CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 2
Three days earlier, Victor had driven me into the mountains outside Aspen during a snowstorm.
I was nine months pregnant and exhausted, but he said he had planned one last quiet getaway before the baby came.
I wanted to believe him.
That was always my worst habit with Victor.
Believing him one more time.
He parked near a frozen overlook and said we needed to talk. The wind screamed around the car. Snow hit the windshield so hard the world outside looked erased.
Then he started arguing about money.
The life insurance policy.
The house.
The baby.
I told him I wanted to go home.
His face changed.
Not angry.
Finished.
He stepped close, placed both hands on my shoulders, and shoved.
The ground vanished.
I remember the sky turning white.
I remember his voice above me.
“Your baby won’t suffer for long.”
Then silence.
I woke on a narrow ledge halfway down the mountain, snow gathering over my coat, my body too weak to move. Above me, Victor stood at the cliff edge with Serena beside him.
“Is she dead?” Serena asked.
Victor laughed.
“For fifty million dollars, she’d better be.”
Then they walked away.
For nearly two hours, I stayed alive by talking to my unborn son.
“Stay with me,” I whispered. “Please stay with me.”
When the helicopter light found me, I thought I was dreaming.
Then Adrian Cross knelt beside me.
May you like
The man from my mother’s hidden photograph.
The father I had never met.
