Chapter 3

Under the blanket, Ivy spread her hand over her stomach. Same as last time. The exact same words. He doesn't love this baby, she reminded herself. He never did. He made me have Noel the way you'd put a collar on a dog. "Dom, come on," Evan said. "That's your kid." "It's leverage," Dominic said. "Nothing more." Evan's pager buzzed. He muttered something about an OR, and the door clicked shut behind him. Then it was just the two of them. Footsteps crossed the room, slow and unhurried. Ivy fluttered her lashes, frowned as if she were surfacing from a dream, and opened her eyes. Dominic Pierce stood over her bed. He was thirty, and he looked like something carved for a cathedral and then left out in the rain too long. Black hair. Black suit. Black eyes that never warmed for anyone. He had been running Pierce Holdings since he was twenty-four, and the business pages called him the Reaper because of what he did to companies that crossed him. The last time Ivy saw him, he had been screaming her name in the snow. Now his hand closed around her jaw. He squeezed until tears burned her eyes. "You knew," he said. It was not a question. Under the blanket, her nails cut half-moons into her palms. Six years of fear came rushing up her throat. Her body remembered him even if she had sworn her heart wouldn't. The concrete basement under the lake house, where he had locked her for four days with no heat and no light after she tried to run. The leather belt across her back the first time she said no to him. The glowing tip of his cigarette pressed into her arm while he watched her face, waiting for her to scream. I can't do this, a small voice inside her whimpered. I can't fool him. Nobody fools him. Then she thought of a little boy crawling across a marble floor. I can do anything. "I don't..." She let her voice shake. "I didn't know." His hand slid from her jaw down to her throat. It wasn't a choke. Not yet. It was a reminder. His thumb pressed slowly against her pulse. "You set Celeste up to push you," he said quietly. "Did you think a little tumble down the stairs would get rid of my child? Did you think I'm stupid enough to buy it?" Ivy let her eyes fill. She let her lips tremble. And then she did the thing she had rehearsed a hundred times in her head while she lay there pretending to sleep. She reached up and laid her palm against his cheek. "Nico," she whispered. "Why are you being like this?" He went completely still. Nico. Nobody called him that. Nobody had called him that since the night his father died. Ivy only knew because, four years into her last life, he had come home drunk on the anniversary, sat on the floor of her dark room with a bottle of whiskey, and said, "He was the only one who ever called me Nico. Nobody else gets to." She had never dared to use it. Now she watched it hit him like a bullet. He ripped her hand off his face. "What did you call me?" "Nico." She blinked up at him through tears, hurt and confused. "You told me to call you that. You said only the person you love gets to—" "Shut up." "—and you said once we had a baby, we'd get married, and your mother couldn't stop us." She pushed herself up onto her elbows. "So when's the wedding?" For the first time since she had known him, Dominic Pierce looked like a man who didn't know what was happening. Then his eyes went black. His hand closed around her throat for real. "You must have a death wish," he said through his teeth. "Marry you? Your mother killed my father. You're here to pay off a debt. And you dare talk to me about weddings?" Ivy clawed at his wrist. Spots danced in front of her eyes. "Nico... please... I can't breathe... I can't talk..." He let go. She curled over, coughing, and when she looked up at him again, she let all of it show. Hurt. Betrayal. A girl whose lover had changed overnight. "Did you change your mind?" she rasped. "Is there someone else?" "Is there—" He actually laughed. "Ivy, cut the act." "What act?" She was shouting now, tears streaming. "We agreed! When I got pregnant, you'd marry me! Now I'm carrying your baby and you want him to be a bastard? Like me? You want our son to grow up the way I did?" His jaw flexed. "You will marry me, Dominic," she said, every word slow and clear. "That's my line. I won't cross it." "Your line." He leaned down until his face was an inch from hers. "Let me be clear. I'm keeping this child so I can make you suffer. If you get difficult, I'll get rid of it tomorrow." She didn't say anything. She just looked at him while the tears fell, her bottom lip shaking, her jaw locked so hard it hurt. Refusing to sob out loud. Something passed over his face. Ivy had seen it once or twice before, on rare nights. It looked almost like confusion. For three months he had thrown everything at her. The cellar. The cold. The hunger. And she had never cried for him once. Never begged. Now she was crying. For a baby. He straightened and looked down at her stomach, and slowly, a cold, satisfied smile spread across his mouth. "Well," he said. "Look at that. Turns out this kid is good for something after all." "What does that mean?" "You'll find out." He adjusted his cuffs. "I'm starting to look forward to meeting him, Ivy." The door slammed. Ivy lay back on the pillows and let her eyes fall shut. Her back was soaked with sweat. Her throat throbbed. When she opened her eyes again, there were no more tears in them. Half an hour later, Evan brought in a psychiatrist, Dr. Patel, who asked a lot of gentle questions. What year was it? Who was the President? Did she remember the fall? Did she remember why she was living at Mr. Pierce's lake house? "Because we're in love," Ivy told her, and smiled. "He's going to marry me. Why does everyone keep looking at me like that?" She heard the rest through the wall of the VIP lounge next door. Old hospitals had thin walls, and Ivy had spent a lot of nights in this one. "Post-traumatic stress," Dr. Patel was saying. "Possibly a dissociative episode triggered by the head injury. Her memory has reorganized itself around a safer story. In her mind, she and Mr. Pierce are a couple. It's rare, but it happens after prolonged trauma." "She's faking it," Dominic said. "Dom." Evan's voice. "Look at what you've put her through. The cellar? The burns? She's twenty years old. People break." Silence. "You sound very concerned about her," Dominic said softly. "I'm concerned about my medical license! Look, she's pregnant. Be gentle with a pregnant woman. That's all I'm saying." A door slammed. Then Ivy heard Dominic in the hallway, low and clipped, on the phone. "Miles. Her grandmother. I want you to—" The elevator chimed and swallowed the rest. Ivy's blood turned to ice. Grandma.