Chapter 3

I didn't cry over the photo.

I threw up instead, which felt more honest.

By the fifth day, Roman's penthouse had a rhythm. His housekeeper, Nadia, a sixty-year-old Russian woman with forearms like a baker and eyes like a hawk, decided on the second morning that I was hers.

"Too thin," she announced, putting a bowl of buckwheat porridge in front of me. "Eat. The baby needs."

I froze. "Who told you?"

"Nobody tells Nadia. Nadia sees." She patted my cheek. "Also you smell toast and run. Very obvious."

She fed me every three hours. She left crackers on my nightstand. When I cried in the laundry room on day four, she didn't ask why. She just folded towels beside me and hummed a song her mother used to sing.

It was the first time in three years someone had stayed in the room while I fell apart.

Roman, I barely saw.

He left before sunrise and came home long after dark. But little things kept happening.

A prenatal vitamin bottle appeared on my breakfast tray. The right brand. The one my OB would've picked.

A stack of nursing journals appeared in the library. My old specialty. Emergency medicine.

A pair of warm slippers appeared outside my door after I'd walked barefoot across the marble floors one night.

I never saw him leave any of it.

On day six, I finally caught him in the kitchen at midnight, drinking black coffee over a spreadsheet.

"Thank you," I said. "For the slippers."

He didn't look up. "Nadia's idea."

"Nadia says it was yours."

A pause. "Nadia talks too much."

"Nadia," called a voice from the hallway, "hears everything."

Roman closed his eyes. And for one second, the most feared man in Chicago looked like a very tired son.

I laughed. I actually laughed. It startled both of us.

He looked up then. Really looked. Something warm moved behind the gray.

Then he went back to his spreadsheet, and I went back to bed, and I told myself my heart was beating fast because of the hormones.

On day seven, the photos went public.

Nico and Bianca at a charity auction. His hand on her lower back. Her head on his shoulder. The Tribune's society page called her "Castellano's first love, finally home."

Nobody mentioned his wife.

Nobody asked where I was.

On day ten, Nico finally called.

I was standing at the window when my phone rang, and my whole body betrayed me. My pulse jumped. My hand went to my stomach. I thought, this is it. He's coming. He's sorry. I'll tell him about the baby and he'll—

"Aria." His voice was clipped. Businesslike. "I need you to do something for me."

"Nico, I need to tell you—"

"My lawyer sent documents to Sokolov's office. Annulment papers. I need you to sign them."

The floor tilted.

"What?"

"It's strategy. As my wife, you're leverage. Sokolov can keep raising the price. If we're not married, you're worthless to him. He'll let you go faster. It protects you."

Worthless.

He said it so easily.

"And after?" I whispered. "When I'm free? Are we getting remarried?"

Silence.

Then, in the background, soft and sleepy:

"Nico? Come back to bed, it's cold."

He covered the phone. Too late.

"I have to go," he said. "Sign the papers, Aria. Trust me."

The line went dead.

Trust me.

I stood there for a long time. Then I walked to Roman's office, where a thick envelope with the Castellano lawyer's seal was waiting on the desk. Roman was there. He watched me pick up the pen and didn't say a word.

I signed every page.

Aria Castellano, née Moore, agrees to the dissolution of—

My hand didn't shake once.

"Aria," Roman said quietly. "You don't have to do this tonight."

"Yes, I do."

I walked back to my room. I locked the door with my key. I lay down on the bed and curled around my stomach and finally, finally let myself sob.

Something twisted low in my belly.

A sharp, deep cramp.

Then another.

I sat up.

There was blood on the sheets.