Chapter 3

Such a betrayal should have shattered the room.

Instead, Valen had delivered it as if he were explaining a sensible arrangement.

I finished packing the last of my clothes just as his mother pushed open the bedroom door. Her eyes went straight to the suitcase at my feet, and for a second, satisfaction flickered across her face before she covered it with contempt.

"While you were gone, I moved Sabina into your room," she said. "The study next door has been turned into the nursery. You can sleep on the sofa tonight. If that doesn't suit you, there's a guest cottage by the back drive."

I was too exhausted to argue. The journey home, the shock, the pregnancy, the humiliation—it all sat in my body like lead.

So I only nodded.

That night, the baby cried on and off from the master bedroom. I turned on the sofa and tried to block it out until I heard Sabina's voice, thin with complaint.

"Valen, do something. He won't stop crying, and I can't sleep."

Then Valen laughed softly.

"You're the one I'm worried about," he said. "Let him cry for a minute."

The ease of it made my stomach turn.

I pulled the blanket over my head, but it did nothing. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him as he had once been—young, brilliant, relentless, with a world full of ambition and a gaze that had seemed to rest only on me.

That man was gone.

By dawn, I had my suitcase in hand and was out the door.

I went straight to the civil office that handled family status, residency records, and exit permits for connected households. With my resignation from the Varesi medical foundation and the recommendation letters from Geneva, the process moved quickly. The clerk barely looked at me as she stamped the papers.

On my way out, a young receptionist stopped me and pressed a small box of candied almonds into my hand.

"For luck," she said shyly. "And for whatever comes next."

I thanked her and left.

After dropping my suitcase at a small hotel on the edge of the city, I went out to buy fruit, protein bars, vitamins, and the supplements my doctor had recommended. As I stepped back onto the street, a cloud of sweet perfume hit me so hard my stomach lurched. I barely made it to the side of a tree before I started vomiting.

"Oh, Nerina," Sabina said behind me. "Is this your new way of showing contempt?"

I turned and found all five of them standing there—Valen, Sabina, his parents, and the baby in the stroller.

Sabina wore a diamond bracelet I had never seen before and looked nothing like a woman with one foot in the grave.

Valen frowned and stepped back as if I carried something contagious.

"Jesus, Nerina," he said. "Do you have to do that in the street?"

Then his eyes dropped to the bag in my hand, and his expression changed.

"What is all that?" he asked. "Hormones? Fertility supplements? Are you still doing this to yourself?"

His mouth tightened with disgust.

"You're obsessed with proving something, aren't you? Buying every remedy you can find and hoping it changes what your body already made clear. At some point, you have to accept reality."

I hid the bag behind me on instinct.

"It's none of your business."

"How is it not?" his mother snapped. "You couldn't give this family an heir, and you're never even around when you're needed. How exactly were you planning to compete with Sabina?"

His father snorted. "A man like Valen was never going to stay loyal to a wife who gave him nothing."

People passing on the street had started to slow down. I could feel them looking.

My hands curled so tightly my nails bit into my palms.

Sabina stepped closer with a smile that was almost playful. At her throat hung a heavy gold pendant stamped with the Varesi crest, the kind worn by the woman publicly acknowledged as mother of the heir.

Valen had given it to her.

"He's holding the heir's presentation tomorrow," she said. "A formal naming at the chapel, in front of the family and the press. You should come. As the wife, you ought to give the baby your blessing."

My head snapped toward Valen.

In the Varesi family, that ceremony was never only about the child. The head of the family stood before the altar with the woman being presented beside him, and together they named the heir and placed the family medallion in his crib. It was a public declaration, not just of fatherhood, but of legitimacy, partnership, and future.

If he stood there with Sabina, what exactly did that make me?

Valen saw the meaning land and squared his shoulders.

"What are you looking at?" he said. "Sabina gave birth to my son. She deserves to stand there."

Then his tone sharpened.

"As for you, as long as you know how to behave, you can keep the title and the appearance of place. But don't come tomorrow looking tragic, and don't try to collapse in public just to pull attention back onto yourself."

So he had thought that through already.

My public humiliation, arranged in advance.

I touched my stomach beneath my coat, and whatever last piece of feeling I had for him lifted cleanly out of me.

"Don't worry," I said.

I looked at the baby, then at Sabina, then back at Valen.

"The surprise I have for you will arrive exactly on time."