Chapter 2

Damian took my silence for surrender.

The next day his adopted sister came back. He was delighted. He even threw her a welcome-home party.

The party was grander than a wedding. Vivi stood in the middle of the crowd with him at her side, the two of them looking like a story people would tell. Nobody wondered where I'd gone.

At the hospital I found my brother in critical condition, tubes running out of him everywhere, struggling just to breathe.

He was still in the clothes he'd bled through the day before. No one had washed him. The bed he was lying on didn't even have a mattress.

My eyes went red. I tried to call Damian and demand an answer, and not one call went through.

It wasn't until my phone died that he sent me a message: Vivi's welcome party is today, handle whatever it is yourself for now.

I sat on the hospital floor, staring at nothing, tears dropping slowly onto the screen.

Then a dull pain spread through my stomach, so bad I nearly passed out before a nurse walking by found me. When I woke up, the doctor told me I was a month pregnant.

I turned my phone back on and found social media flooded with coverage of the grand party Damian had thrown for his adopted sister. The cover photo showed him smiling as he kissed Vivi's forehead. The cold spread through me inch by inch.

Damian didn't come to the hospital until that night. He looked at my brother in the bed, frowned, and gave orders for a doctor to look after him.

"Elena, I got you a doctor. I have to go check a shipment with Vivi tonight, so I'm heading out."

He left in a hurry. He never saw the way the doctor's face went cold the second he was gone.

I caught the hem of his coat, and there was something close to pleading in the way I looked at him.

Damian turned back, and something strange moved in him, as if it were telling him not to walk out of this hospital, that he would regret it.

But he hesitated a long time. In the end he sighed, took off his overcoat, and draped it over my shoulders. "I'll come back and sit with you in a bit."

The doctor changed my brother's dressings carelessly, asked nothing about his other symptoms, and turned to go.

I blocked his way without thinking. "Damian told you to stay and treat my brother. You haven't finished, why are you—"

"Oh, please. Haven't you seen the news? You don't still think you carry any weight around here, do you? The Boss is done with you. Why would I take orders from you?" The doctor cut me off, then shoved the door open and left without looking back.

I wanted to argue, but my throat closed up. He was right. Everyone here treated you according to what you were still worth, and there was no way Damian didn't know it. He walked out for someone else anyway.