The nurse had just placed the warm, crying bundle of joy into Evelyn’s arms. She was exhausted, sweaty, and happier than she had ever been in her life.
She looked up, expecting to see tears of joy in her husband’s eyes. Instead, she saw his mother standing at the foot of the bed, holding a manila envelope.
Beatrice didn’t ask to hold the baby.
She didn’t ask how Evelyn was. She simply threw the envelope onto Evelyn’s legs.
“Sign it, Evelyn,” she sneered.
“The paternity test is pending, but the divorce is non-negotiable.”
Evelyn looked at her husband, Richard, silently, begging him to say something. He just checked his watch.
They thought they were discarding a poor, helpless orphan.
They had no idea they had just declared war on the owner of the very hospital they were standing in.
The sterile smell of the hospital room usually brought people comfort, a sign of cleanliness, of care. But in room 402 of St. Jude’s Medical Center, the air was thick with a toxicity that no disinfectant could scrub away.
Evelyn Sterling lay back against the pillows, her body aching with a profound, bone-deep weariness.
It had been fourteen hours of labor, fourteen hours of agony to bring a new life into the world.
In her arms lay Leo, a tiny red-faced miracle wrapped in a standard-issue hospital blanket. His little chest rose and fell in a rhythm that should have stopped the world.
“He’s beautiful, isn’t he, Rick?” Evelyn whispered, her voice raspy.
She looked toward the window where her husband, Richard Thornton, stood. Richard didn’t turn around.
He was staring out at the parking lot, his knuckles white as he gripped the windowsill.
He was wearing the navy-blue Armani suit Beatrice, his mother, had picked out for him. He always looked impeccable, but today his posture screamed cowardice.
“Richard.”
A sharp, icy voice cut through the silence. Beatrice Thornton stepped out from the shadows near the door.
The matriarch of the Thornton real estate empire was dressed as if she were attending a board meeting, not the birth of her first grandchild.
Her pearls were real, her Chanel suit was tailored to within an inch of its life, and her expression was that of someone who had just stepped in something unpleasant.
“Look at me when I’m speaking to you, Evelyn,” Beatrice commanded.
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