Chapter 1

So it had come to this. Cut off the leg, buy a little more time.

Victoria was spending the night making bead art with Julian Mercer. Their photos filled her feed — warm lamplight, colored beads scattered across the rug, a screen's worth of congratulations underneath. I smiled at it, the way you smile when there's nothing left to do, and pulled the IV out of my arm.

She'd told me once, in a voice full of loathing, that marrying a worthless man like me was the greatest regret of her life.

So this time, I hoped she would be left with nothing to regret.

A bead of blood followed the needle out. The nurse rushed over and caught my wrist.

"What are you doing?"

I just smiled at her. "Hi. Could you cancel my surgery, please?"

They called the doctor. He stood there a long time without saying anything, then wrote me a prescription for painkillers and let me go.

On the way back to my room, I heard the nurse arguing with him outside the station.

"Dr. Wilson, this is a man's life. Without the amputation the cancer spreads everywhere. He won't last a week."

A week.

So that was all. That soon, and I could stop.

The doctor's laugh had no humor in it. "You know his father died in that same bed? Same disease."

My steps stopped.

"He's been coming in for chemo for a year," the nurse said. "Always alone. Other patients have someone sleeping in the chair, feeding them, wiping them down. He curls up shaking and still presses the call button himself. His wife has never come. Not once. One night he called her and a man picked up."

The doctor's voice dropped. "Maybe that's just how it goes."

I closed my fist around the prescription until my nails bit into my palm.

Maybe that's just how it goes.

The way my dad grabbed my hand when they told him what he had — in that much pain, still smiling. "Don't be scared, son. Your old man can take it." And then dying in my arms anyway.

The way I opened my mouth on my wedding night and asked Victoria for five hundred thousand dollars to save him.

I still remember what happened to her face.

"Daniel." She said it slowly. "Am I an ATM to you? Is that it?"

I hadn't seen it coming. I couldn't get a word out.

"My parents told me you were a con man. My friends told me. Even Julian told me. I didn't believe any of them. I wrecked my own name for you. I tore up an engagement my family arranged. Everyone I grew up with laughed at me and I married you anyway."

Her voice had gone hoarse. Her eyes were red.

"No — Victoria, it's my dad, he—"

"We got married today." She cut me off, ripped the veil off her head, and threw it on the floor. "You're really doing this now? Tonight?"

"Vic, I'll pay it back, I swear. No — forget it, I won't take it. I'll figure something else out. Please don't be angry."

She pulled a bank card out of her bag and slapped it across my face. Her mouth twisted into something that wasn't a smile.

"Nothing that goes into your hands ever comes back out."

"Stop acting. You're exactly what they said you were."

Then she slammed the door behind her.

That was our wedding night.

I waited in the living room until four in the morning, and what came through the door was Julian Mercer, holding her up. She was too drunk to stand. Half her weight was against him, and under the hall light the marks on her neck were red enough to hurt to look at.

Julian gave me a smile — apologetic, harmless.

"Don't worry, Daniel. I've got Vicky. Go get some sleep."