My husband shoved me off an icy cliff while I was nine months pregnant because he thought my life was worth less than a fifty-million-dollar insurance payout. – usnews
“Your chart is under a protected alias. Only essential medical staff know your real identity. Hospital security has been briefed that no visitors are permitted unless cleared by me and Dr. Walsh.”
“It was chosen quickly.”
I might have laughed again if my ribs allowed it. Instead, I pressed my lips together and looked toward the window.
Snow tapped softly against the glass.
“Why were you there?” I asked.
Adrian did not answer.
I turned my head back. “At the mountain. In the storm. Why were you there?”
He looked older in that moment.
“I was already in Aspen,” he said. “Our investigators had been reviewing Victor’s financial activity. There were inconsistencies tied to the policy. I came personally because…” He stopped.
“Because what?”
His jaw tightened. “Because your name appeared on the file.”
The monitors hummed steadily beside me.
“Elena Hale,” he continued. “Born Elena Marlow. Daughter of Sofia Marlow.”
My mother’s name struck me harder than I expected.
Sofia Marlow.
I had not heard it spoken by anyone who knew her in years.
“You knew my mother,” I said.
“Yes.”
“How?”
Adrian lowered himself back into the chair. “That is a longer conversation than you should have tonight.”
“I almost died tonight.”
His eyes closed briefly.
When he opened them, the careful corporate mask had slipped. Beneath it was a man carrying a wound so old it had become part of his posture.
“I loved her,” he said.
The room seemed to still.
“She worked as a translator for one of our European offices before Cross Atlantic became what it is now. She was brilliant. Stubborn. Funny in a way that made you feel foolish and grateful at the same time.” His gaze moved to my face, as though searching for pieces of her there. “We were together for almost a year.”
“My mother never told me.”
“She left before she knew she was pregnant. At least, that is what I believed for a long time.”
“What happened?”
A shadow crossed his features. “My family happened. Her family. Money. Fear. Pride. A dozen things that matter terribly to young people until they destroy what actually mattered.”
I stared at him, trying to fit this man into the empty spaces my mother had left behind. She had been gentle but guarded, always careful when I asked about my father. She told me he was gone. Not dead. Not cruel. Just gone.
Had I signed it? Had there been another page beneath the first? Had he forged it completely?
A thin, cold thread of realization slid through me.
