HIS FORSAKEN WIFE HIS GREATEST REGRET

Roberta's POV

"Someone help me!"

My voice ricocheted off the hospital walls. Ziva burned in my arms—five years old, skin like paper, breath shallow enough to stop my heart.

The nurse at the front desk set down her pen. Slowly. Like I was an interruption.

"Ma'am, please lower your"

"Don't." I slammed my palm on the desk. Ziva's head lolled against my shoulder. Her lips were pale. Her eyelids bruised purple underneath. "She had surgery. Something went wrong. She needs a doctor now."

The nurse's fingers hovered over her keyboard. "What kind of surgery?"

"Bone marrow transplant."

"Which hospital?"

The question landed like a slap.

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

"Ma'am. Which hospital performed the procedure?"

My throat closed. How do you explain that your husband took your daughter—your daughter—to save his bastard son and you weren't allowed to come? How do you say those words out loud without sounding like a monster?

"I don't know."

Both nurses looked up.

"You don't know."

"No."

The older one folded her hands on the desk. Her patience was an insult. "Your daughter had a bone marrow transplant, and you don't know which hospital?"

Jace's voice echoed in my skull: You'll only make it harder for her. Stay home and wait.

And I had stayed. Like a fool. Like a wife. Like someone who still believed he wouldn't destroy everything.

"Ma'am"

"I don't know the hospital." My voice cracked open. "I don't know the doctor's name. All I know is my daughter has been suffering for over a week, and she needs help now."

A younger nurse moved fast around the desk. She didn't ask. She took Ziva's wrist, lifted one eyelid, and pressed fingers to her neck.

Her face shifted.

"Get a gurney. Now."

They lifted Ziva from my arms. The weight left me like a missing limb. I followed, half-running, past double doors, down a corridor.

"ICU," someone said ahead.

I stopped breathing.

"That's my daughter"

"Wait here."

The doors swung shut.

I stood in the hallway, staring at my empty hands. Her warmth still in my palms. Her absence already unbearable.

I walked back to the lobby. Paced. Prayed to a God I'd stopped believing in. Checked my phone. Paced again.

Then I saw him.

He came through the main entrance with long, controlled strides. The hallway parted around him. One hand gripped the limp fingers of a woman on a stretcher. His jaw was tight. His eyes—sharp, dark, focused—never left her face.

I knew him before my brain caught up.

Brett.

Eight years dissolved.

I was twenty. Reckless. Hollow from a year that had gutted me. A one-night stand with a stranger who had been gentle in ways I didn't deserve. I gave him my virginity because I didn't know what else to do with the pain.

His card fell from his jacket. I memorized his name. Brett, something.

I never called. I never forgot.

His eyes swept the corridor. Landed on me for half a second.

Then moved on.

No recognition. No pause. Like I was furniture. That night was nothing. I was nothing.

His hand tightened around the woman's fingers. He bent close to her ear, said something low. Her face was beautiful even unconscious.

The ring on her finger caught the light.

I looked at his hand.

Gold band.

He's married.

Something moved through my chest. Grief with no right to exist for a stranger, for one night, for the girl who had hoped the world contained men who held women like that.

He had found someone. He loved her the way I had spent eight years waiting to be loved.

And here I stood. Roberta Riggs. Wife of Jace Riggs. Billionaire. Architect of his fortune—visible to no one. Trapped. Buried alive. Unhappily married to a man who had never once stood beside me in public.

The stretcher disappeared through another set of doors. Brett followed without looking back.

Then the gurney came back out.

Ziva. My Ziva—being pushed past me, away from the ICU.

"What are you doing?" I ran after them. "She was in the ICU—why are you moving her?"

"We're moving her to Ward C."

"Why? You just said she needs the ICU"

The nurse slowed. Choosing words. "We have one senior physician available tonight. He's attending to a VIP first. She has to wait."

I stopped walking.

"You're moving my daughter out of intensive care for a VIP?"

Silence.

"You took her in. Which means she arrived first. Which means she had that slot. Now you're giving it to someone who came in after her?"

The nurse said nothing.

I pressed my hands to my face. Dropped them.

"My husband is Jace Riggs. Riggs Global. That's his daughter you're denying"

The nurse at the back looked up. Her eyes travelled from my face to my clothes to my shoes. Made a slow, humiliating journey back up.

She laughed under her breath.

"Jace Riggs? That child looks nothing like him."

"She's his daughter"

"Everyone knows Jace Riggs has spoken about his wife in interviews." She tilted her head. "Very sophisticated woman. Very private. Doesn't mean anyone can just walk in here and"

"I am his wife."

The look she gave me was the most complete dismissal I had ever received.

And I understood it. Because Jace had never once stood beside me. Never brought me to an event. Never let anyone photograph us. 'She prefers her privacy '. That's what he always told the press.

I had believed he was protecting me.

I was just a secret he was bored of keeping.

"If he's truly your husband," the kinder nurse said, "call him. Surely a man like Jace Riggs can make a call. Your daughter came in before the VIP—he could arrange for her to be seen first. VIP to VIP."

I was already reaching for my phone.

I dialled.

You've reached Jace Riggs. Leave a message.

I dialled again.

Again.

You've reached

I lowered the phone.

The nurses watched me with flat, patient eyes. People who already believed I was lying.

"Be patient, ma'am." The kinder one gestured toward Ward C. "When the doctor is finished, he'll see your daughter."

I followed them in silence.

Ziva lay in the hospital bed. Small. Pale. Too still. Her chest rose and fell in shallow increments. I sat beside her. Took her hand in both of mine.

I dialled Jace again.

He wasn't picking up.

I knew where he was. I could picture it—his jacket over a chair that wasn't ours, his phone face-down on a nightstand that wasn't ours, his hands on the woman who had given him a son.

The same woman whose son had been saved with my daughter's bone marrow.

And now my daughter lay here, in a general ward, waiting for a doctor who was attending to a VIP, while Jace Riggs sent me to voicemail.

How did I get here?