Chapter 3

Hope Corbett POV:​

The freezing Boston rain drenched my thin dress the moment the officers pushed me outside, sweat mixing with the rain as it streamed from my forehead into my stinging eyes.

Through the heavy curtain of rain and flashing police lights, my eyes stayed locked on Chadwick—standing inside the warm, brightly lit lobby.

An officer shoved my shoulder to hurry me along, and I staggered against the wet, cold metal door of the squad car, the handcuffs biting deep into my wrists.

Just before ducking into the back seat, I gathered the last shred of strength left in my chest and screamed into the thunder—

"Chadwick, I will never love you again!"

Inside the glass doors, Chadwick stopped dead in his tracks, his broad shoulders locking stiff.

The officer slammed the car door shut, sealing out the roar of the storm. The engine thundered to life, and the squad car pulled away from the curb.

I leaned my head back against the hard plastic seat, closed my eyes, and let the tears fall freely in the dark.

The squad car tore across the highway overpass and stopped outside the towering concrete walls of a federal prison on the edge of the city.

Guards marched me down a corridor lined on both sides with chain-link fencing, heavy iron doors clanging shut behind me one after another, each lock snapping into place.

At the intake desk, a burly female guard confiscated my cheap wedding ring, tilting my chin up to shine a flashlight straight into my pupils.

"Another puck bunny trying to sleep her way into a star player's money," she sneered. "You're going to have a real nice time in here."

They stripped off my soaked dress and threw me a stiff orange jumpsuit, a serial number stamped across the chest.

The guards shoved me into a tiny, windowless cell reeking of damp mold, then slammed the heavy steel door with a clang—claustrophobia swallowed me whole like a rising tide.

I curled up on the cold iron bunk, arms wrapped around my knees, gasping for air in the suffocating darkness.

Whistles and filthy jeers drifted in from the neighboring cells. Chadwick's reach had clearly already found its way to the inmates inside.

As I cowered in the corner, shivering, a faint, almost imperceptible flutter pulsed deep in my lower belly.

I went rigid. Withdrawing my hand from my knees, I pressed trembling fingertips against my flat stomach—and a horrifying realization struck me:

My period had been gone for over a month. Fear and panic exploded in my chest, choking me: was I... pregnant?

The instant panic clamped down on my throat, I bit my lip hard, refusing to let myself cry out in that dark cell.

I couldn't help reliving the madness of that night. Anabel's favoritism had already wounded me to the bone, yet on the night he came home drunk, I still couldn't push away his embrace.

The name he murmured into my hair as he pressed me down was Anabel's—clearly, unmistakably Anabel's—yet I still lay there, tears streaming, and accepted all of it.

There was no denying it: this child carried Chadwick's blood. But right then and there, I swore my oath—the man who had thrown me into this hell would never learn that this child existed.

Wiping my face with my rough sleeve, I held my belly and forced myself to breathe. For this child, I had to survive the guards' batons and the inmates' schemes.

Five years of agony came to an end at last, in the echo of iron doors closing inch by inch.

Those days were like rusted nails driven one by one into the boards of my memory—the laundry room, where steam never cleared all year long, the white fog of scalding irons hiding the hands that pinned me down. When the iron pipe came down, it made no sound of its own—only a dull crack from my own bones, like a winter lake splitting open.

I lay sprawled beside the scorching dryer, counting the bursts of agony in my palm. I counted to seven—and then there was nothing. When I woke, my little finger had healed crooked into an angle no finger should have. No splint, no cast—only a prison medic's parting words: "It'll straighten out on its own."

And then there was the underground clinic. Their "operating table" was a wooden plank covered in a filthy sheet, a light bulb overhead flickering on and off.

They forbade me to scream—so I bit down on a towel folded eight layers thick, and in the moment my teeth tore through the fabric, I heard the sound of my own body being ripped apart. No anesthesia. Only the midwife's hands pinning my shoulders, and the only words she ever said to me: "Stay alive. The baby is waiting for you."

I obeyed. For that cry not yet born, I swallowed every blow down—until, five years later, the prison's heavy iron gates groaned slowly open.

Bright sunlight fell upon my pale face.

Wearing the faded trench coat from five years ago, my crippled right hand buried deep in my pocket, I stepped onto the pavement and drew in a deep breath of Boston's cold air.

Chadwick Justice POV:​

Five years ago, standing behind the glass doors of the TD Garden lobby, I watched the patrol car's red and blue lights vanish into the pouring rain while an invisible fist ground my chest to pieces.

Her final scream in that storm still echoes in my ears, rattling the composure I had always prided myself on.

I loosened my silk tie and forced a low, suppressed laugh from my throat.

"Just another murderer's lie."

Yet when I looked down and saw her bright red blood mixed into the muddy water and crystal shards on the marble floor, the fingers hanging at my sides were trembling.

Remembering the dead, hollow emptiness in her eyes when my hand was around her throat, I couldn't breathe.

Blaise Petersen, the club's General Manager, edged up cautiously, offering a clean white towel to wipe the blood from my knuckles.

I slapped the towel out of his hand without a word and strode down the players' tunnel toward the locker room, never wanting to look at the blood on that floor again.