เข้าสู่ระบบSPECIAL CHAPTER: JACKI started pacing again, taking three steps up the pavement before turning and retracing them. My shoes were soaked through, and I could feel the cold pressing against my toes."Adonis is in the hospital right now. Your hospital, by the way. He collapsed this morning, and the doctors are trying to tissue-type everyone they can to find a bone marrow donor. Justina might have also been telling them she's his biological mother. Every form, every consent document, every medical record says the same thing. But when they test her, the results will show they're not related.""And?""And people will start asking questions if it gets out. The hospital, the court, anyone who looks closely at the paperwork. It could put her custody of him at risk. And then there's Gregor. He's going to want to know why the woman he believes is his child's biological mother has no genetic relationship with him."A monitor beeped twice in the silence that followed."There's more," I continued,
SPECIAL CHAPTER: JACKCharissa.I will be leaking that I'm in your brother's music video very early tomorrow. Tell him to prepare and confirm it. If he even thinks of humiliating me, he is finished.I read the message again, hoping I'd misunderstood something. I hadn't. A second message was already coming through, the three little dots appearing and disappearing beneath the first.Don't make me ask twice, Jack.My thumbs hovered over the keyboard. I typed okay, then felt my stomach twist so violently I thought I might throw up right there on the pavement. I deleted it. I tried please, but erased that too. I'd said please to Charissa more times than I could count, and it had never once made her reconsider anything.Oliver didn't want her in his video. He'd told me as much over the phone, speaking quietly from his hotel room in Milan. There was something in his voice I'd not heard since we were boys, a kind of exhaustion that stripped away all the usual pretense.I can't have her near t
SPECIAL CHAPTER: JACKThe drizzle had faded into a fine mist, light enough that I could walk through it without bothering to pull up my hood. I left it down.At the corner, I turned left. Left took me away from the taxis, away from the green door, and, more importantly, away from the man who had lifted Justina out of that chair as though she weighed nothing. The same man who had looked at me with an expression that suggested I was a stain he hadn't yet decided how to remove.I shoved my hands deeper into my pockets, hoping to keep anyone from noticing the tremor in them. Nobody was looking at me anyway, which somehow made it worse.The old tram depot stretched along my right, its long grey wall broken by a section of collapsed roofing at the far end. Weeds had pushed through the gaps between the abandoned rails, growing wherever they could find a foothold. I followed the tracks because they ran in a straight line, and I didn't trust myself to decide where else to go.Somewhere behind
GREGOR“I am quite serious. I'll carry him on my hip to your graduation, and he'll probably scream through the entire ceremony. We'll be asked to leave before they hand you your certificate, and I'll consider it money well spent.”She stared at me for a moment, fighting a smile that never quite arrived.“That's your solution?”“It's one of them.”“You can't negotiate with a baby.”“I negotiate with considerably more difficult people.”“That's not reassuring.”“It wasn't meant to be.” I reached for her hand, threading my fingers through hers. “Listen to me. I don't want you to feel that having another child means sacrificing everything you've worked for. You've spent too long building your life for me to expect you to abandon it. We'll make room for the baby in the life we already have. We won't ask you to disappear from it.”A faint smile touched her lips, but it disappeared almost as quickly as it came. She lowered her eyes to the duvet, picking at a loose thread.“I've done this bef
GREGORHer head remained on my shoulder. “What makes you think that?”“You said a few things last night.”“Oh… Well… I was drunk.”“I know.”“So I'm sure none of it made much sense.”“Some of it did.” I rubbed my thumb over her shoulder. “Enough to make me wonder how long you've been thinking about it.”She went quiet.“What did I say?”“I'm not going to hold you to anything you said while you were barely conscious.” I paused, choosing my words. “But I don't think it all came from the alcohol, Justina. And I'd rather you told me what was on your mind than have me spend the next few days trying to work it out.”She lifted her head slightly. “What exactly are we talking about?”“Could it be about what Okafor said? About considering a second child?”Her body shifted away from mine. She sat up, pulling the duvet into her lap, and looked towards the wardrobe. Then the window. Then her hands, which had begun worrying at a loose thread on the duvet.“Gregor...”“I'm not asking you to give me
GREGORI retrieved it, scraped away what I could with a butter knife, and spread the butter over the blackened side anyway. There was something to be said for commitment, even when the results were questionable. The second slice came out considerably better, so I put both on a plate with the golden sides facing up and carried them upstairs with the tea.Justina had made it as far as the headboard. Her knees were drawn beneath the duvet, and her face had been scrubbed clean. Her hair was damp where she'd apparently put it under the bathroom tap, then finger-combed it into something approaching order. She watched me approach with an expression I couldn't quite place.I set the tray across her knees.She looked at the toast.“That's burnt.”“On one side.”“Gregor, it's black.”“It's a little overdone.”She picked up a slice and turned it over, inspecting the golden underside.“I'm not sure what you did to deserve this kind of kitchen.”“I can be a decent cook when I put my mind to it. Bu







