CHAPTER 001

I froze.

Through the crack in the hospital room door, I saw my sister's hand pressed tightly against my husband's chest.

"Alexander, how much longer are you going to make me wait? I've already waited three years for you." Dorothy's voice was low and strained. "I thought you said you loved me."

Alexander said nothing back. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, his hands wrapping around her like she was exactly where she belonged.

I stuffed my knuckles into my mouth and bit down hard to stop the sound that was clawing its way up my throat. Tears had already blurred everything at the edges. That morning, on the way to my parents' house, Dorothy and I had been in a car accident. We had both survived. The moment I came back to consciousness I had called Alexander, and he had promised he would come.

He had come. Just not to my room.

I walked back down the corridor and through the crowd with my face completely empty. People glanced at me with sympathetic eyes, probably assuming I had just received terrible news about someone I loved. I couldn't stop the thought that followed: if I had actually died in that accident this morning, would anyone have genuinely wept for me? I turned the question over slowly and couldn't find a single answer that didn't make my chest cave in. I forced a small twisted smile at nothing in particular and kept walking.

I hadn't come back to the Quinlan family until I was fourteen. A cruel joke of fate, switched at birth and returned years later like something misplaced and eventually recovered. I had believed coming back to my birth family would finally mean belonging somewhere. Instead, eighty percent of their love went to Dorothy, the daughter they had actually raised, the one they actually knew. After ten years of trying, I was still just a presence they tolerated rather than one they chose.

I pushed open the door to my own hospital room and made it to the bathroom just in time, dropping to my knees on the cold tile in front of the toilet. I gripped the rim with both hands. My legs were shaking and my stomach was turning itself inside out. I could not fall apart, not here, not now, because I was pregnant. The doctor had discovered it during my examination after the accident. I had been planning to tell Alexander. I had been so certain that news was going to change everything between us.

Now I wasn't sure I wanted to tell him anything at all.

Tears dropped one after the other onto the cold tile while I knelt there trying to breathe. When the nausea finally passed I sat back against the bathroom wall with my knees pulled up to my chest. The floor was cold through my hospital gown. The fluorescent light above the mirror buzzed faintly. I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth and stared at the grout between the tiles and waited for the shaking in my legs to stop, waiting for the spinning to stop and waiting to feel like I could breathe again.

Alexander had been our neighbour before everything changed. When the Quinlan house felt like too much, being near him had always given me room to breathe. That dependence had quietly grown into love before I even noticed it happening. I loved him the way that leaves marks on a person. Anyone who ever caught the look on my face when he walked into a room knew it. Alexander knew it too.

At least I thought he did.

I pulled myself up off the bathroom floor, rinsed my face at the sink and struggled to walk.

"Poor Maeve." Dorothy had come in at some point without my noticing. She stood over me with her chin lifted and her eyes bright, looking down at me with a condescending gaze that made my stomach churn further. It was clear she knew exactly what I'd witnessed. "Just look at the state of you. This is the price you pay for stealing Alexander away from me in the first place."

I grabbed a clean towel from the nightstand and wiped my face. "Don't talk about being a mistress like it's something to be proud of."

"Shut up!" Her voice cut sharper. "Do you really think he would have married you if it weren't for that arranged engagement? He had no choice. You gave him no choice."

The bitterness that rose in me then was old and familiar. The Quinlan and Hagreeves families had sealed their alliance through marriage long before Alexander or I were old enough to have opinions about it. When I came back to the family I stepped into the slot Dorothy had spent years expecting to fill herself. She had never forgiven me for it.

"In case you didn't know," she said, her hand moving slowly and deliberately across her stomach, "I'm pregnant. I imagine Alexander will be raising the subject of divorce with you very soon."

I sat very still and let that land.

I had believed, even through all of it, that there were lines Alexander would not cross. That somewhere underneath everything there was a boundary that would hold. I had been completely, utterly wrong.

"I will wait for the divorce papers," I said, when I could trust my voice again, "and I will sign them without hesitating. But every time the two of you have been together before that divorce is final, that is adultery. And that will never not be what it was."

I pressed my hand gently against my stomach. There was a child growing inside me. My life was falling apart in every direction and I could not fall apart with it.

"Leave my room. I don't want to ever see you again." Dorothy was no longer my sister, not by any measure. She had hurt me ruthlessly, destroyed my life, and shown not a shred of remorse for any of it.

"Great. You think I want to spend time with a bitch like you? I've hated you for years!" The warmth dropped completely from her face and what sat underneath was a hatred so old and so settled it had clearly been living there since the very first day we met. She took a step closer, her voice rising. "You think just because you share blood with Mom and Dad you're entitled to everything? They love me more. You're the one who—"

Her words caught in her throat as her eyes drifted to the corner.

I looked at her in confusion, then followed her gaze. Our eyes landed on the pregnancy report lying on the table at the exact same moment.

Damn it. I had forgotten to put that away.

I stood up immediately and reached for it. Dorothy got there first, snatching it up before my fingers could close around it. Her angry glare turned venomous as her eyes moved across the page, vicious in a way that made the hair on the back of my neck rise, like she wanted to tear me apart with her bare hands.

My heart pounded wildly against my ribs. "You've already got everything you wanted," I said, my voice coming out steadier than I felt. "What else do you want from me?"

I clenched my fists at my sides and told myself there was no reason to be afraid. There was nothing wrong with my pregnancy. She could not take that from me.

Dorothy advanced on me step by step, her jaw set tight, her teeth pressed together as she hissed, "You cannot carry his child!" She snarled at me, "You will not ruin what I have again!"

I was on high alert instantly and turned toward the door to get out. Dorothy moved faster than I expected. Both her hands clamped around my throat and she drove me backward, pinning me against the window frame. The grip was immediate and crushing and I could not pull in a single breath. I clawed at her fingers with both hands, trying desperately to pry them loose, trying to create any space at all.

No. I could not die.

Not like this.

I strained and twisted and fought to get my fingers underneath hers, my vision already darkening and blurring at the edges with the effort of trying to breathe through hands that would not move.

The window behind me was open and with how hard she kept pushing, I could tell what exactly was running through my sister's mind.

"Dorothy, please, don't do this to me...i don't want to die!" I gritted my teeth and tried to pull away from her grip. "My child can't die." I begged with tears in my eyes.

A quick hesitation crossed her face, but was soon replaced by a determination.

"GO TO HELL!" she snarled and pushed me hard.

The fall lasted less than a second. I hit the ground and the impact tore through every bone in my body at once, a single enormous collision that knocked the world sideways. A low pained sound bubbled up in my throat but all I tasted was blood. My blood.

I lay on the concrete with the sky above me, astonished that I was still conscious at all.

My vision swam and blurred and slowly, within the blur, a pair of black shoes came into focus near my head.

Alexander was here.

He stood completely still above me, staring down at me with his phone pressed to his ear, his entire body rigid, appearing utterly unable to comprehend what he was looking at. The phone slipped from his grasp and clattered to the ground beside him.

I tried to say her name. I tried to tell him what she had done. Blood choked me before I could form a single word and spilled over my lips and down my chin.

He dropped to his knees and gathered my broken body into his arms and leaned his face down close to mine, straining to catch whatever I was trying to say.

I lifted my hand and touched his face.

He looked like he was crying. I thought I must be mistaken about that. It was probably just my own blood on his cheeks.

Alexander. You are going to be a father.

That was the last thought that passed through my mind before the darkness took everything.

When I opened my eyes again, it was three years ago.

"Maeve! Come downstairs! Your sister is back from abroad!"