ANMELDENSeraphina's POVIsabella's first birthday starts with her tiny fist in my face at 5:47 AM."Mama." Her first real word, spoken with the confidence of someone who knows she owns our entire world. "Mama up."I pull her into bed between us, and Aurelius wraps around us both—his hand finding mine over our daughter's sleep-warm body. A year ago, we didn't know if she'd survive. Now she's demanding pancakes in a voice that sounds exactly like his when he's issuing commands to his board."Happy birthday, Isabella Cole-Kingsley." He kisses her dark curls—so much hair, just like that first glimpse in the operating room. "You're one year old. That means we've survived twelve months of you terrorizing us."She giggles, pats his face, then mine. "Dada silly.""Dada is very silly." I'm crying already, and the day hasn't even started. "But Mama loves him anyway."Aurelius's eyes meet mine over our daughter's head, and in them I see everything: the bathroom floor where I took that first pregnancy te
Seraphina's POVIsabella has been screaming for forty-three minutes, and I'm starting to understand why sleep deprivation is a torture technique."Please," I beg our ten-day-old daughter, rocking her with arms that shake from exhaustion. "Please, baby. Mama fed you, changed you, checked your temperature three times. What do you need?"She answers with another ear-splitting wail.Aurelius appears in the nursery doorway at 3 AM, looking like a billionaire who forgot what sleep feels like. His hair is chaos, his T-shirt is on backwards, and he's holding the mysterious package that arrived yesterday—the one we've been too terrified and exhausted to open."Still?" His voice cracks with the same desperation I'm feeling."Still." I'm crying now too, because my breasts are engorged and painful, Isabella won't latch properly, and I survived experimental surgery and eight months of terror just to fail at the most basic thing mothers are supposed to do. "I don't know what I'm doing wrong.""You'
Seraphina's POVThe operating room is too bright, and I'm too scared.They've draped a blue sheet across my chest—a barrier between my face and the surgery happening below—and I can't see Aurelius anymore. He was here a second ago, wasn't he? Holding my hand while they placed the epidural, whispering promises against my temple. But now there's just fluorescent light and the steady beep of monitors tracking two heartbeats that might become one."Mrs. Kingsley, you're doing great." Dr. Torres appears above the sheet, masked, but his eyes are smiling. "We're about to start. You'll feel pressure but no pain. Your husband is right here."And then Aurelius's face fills my vision—scrubs, surgical mask, but his eyes are the same. Terrified and certain all at once."Hey," he whispers, taking my hand. "I'm not going anywhere.""She's eight weeks early." My voice cracks. "What if—""Then we handle it. But Seraphina—" His thumb traces circles on my palm, that gesture that's carried us through sur
Seraphina's POVThe Vanderbilt wedding is supposed to be my victory lap.Six months ago, when Charlotte Vanderbilt first walked into my office—back when I was freshly pregnant and terrified every moment would end in blood—I promised her the most elegant autumn wedding Manhattan had ever seen. Now I'm thirty-two weeks pregnant, my feet swollen inside shoes that cost more than most people's rent, and I'm watching two hundred guests fill the Plaza Ballroom while our daughter does gymnastics against my ribs."You should be sitting," Aurelius murmurs against my ear, appearing behind me with the silent grace of a man who's spent months hovering. His hand finds my lower back, his thumb pressing exactly where the ache lives."I should be working." But I lean into his touch anyway, because even after everything, his hands still feel like home. "This is the biggest wedding of the season. I can't just—""You're literally creating life." His other hand slides around to rest on my bump, and I feel
Seraphina's POVThe envelope sits on our kitchen counter for three days before I find the courage to open it.White. Sealed. Containing the one piece of information that will make this pregnancy impossibly real: whether we're having a son or a daughter. Dr. Torres handed it to us after the twenty-week anatomy scan—the ultrasound that confirmed our baby has ten fingers, ten toes, a perfect heart, and a gender we haven't decided if we're ready to know."We could just open it," Aurelius says for the hundredth time, watching me circle the envelope like it might explode."Or we could wait. Keep the mystery a little longer." I'm twenty weeks pregnant now, finally showing, the small bump that's been hiding under loose clothes now impossible to ignore. "Once we know, everything changes.""Everything already changed." His hand slides around my waist, settling on the curve where our daughter or son is currently doing gymnastics. "The second that heartbeat appeared on the ultrasound, everything
Seraphina's POVThe heartbeat sounds like a war drum.Fast. Fierce. Impossibly strong for something the size of a lentil. Dr. Torres's portable ultrasound machine fills our bathroom with the rhythmic whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of our baby's heart, and I'm crying so hard I can barely see the screen."Still there," Dr. Torres says, and the relief in his voice tells me he was worried too. "Heart rate at 145 beats per minute. That's perfect for four weeks.""But the bleeding" Aurelius's voice is raw from thirty minutes of silent terror while we waited for Dr. Torres to arrive."Subchorionic hematoma. A small pocket of blood between the uterus and placenta. Common in transplant pregnancies the uterus is still learning to accommodate." He adjusts the wand and shows us the dark spot on the screen. "See that? That's where the bleeding is coming from. Not from the baby. The baby is fine."The baby is fine.Those four words unlock something in my chest that's been clenched tight since I saw blood on
Seraphina’s POVThe celebration is still in full swing, champagne flowing, a saxophonist playing, people laughing like Scarlett’s arrest solved everything, when my phone buzzes again.I almost ignore it. Almost let this perfect moment stay perfect.But something about the vibration feels wrong. Urg
Seraphina’s POV“Absolutely not.”Zara plants herself in front of the bridal boutique door like a human barricade, arms crossed, eyes blazing. “You are not choosing a wedding dress while checking your phone every thirty seconds for death threats. We’re turning off all phones, hiring extra security,
Seraphina’s POVBy the time security sweeps Aurelius’s office, James Morrison is gone.Not escaped, gone.The footage shows him sitting behind the desk one moment, calm and unhurried. Then static. Then an empty chair. No exit recorded. No alarm triggered. No one on any floor reports seeing him.It’
Seraphina’s POVMy finger hovers over the answer button, Scarlett’s name glowing on the screen like a warning. Around me, the rooftop has gone silent—family drama forgotten, celebration suspended, everyone waiting to see what I’ll do.“Don’t answer it,” Richard says, his earlier hostility replaced







