand and foot. You'll see to it that she and my heir want for nothing. Do exactly as you're told until she delivers, and I'll finally tell you where your son is buried."

My breath caught in my throat. "Edmund—no. Don't do this."

"And if you say no," he continued, his gaze utterly devoid of warmth, "his grave will be paved over by morning."

He understood precisely which lever would break me.

So I turned myself into a shadow in that room.

Three days passed in which I swallowed every scrap of pride I had left. I brought Vienna her ice water. I rubbed her swollen ankles while she griped about the hospital's food. Silent and empty inside, I watched Edmund arrive with armfuls of roses, pressing kisses to her forehead, murmuring the same tender words that had once belonged only to me.

The air in that room felt thick enough to choke on.

By the fourth afternoon, Edmund was bent over the bed, his palm resting with easy familiarity against Vienna's stomach. She laughed, drawing his mouth down into a slow, deliberate kiss, and over his shoulder her eyes found mine, gleaming with triumph.

My stomach turned. Breathing became impossible.

I fled the room, shouldering through the heavy doors into the empty, frigid corridor beyond. The winter chill bit at my skin, but it did nothing to hold back the panic clawing up my throat.

My chest locked tight. The walls seemed to press inward from every side.

Fingers shaking, I fumbled through my coat pocket for my medication, desperate for anything that would silence the pain, anything that would erase the image of the two of them together.

I pressed a white pill free from its foil packet, my hand trembling so violently I could barely guide it toward my mouth.

That was when the suite door banged open.

Edmund stood framed in the doorway, his eyes lit with a rage that made no sense.

"What do you think you're doing?" he demanded.

Before I could get out a single word, he closed the distance in one stride. His hand struck my wrist.

The pill shot from my fingers, skittered across the icy hospital tile, and vanished into the shadows of the hallway beyond.