Chapter 1

ESMERALDA'S POV

The ceiling tiles are water-stained. Sixteen of them. I've counted three times now, each number blurring through the haze of morphine and something darker, the kind of emptiness that no drug can touch.

My hand drifts to my abdomen, expecting the swell that's been there for sixteen weeks. Expecting the flutter of life that had just started to feel real. My fingers meet only flatness, surgical tape, and the thick wadding of bandages beneath the thin hospital gown.

Gone.

The word sits in my chest like a stone.

"Mrs. Voss?" A nurse appears beside my bed, her face professionally sympathetic. "How are you feeling?"

How am I feeling? The question is absurd. My baby is dead. My husband isn't here. I'm alone in a sterile room that smells like antiseptic and failure.

"Where's my husband?" My voice comes out cracked, barely recognizable.

The nurse's eyes flicker with something…pity?before she adjusts my IV line. "I'm sure he'll be here soon. You just rest now. The surgery went well, all things considered."

All things considered. As if losing my baby is just a minor complication.

She leaves, and I'm alone again with the water-stained ceiling tiles and the crushing weight of silence.

My phone sits on the side table, screen dark. I reach for it with trembling fingers, each movement sending sharp pains through my lower abdomen. The lock screen shows forty-three missed calls to Julian.

Forty-three times I tried to reach him.

Forty-three times he didn't answer.

I scroll through my call log like a masochist examining her wounds. The timestamps tell the story: 2:47 PM when the first cramp doubled me over. 3:12 PM when I was driving myself to the hospital. 3:45 PM from the ER waiting room. 4:30 PM when they were wheeling me into emergency surgery.

The last call was at 4:52 PM, right before they put me under. I remember the anesthesiologist's gentle hand on my shoulder, the cold rush of medication in my veins, and Julian's phone ringing into the void.

Now it's 9:17 PM. Five hours since they took our baby from my body.

Five hours of silence.

I pull up our text thread. The last message is from me, sent at

4:48 PM: Please. I need you. Something's wrong with the baby.

Read at 5:03 PM.

He read it. He fucking read it while I was on an operating table, and he didn't come.

A memory surfaces, unwanted but vivid: Julian six months ago, pressing me against his office desk after hours, his hands rough on my hips, his mouth hot against my neck. "You're perfect," he growled, thrusting deep. "My perfect wife."

I believed him then. Believed I was everything he needed.

Another memory: our honeymoon in Santorini, making love as the sun set over the Aegean, his fingers tangled in my hair, whispering promises against my skin. Forever. Always. Mine.

When did those promises turn to dust?

The door opens and my heart lurches—but it's just another nurse coming to check my vitals. Not Julian. Never Julian, apparently.

"Still no husband?" she asks, too kindly.

I have to look away. "He's probably just caught in traffic."

The lie tastes bitter, but what else can I say? That my husband has been distant for weeks? That he flinches when I try to touch him? That the man who used to worship my body now looks at me like I'm something he wants to escape?

The nurse doesn't call me on the lie. She notes something on her tablet and slips out quietly.

My hand finds my phone again. I should stop calling. I should have some dignity.

But my fingers are already dialing.

It rings once. Twice. Three times.

"Esmeralda." His voice is clipped, distracted. Background noise filters through—voices, laughter, the clink of glasses. He's at a restaurant. Or a bar. Somewhere warm and alive while I'm here bleeding and broken.

"Julian." My voice breaks on his name. "I lost the baby."

Silence. Long enough that I check to see if the call dropped.

"Julian?"

"I heard you." His tone is flat, carefully controlled. "These things happen, Esme. The doctor said it was a possibility with your condition."

My condition? What condition? I was healthy. The baby was healthy.

"I needed you," I whisper. "I called you forty-three times."

A pause. More laughter in the background high-pitched, feminine.

"I had meetings. Important ones. You know how crucial this acquisition is." His voice hardens. "I'm sorry about the baby, but we'll try again. You're young. We have time."

We'll try again. As if our child was a failed business deal.

"When are you coming to the hospital?"

"I can't tonight. This dinner is…it's critical. But I'll see you when you get home tomorrow, alright? We'll talk then."

"Julian—"

"I have to go. Rest. I'll have someone send flowers."

The line goes dead.

I stare at the phone in my hand. One minute and thirty-seven seconds. That's all my husband could spare for the death of our child.

The phone slips from my fingers, clattering against the bed rail.

Then the tears come hot, silent, devastating. Not gentle crying, but the kind of sobs that rip through your chest and leave you gasping.

A nurse finds me like that an hour later, gives me something to help me sleep. But even drugged into unconsciousness, I dream of Julian's voice cold, distant, already gone.

And when I wake at 3 AM to an empty room and the ghostly ache of my hollow womb, I understand with crystalline clarity:

I am alone.

I have always been alone.

The water-stained ceiling tiles blur above me. Seventeen. I miscounted.

Everything in my life is wrong, and I don't know how to make it right.

But somewhere in the chemical haze of grief and medication, a small voice whispers: *Maybe it was never right to begin with.*