Chapter 2

A bus station bench. A hospital waiting room. The back seat of a Honda Civic with a broken heater.

I thought I'd forgotten that skill. Three years of Egyptian cotton sheets and Julian's arm around my waist had softened me. But muscle memory is a stubborn thing.

I slept in Maya's guest room. Maya—my best friend from before, from the real world—lived in a one-bedroom in Bushwick with a cat named Chaos and a permanent expression of righteous fury.

"He said what?" Maya hissed at 2 AM, pacing her tiny kitchen. Chaos watched from the refrigerator top, unbothered.

"Vessel," I repeated. The word tasted like ash. "A clean, healthy vessel."

"I'm going to kill him," Maya said. "I'm going to walk into that glass tower and—"

"No." My voice was flat. "You're going to help me think."

Maya stopped pacing. She looked at me—really looked—and I saw the moment she realized I wasn't crying.

"Sera," she said slowly. "What are you planning?"

"I'm pregnant, Maya."

The kitchen went silent. Even Chaos seemed to hold his breath.

"Does he know?" she whispered.

"I left the test on his pillow."

"So he knows you know."

"He knows I'm pregnant. He doesn't know I heard the conversation. He'll assume I'm emotional, hormonal, dramatic. He'll send flowers tomorrow. Roses. He always sends roses when he thinks I'm upset."

"And?"

"And I won't be here to receive them."

I pulled out my phone. Seventeen missed calls from Julian. Nine texts.

Sera, where are you?

Baby, come home. We need to talk.

I saw the test. I'm so happy. Please come home.

Happy. He was happy. Because the vessel had performed its function.

I turned the phone off.

"I have something," I told Maya. I showed her the flash drive. "Forty million dollars embezzled from a children's charity. Funneled into real estate under his mistress's name."

Maya's eyes went wide. "That's not just divorce leverage, Sera. That's federal prison."

"I know."

"What are you going to do with it?"

I looked at my reflection in the dark window. I barely recognized myself. No makeup. Hair tangled. Wearing Maya's oversized NYU sweatshirt.

But my eyes were clear.

"I'm going to disappear," I said. "I'm going to have this baby somewhere he can't reach us. And I'm going to build something so big that when I come back, he won't be able to look down at me. He'll have to look up."

"Where will you go?"

"Austin," I said. "Your cousin still runs that design incubator?"

"Yeah, but Sera—Austin? You don't know anyone there."

"Exactly."

My phone buzzed again. Even powered off, the notifications bled through on Maya's connected tablet.

A new message. Not from Julian.

From Naomi Price.

I know you found out. If you're smart, you'll take the money and walk away. Julian is mine. He was always mine. You were just the oven.

Maya read it over my shoulder. Her hand gripped the counter until her knuckles whitened.

"The oven," Maya breathed. "She called you an oven."

I stared at the message.

Then I screenshot it.

"Thank you, Naomi," I said quietly. "That's going in the file."

I looked at Maya.

"I leave tomorrow. But first, I need to do one thing."

"What?"

"I need to go back to the penthouse. There's a safe in his closet. The combination is our wedding date—he's that arrogant. Inside is the original Ashford Foundation charter. It names me as co-trustee."

Maya grabbed my arm. "Sera, if he catches you—"

"He's at the office until six. And then he has dinner with his mother. He won't be home until ten."

"How do you know?"

I smiled. It wasn't a warm smile. It was the smile of a woman who had spent three years studying her captor's schedule.

"Because I was his perfect wife," I said. "I knew everything. He just never thought it mattered."

Maya stared at me for a long moment. Then she grabbed her car keys.

"I'm driving."