Chapter 2

A gasp tore out of me as I sank to my knees, my hands scrabbling desperately across the icy tile in search of that small white pill. I couldn't do without it. My chest felt like it was folding in on itself, and the edges of my vision had already begun to blur into darkness.

Edmund seized my shoulders and hauled me upright without any gentleness. "I'm talking to you, Camila! What are you doing with antidepressants? You were supposed to have moved past all this by now!"

"I can't... I can't get air," I managed between gasps, my whole frame shaking uncontrollably. Panic was rising over me like water closing over my head. "Edmund, please—just let me look for it. Please..."

He made a disgusted sound, his grip clamping down harder until his fingers pressed into skin already bruised from earlier. "Is this some kind of game to you? Another performance just to pull my attention back to you?"

"It's not fake!" I wept, my jaw trembling too hard to hold my teeth still. "I swear, this is real—the pain, it's real—please!"

"Enough of this!" His shout bounced sharply off the antiseptic walls around us. "You're putting on a show again, Camila. It's been an entire decade since we lost that baby. Ten years. Isn't it time you finally grew past this?"

Those words cut into my throat like broken glass. Grown past this.

The tears came freely now, and I sank down the wall until I was on the floor once more. "I only want to know where he's resting," I pleaded, fisting my hand into the fabric of his tailored coat. "Please, Edmund. Just give me that much—tell me where my son was laid to rest. Nothing more. Please..."

He gazed down at me, and whatever remained of warmth in his face hardened into something I no longer recognized. Bending close, his voice dropped into a low, menacing murmur.

"Keep up this hysterics for one more second," he warned, "and I'll pull the funding for your mother's treatment before the day's out. As for your sister—one phone call, and I'll see to it her modeling career doesn't survive the morning. Is that truly what you want?"

The breath left me entirely. My mother's care, which kept her alive. My sister's one and only dream. He held both of them in his fist, ready to crush them simply to bend me into submission.

"Please, no—don't," I whispered, my head shaking back and forth in desperation. "I'll stop. I'll be quiet, I promise."

"Better," he said flatly, smoothing down his suit jacket. "You're finished with those pills. You don't need them anymore. And there will be no divorce."

Through the blur of tears, I stared up at him, my chest still heaving with the effort of breathing. None of it made any sense to me anymore. "Why?" The word tore out of me, cracking apart as it left my mouth. "Why can't you just release me? You've got Vienna. You've got your heir on the way. Why keep holding on to me?"

A muscle worked in his jaw. He glanced away for the briefest moment before his eyes came back to mine. "Because I love you still."

Everything in me went still. Then a laugh broke loose from my chest, bitter and cracked down the middle. I shook my head slowly as the room began to spin around me.

"A man who loved me wouldn't have cheated," I forced out, the darkness now creeping steadily inward at the corners of my sight. Oxygen deprivation was already stealing the feeling from my arms and legs. "If this is love... then do me a favor and end it. Just kill me, Edmund..."

"Camila!"

His voice reached me as though filtered through deep water. The fluorescent lights overhead stuttered, the world tilted sideways, and then my eyes rolled back as the cold black finally swallowed me whole.

Consciousness returned slowly, my skull throbbing with each heartbeat. The sharp bite of antiseptic filled my nose. I found myself stretched across an unyielding hospital mattress in a room lit low and dim.

I attempted to push myself upright, but my limbs refused to cooperate, heavy as stone.

That was when voices drifted in through the door left slightly ajar.

"Are her vital signs holding steady?" Edmund's voice, clipped and impatient.

"Yes, Mr. Voss," came a doctor's answer, threaded with unease. "Though the panic attack was quite severe. She'll need her medication to keep the trauma under control—"

"No." Edmund's interruption was blunt. "She isn't to have that medicine."

"Sir, if she goes without it, the suffering will be considerable—"

"That's exactly the idea," Edmund said, and there was a cruelty lacing his words I had never once heard from him before. "Let her suffer. It's payment for costing me my heir."

My breathing simply stopped. I lay frozen in the darkness, unable to move, my heartbeat slamming against my ribs.

"Because of her," he went on, hatred saturating every syllable, "the CEO position slipped through my fingers. My own cousin took control of the company because I couldn't produce an heir in ten full years. She's the reason my entire life fell apart."

The doctor offered no reply at all.

"See that she stays alive," Edmund commanded coldly. "She doesn't get to die before her time. She owes me for every single thing she's taken from me, and she's going to pay it all back."

Sharp footsteps clicked against the hallway floor and came to a stop just beyond my door.

"Relax, Edmund. I've got her handled. She won't be doing anything foolish."

Whatever air remained in my lungs disappeared instantly. My blood turned to ice in my veins.

I recognized that voice. I had spent every year of my life shielding the person it belonged to.

Bianca. My own younger sister.

"You've kept her in line beautifully, Bianca," Edmund said, his tone easing into something warm with approval. "Nothing's tipped her off about the medical funds, has it?"

A light, careless laugh slipped from Bianca, and it sent a violent chill racing down my spine. "Camila's clueless. She still believes Mom's alive and recovering at that clinic in Switzerland. Keep the money flowing into my agency, and I'll keep writing Mom's letters for her."

"Good. And how's Vienna holding up?" Edmund asked.

"Resting comfortably," Bianca answered easily. "Told you it was a brilliant move, introducing my best friend to you. She's finally giving you the heir Camila could never manage."

I clapped a hand over my mouth, choking back the sob threatening to rip its way out of my throat.

My own sister. My own blood. The very person whose dreams I had just humiliated myself to protect.

She'd betrayed me completely. She was the one who had put Edmund and his mistress together in the first place.

And my mother—my mother had already been gone for years.