Chapter 3

The gala never happened—at least not for me—because at 9 a.m. the next morning, my mother called while I was still tangled in my blankets, alone, in my separate bedroom, in my separate life.

"Sweetheart. The photos from last night are everywhere. You two looked radiant. So when am I getting grandchildren?"

"Mom."

"I'm just saying, a man who looks at you like that—"

"Like what? He looks at me like I'm a quarterly report."

"Honey." Her voice dropped to a stage whisper. "He looked at you like a starving man looks at a steak. The Post ran it with the caption 'Ice King Melts.' I've had it framed."

I hung up on her, which is our family's love language, and stared at the ceiling.

The truth was, the gala had rattled me. Every time another man so much as greeted me, Damian's thoughts went from chamber music to war drums. When Kane Foster—the new star analyst at Blackwood Capital, all dimples and zero boundaries—kissed my hand hello, my husband smiled politely while his brain produced a detailed, itemized plan for relocating Kane to the company's office in Antarctica. We don't have an office in Antarctica, his own mind countered. We'll open one, he replied to himself.

And yet at the end of the night, he'd walked me to my bedroom door, said "Goodnight, Sienna," and retreated to his own room like a knight honoring some vow I'd never asked for.

"Don't look at her lips. Door. Close the door. Two years of discipline, don't you dare—"

The man was a fortress, and I was beginning to suspect I'd been the one who built the walls. I just couldn't remember how.

So today, I was going to his office. Officially: to discuss "investments," a word I planned to say while holding a folder. Unofficially: to stake my claim, test my range, and figure out what condition and what Marcus and what they always run meant before I signed away the strangest, most promising marriage in Manhattan.

I picked my most devastating skirt. For research purposes.

Blackwood Capital's lobby was a cathedral of glass and ego. The receptionist's eyes went wide—"Mrs. Blackwood!"—and I sailed toward the private elevator like I owned it, which, technically, in the event of a divorce settlement, I partially would.

The elevator climbed. Somewhere around the fortieth floor, the radio in my head crackled to life, which meant my husband was close.

"—third coffee today and it tastes wrong. Bitter. Metallic. Why is it so hot in here? Focus. The Hendricks merger—" His thoughts staggered, blurred, like a record skipping. "Something's wrong. My skin is burning. It's three weeks early, it can't be happening now, not HERE—"

The elevator doors opened on the executive floor.

His assistant, a nervous young man named William, materialized in front of me like a goalkeeper. "Mrs. Blackwood! What a—what an unexpected—Mr. Blackwood is extremely indisposed—I mean occupied—"

"I'll wait inside," I said, stepping left. He stepped left.

"The lounge has excellent pastries—"

"William."

"He gave strict orders no one enters, especially—" He stopped himself one syllable too late.

"Especially me?"

Through the heavy office door, I heard a woman's voice, syrup-sweet: "Mr. Blackwood, you're burning up. Let me help you out of that shirt."

And then my husband's thoughts hit me like a freight train, ragged and desperate:

"Get her away from me. Her hands—wrong, wrong, everything's wrong, the coffee, someone PUT something in the coffee—I can't hold it back—Sienna. I need Sienna. No—she can't see me like this. She can never see me like this."

I shoved past William and threw open the door.