Chapter 1 - THE KNOCKS AT TWO O’CLOCK
Julian’s fist struck my stomach before the first guest understood he had raised his hand.
The impact folded me over my eight-month belly and threw me backward into the gift table. Wrapped boxes slid beneath my feet. A silver cupcake stand tipped, scattering blue frosting across the polished floor of Beatrice and Arthur Winslow’s home in Upper Arlington, Ohio.
Someone screamed.
Julian did not look at the guests.
He looked only at me.
“Move, Clara,” he said. “She belongs here now.”
Chloe Marsh stood beside him in a cream dress, one hand resting beneath the small curve of her stomach. She was twenty-two, almost fifteen years younger than Julian, and until that moment I had known her as a marketing assistant at Winslow Custom Homes.
She smiled down at me.
“You lost the room the second I walked in.”
My mother-in-law clapped once.
Arthur did the same.
The sound was worse than shouting.
Julian adjusted his navy cufflinks while I lay among crushed gift bags, trying to breathe.
“She’s carrying the real heir,” he said. “You barren trash.”
I was carrying a daughter after four rounds of IVF and two miscarriages.
They all knew that.
Pain tightened beneath my ribs. Then I felt one small kick.
My baby was still moving.
I looked at my shattered wristwatch. The hands had stopped at 1:59.
Across the room, the wall clock reached two.
“You really should’ve checked who you married,” I whispered.
Three hard knocks struck the front door.
Every head turned.
I stayed on the floor, one arm around my stomach.
Arthur’s expression changed before anyone opened the door. The color drained from his face, and for the first time that afternoon, the man who had spent thirty years controlling every room he entered looked afraid.
My friend Naomi dropped her paper plate and ran toward me while another guest called 911.
Beatrice grabbed Arthur’s sleeve.
“Who is that?”
He did not answer.
The knocks came again.
May you like
Arthur stared at me.
“What did you send them?”
