Bingo!

Rose's Pov

The moment I heard “mission accomplished" and saw the news on the internet. Every stress in me diminished. It's hard trying to compete when you're as white and pure as a baby horse.

This is just the beginning. That night, I remember he came to me sweet and eyes filled with lust but got interrupted with an unknown call only to leave and later call me. And as I picked the call up on the second ring, the next thing I heard was,

"Rose." His voice was strange. Tight and strange and higher than usual, something panicked living just beneath the surface of it.

I arranged my expression out of instinct even though he couldn't see .

"What's wrong?" I asked. Trying as hard to sound normal.

"It's Serena." A breath. "There was an accident. She's — they're saying she's in hospital, she's — Rose, I need to go, I just—"

"Go," I said immediately. "Go, Damien. I'll be here. Call me when you know more."

He hung up. I set the phone down.

Turned back to the window.

Somewhere in the city, in a hospital ward with beeping machines and strip lighting and a nurse with tired eyes, Serena Whitmore was either breathing or she wasn't.

I lifted my coffee mug. Took one slow, deliberate sip.

And smiled at the glass. That was the best short-lived moment.

But all of a sudden, everything overturned and now I am here pretending as if I care about her. She's nothing. Just a fucking worthless replacement.

I would have still been enjoying it. But Damien got restless and insisted we visit her.

An asshole.

The hospital smelled like disinfectant. It made me sick to my stomach and I hated it immediately.

Damien walked three steps ahead of me the entire way from the car park, which told me everything about the state of his head. Like I wasn't there.

He's just always available for her.

I kept walking. Soft eyes, slightly worried brow. A nurse looked up as we reached the desk.

"Serena Whitmore," Damien said as he tapped his foot on the floor.

"Relation?"

"Husband."

The word landed in my chest like a thumb pressed into a bruise. Still. Even now. Even with everything I had arranged, everything I had waited for, everything I had done — she was still the one with the title attached to his name.

Not for much longer. I thought.

"She's been stabilised," the nurse said. "This way."

We followed her down a corridor that went on too long. Damien's jaw was set. His hands opened and closed at his sides — a habit he had when he was trying not to show fear, which he was always trying not to show.

He was terrified.

Which was, frankly, inconvenient.

I had planned for grief. Manageable grief that I could shape and sit beside and eventually redirect toward something that served me. What I had not fully planned for was this quality of panic.

Focus, I told myself. This is nearly over.

The room was at the end of the corridor. The nurse pushed the door and stood aside and Damien went in first and I followed and I had my expression arranged before I even looked at the bed.

And there she was.

Tubes, monitors. A bruise along her jaw that had gone purple and yellow at the edges. Eyes closed, with her chest rising and falling with the mechanical steadiness of the assisted. The soft, even beeping of a machine doing what her body apparently couldn't manage alone.

Damien made a low involuntary sound. He crossed to her in three steps and reached for her hand and I watched him do it and felt nothing except a clean, distant impatience.

She looked so small.

Even like this. Even with the tubes and the bruising and the hospital gown that flattened everything, she still managed to look like a woman people felt sorry for. That pale, still quality.

I moved to the other side of the bed. Placed my hand near her arm, close enough to register, not quite touching. I looked at her face with the full weight of my concern expression deployed.

"She looks peaceful," I said softly which unfortunately got no response and reaction from him.

Damien's eyes were on her hand. The nurse turned back to the monitor. And in the space that opened between those two attentions —

I leaned down, close enough that if she was anywhere near the surface she would feel the warmth of it, the proximity..

"Enjoying yourself?" I said. A breath barely sound at all, just shape. "The machines, the tubes, all of this—" I let my eyes move over the room with a slow, satisfied thoroughness. "It won't last. Nothing about you lasts, Serena." I paused and let the silence do its work. "He'll cry at your funeral. But grief is temporary. And I am very, very patient."

Expecting to see a reaction but to my utmost disappointment, nothing happened. Not a flutter or a twitch. Not the smallest betrayal of a body that was listening.

I straightened up.

Good, I thought. She's genuinely gone. Then this is already finished. I looked at her face one more time.

I moved back around the bed and stood beside Damien and put my hand on his back, He didn't lean into it. But didn't move away. I could work with that.

We stood like that until his phone vibrated in his pocket.

He looked at the screen. Something shifted in his jaw.

"I have to — it's the office, I need to—" He looked at me. Then at Serena, and back at me again.

"Go," I said immediately, and warmly.

"I'll stay. Go."

He squeezed her hand once before he left.

The door clicked shut behind him and I paused briefly while I waited.

One. Two. Three. Four.

"Just us," I said pleasantly. I didn't bother leaning down this time.

"That's better." I sat in the chair Damien had vacated. Crossed my legs. "Do you know what I keep thinking about? How long I waited, and how patient I was. How many times I watched him look at you—" I paused. "And then I just decided, just like that… it was enough."

The monitor beeped at my words. Her face was a mask. I carefully studied her.

"You always thought being good was your protection," I said. "Patient and kind and quietly capable. Like goodness was a shield." I tilted my head. "It isn't. It's just a different way of being slow."

Still got nothing. No reaction from her.

"Almost impressive," I said quietly. "If you are in there."

The door opened, and in came a different nurse… younger, slightly harried, the energy of someone three hours past the end of a long shift. She came in two steps before she registered me, then stopped.

"Oh — sorry, I didn't realise—" She checked her tablet. Checked the bed. And then something moved through her expression.

"Are you family?" she asked.

"Sister," I said without hesitation. "Is something wrong?"

She looked at the tablet once more. At me, and looked at Serena as a look of pity flashed across her eyes that didn't last.

"I'm so sorry," she said. And she meant it, which meant it was real, which meant it was something I had not arranged and could not take credit for.

She looked at the bed. At Serena's motionless face.

"The pregnancy," she said quietly. "We did everything we could." A pause that lasted exactly as long as it needed to. "But I'm afraid she lost it."