Chapter 2

After I ended the call, the pain in my abdomen came back hard.

I bent over as cold sweat spread down my back. The doctor had said I lost too much blood after the miscarriage and needed at least two weeks of bed rest. No one in this villa knew that.

Thunder rolled over the Hudson like distant gunfire. Adrian came out of the study with his phone buzzing in his hand.

Evelyn’s voice drifted from the speaker. “Adrian, the thunder is so loud. Every time I close my eyes, I see Luca dying in front of me. The baby keeps kicking, and I’m scared.”

Adrian’s face changed at once. He grabbed his car keys by instinct.

That was when I finally spoke. “Don’t go.”

He stopped and looked back.

I gripped the sofa arm and forced myself to stand. My vision went dark around the edges, and I could barely make out his shape.

“I don’t feel well,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “Adrian, my stomach hurts. Can you stay, or at least call a doctor for me?”

For one moment, he wasn’t completely unmoved. I saw him take half a step toward me, and real hesitation flashed through his eyes.

Then Evelyn drew a soft breath through the phone.

“Is Selena upset? Forget it. Don’t come. She’s Mrs. Moretti. I shouldn’t make things awkward for you. I only have one guard here, but if those men come back, I’ll manage somehow.”

Adrian’s hesitation vanished.

He walked to me, his voice low and sharp with warning. “Selena, don’t compete with her like this.”

“I’m not.”

“You are. If I call a doctor here now, are you going to let people say I abused family resources for you again?”

I opened my mouth, but my throat felt packed with broken glass.

That night in the emergency room, the nurse had tried over and over to reach Dr. Harrison. The answer she received was that Mr. Moretti had personally ordered Dr. Harrison to remain at the Langdon estate until Mrs. Langdon’s condition stabilized.

Our baby and I had ranked below a nightmare.

Adrian picked up his coat. “I’ll be back soon. Rest and stop overthinking.”

The front door closed softly, but it felt like the last thread between us had been cut.

At one in the morning, Evelyn posted again.

In the photo, Adrian had his back to the camera. His sleeves were rolled to his forearms, and he was half kneeling by her bed with a glass of warm milk. The bedside lamp was gentle.

Her caption read:

[I only said I was scared of thunder, and he crossed half the city to get here. A always says he doesn’t know how to comfort people, but look at him. My personal bodyguard tonight. Poor thing worked so hard.]

Then she added a comment under her own post.

[Some kinds of safety can’t be begged for.]

I stared at that line and saved the screenshot into an encrypted folder.

From that night on, I stopped asking him for answers.

The next morning, I used Mrs. Moretti’s highest clearance to enter the family’s internal system. I downloaded three months of medical team dispatch records, vehicle tracking logs, security withdrawal orders, and transfers connected to Evelyn’s accounts.

Adrian thought I was just the wife he kept behind estate walls.

He had forgotten that before I married him, I was the youngest neurogenetics doctoral candidate at NYU, and the only person who had ever cracked the Moretti medical encryption system.

When I loved him, I was willing to stand in his shadow.

Now that I didn’t, I would show everyone what had been hiding there.