The phone buzzed again. And again. Insistent, demanding, the rhythm of a man who expected to be answered.

Jasper picked it up.

He didn't consider not picking it up. The action was automatic, reflexive, the same way he'd reach for a scalpel or a suture. His thumb slid across the screen, accepting the call, and he raised the phone to his ear without speaking.

"Denice? Denice, are you there?" Arthur's voice, nasal and eager, filled the speaker. "I've been trying to reach you. You missed our dinner reservation, I was worried-"

"She's indisposed."

Silence. Then: "Who is this? Where's Denice?"

Jasper walked to the window, looked out at the rain that still fell, at the city that continued without regard for the drama unfolding in this room. "She's resting. In my bed. As you can imagine, she's quite exhausted."

"Your-" Arthur sputtered. "Who the hell do you think you are? I demand to know-"

"Dr. Jasper Montgomery." He let the name land, watched it crush the other man through the silence. "Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery. And you are...?" He paused, let the silence stretch. "Ah. Yes. Arthur Fletcher. Age fifty-three. History of hypertension, elevated PSA, and-" He clicked his tongue, consulting a mental file that didn't exist. "A man who relies on flashing his wallet and empty promises of yacht trips to impress women half his age. I have absolutely no interest in your existence, nor the time to entertain your bruised ego."

"I-how dare you-"

"I dare quite a lot, Mr. Fletcher. What I don't dare is waste my time on men who pursue women half their age with promises of yacht trips and investment portfolios." Jasper's voice dropped, became something almost gentle. Almost kind. "Denice won't be requiring your services. Not now. Not ever. Do I make myself clear?"

He ended the call. Blocked the number. Tossed the phone onto the bedside table where it landed with a crack that made him wince-old habit, Elek had always said he was too rough with equipment-and turned back to the room.

Denice was awake.

Her eyes were open, unfocused, tracking slowly toward him. She blinked, once, twice, and awareness flooded her expression-confusion, then memory, then the careful blankness she wore like armor.

"Where-" She tried to sit up, winced, looked down at the IV in her hand. "What happened?"

"You fainted." He kept his voice neutral. Professional. "Hypoglycemia. Dehydration. Exhaustion." He listed the diagnoses like ingredients. "You're in a private room. You'll be monitored until your vitals stabilize."

She nodded, slow, her fingers finding the edge of the blanket and pulling it higher. "Thank you."

The word surprised him. He hadn't expected gratitude. Hadn't wanted it. Gratitude implied debt, and debt implied connection, and he was determined to have none with this woman.

"Don't thank me yet." He moved closer, stood at the foot of the bed where she had to look up to see him. "Arthur Fletcher called."

Her face changed. The blankness cracked, showing something underneath-shame, maybe. Or fear. "You answered my phone."

"I did."

"That was-" She stopped. Started again. "You had no right-"

"I have every right." He cut her off, felt the anger rising, the same anger that had driven him to threaten her job, to force her compliance, to take her body without tenderness. "You're under contract. Your body is-" He gestured, encompassing the bed, the IV, the situation. "-relevant to my family's interests. Until that contract is fulfilled, you don't make appointments with other men. You don't miss dinner reservations. You don't-"

"Your family's interests?" Her voice was rising, cracking, the first real emotion he'd heard from her. "You mean my son's life? You mean the child you're forcing me to conceive so you can-" She laughed, a broken sound. "So you can what? Feel like you've done your duty? Like you've honored your precious Montgomery blood?"

"I'm ensuring-"

"You're ensuring nothing!" She was sitting up now, despite the IV, despite the dizziness that made her sway. "You're using me. Using my son. Using-" She stopped, swallowed, and when she spoke again her voice was lower, deadlier. "You don't even know what you're doing. You don't know-"

"Then tell me." He moved before he thought, rounding the bed, catching her chin in his hand. Her skin was still hot, fever-warm, and her eyes-green, like his, like Elek's-were wide and wild. "Tell me what I don't know, Denice. Tell me why you married my brother. Tell me why you look at me like-" Like what? Like he'd destroyed her? Like he was destroying her still? "Like this."

She stared at him. Her lips parted. For a moment-just a moment-he saw something in her expression that looked like surrender. Like confession. Like the truth he'd been chasing since he woke up in this hospital five years ago with a hole in his memory and a name on his lips that no one could explain.

Then the door opened.

"Jasper?" The voice was feminine, familiar, and Denice's face transformed. The wildness vanished, replaced by something harder. Something colder.

Something broken.

Kira Schultz entered like she owned the room. Chanel suit, pearl earrings, blonde hair swept into a twist that probably took an hour and cost more than Denice's monthly rent. She stopped three feet from the bed, her smile freezing as she took in the scene-Jasper's hand on Denice's chin, their faces inches apart, the intimacy of the moment that couldn't be disguised.

"Oh." Kira's hand went to her throat, a gesture of surprise that looked rehearsed. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize you had company."

Jasper stepped back. His hand fell to his side, fingers curling into a fist. "Kira. What are you doing here?"

"I came to see Ansel." She moved closer, her heels clicking on the tile, and slipped her arm through his. The gesture was automatic, proprietary, and Denice watched it with an expression that might have been carved from stone. "He's having his treatment. I thought I'd check on you while I waited." She looked at Denice, head tilting. "Is this...? Elek's wife?"

"Widow," Denice said. The word was flat. Final.

"Of course." Kira's smile didn't waver. "I'm so sorry for your loss. Elek was-" She paused, glanced at Jasper, back to Denice. "He was wonderful. We all loved him."

Denice said nothing. Her hand had found the IV line, fingers tracing the tubing where it entered her vein.

Kira's grip on Jasper's arm tightened. "You know, Denice-may I call you Denice?-I've been meaning to reach out. I feel like we have so much in common." She laughed, a silvery sound. "Everyone used to say how much you looked like me. Back when Jasper and I were-" Another glance at Jasper, coy, conspiratorial. "Well. Before I went to Paris. They said he'd found himself a little stand-in. Isn't that funny?"

Stand-in.

The word hit Denice like a physical blow. She felt it in her chest, in her throat, in the sudden tremor of her hands. Five years, and she'd convinced herself it didn't matter. That she'd misheard, misunderstood, that the overheard conversation in the hospital corridor hadn't been about her-

But Kira was smiling, and Jasper was silent, and the truth she'd buried was rising through the floorboards like smoke.

"Jasper?" Kira prompted, squeezing his arm. "Tell her. Tell her how silly everyone was. How you just had a type, back then. Dark hair, green eyes-"

"It was a long time ago." Jasper's voice was strange. Distant. "I was young. Stupid." He looked at Denice, and for a moment she saw something in his eyes-confusion, maybe. Or recognition. "It doesn't matter now."

Doesn't matter.

The finality of it crushed her. All her pride, all her carefully constructed dignity, all the walls she'd built to survive this nightmare-they crumbled. She was nothing. Had always been nothing. A substitute. A placeholder. A body that happened to fit the specifications while the real thing was unavailable.

Her fingers closed on the IV catheter.

She pulled.

The pain was sharp, immediate, blood welling from the vein and running down her hand in a thin red line. She didn't feel it. She was already moving, swinging her legs over the side of the bed, finding her feet on the cold tile.

"Denice-" Jasper reached for her.

"Don't." She backed away, her hand pressed to the bleeding wound, her eyes fixed on his face. "Don't touch me. Don't look at me. Don't-" Her voice broke. She didn't care. "You want a child? Fine. Send me a schedule. I'll be there. But don't-" She swallowed, tasted copper, kept going. "Don't pretend this is anything other than what it is. Don't pretend I'm anything other than what I am."

She turned to Kira. The other woman's smile had slipped, showing something underneath-surprise, maybe. Or satisfaction.

"Congratulations," Denice said. "He's all yours. He always was."

She walked to the door. Her legs shook, but they held. Her hand left bloody prints on the handle, on the frame, on everything she touched. She didn't look back.

The hallway was empty. She walked faster, then ran, her bare feet silent on the carpet, her hospital gown flapping open in the back. She didn't care. She couldn't care. She just had to get out, get away, get somewhere she could breathe-

The elevator doors opened.

She stepped inside, pressed the button for the lobby, watched the doors begin to close-

And saw Jasper in the corridor behind her, his hand raised, his face twisted with something that looked almost like pain.

The doors closed. The elevator descended. Denice slid down the wall and pressed her bleeding hand to her mouth, and screamed silently into her palm.

The elevator stopped at the third floor.

Denice didn't move. She sat on the floor, her back against the wall, her hand wrapped in the hem of her hospital gown, and watched the doors slide open.

Ansel sat in a wheelchair.

He was smaller than she remembered. Paler. The knitted cap on his head was blue, his favorite color, and his hands-his tiny hands-rested on the blanket covering his lap. He was looking down at something, some toy or book, and he didn't see her.

But Denice saw him. She saw the shape of his eyes, the curve of his mouth, the way his ears stuck out slightly from his head-Jasper's ears, her ears, the genetic blueprint they'd created together in secret and in love.

"Ansel." The name escaped her, a whisper, a prayer.

He looked up.

For a moment-just a moment-she saw recognition in his face. Confusion, then something that might have been hope. His mouth opened-

"Mommy?"

The voice came from beside him. Kira Schultz stepped into the elevator, her hand on the wheelchair's push handle, her smile bright and warm and absolutely devastating.

"Mommy's here, sweetheart." She bent down, adjusted Ansel's blanket, pressed a kiss to his forehead. "Did you have a good nap?"

Ansel's face transformed. The confusion vanished, replaced by adoration. He leaned into Kira's touch, his small hand finding her sleeve, gripping tight. "I dreamed about the beach. The one in the storybook with the pink sand."

"When you're all better, love, I'll take you to see a real one just like it," Kira promised, her voice dripping with honeyed affection.

Denice couldn't breathe. The elevator was too small, the walls too close, the air too thin. She tried to stand, couldn't find her legs, settled for crawling forward on her knees.

"Ansel." Her voice was wrong-too high, too desperate, the voice of a stranger. "Ansel, it's me. It's Mama. Look at me-"

His eyes found hers. She saw the moment of recognition, the flicker of something that might have been memory. Then Kira's hand tightened on his shoulder, and the flicker died.

"Who's that?" Ansel asked, his voice small, frightened.

"Just someone who works at the hospital, sweetheart." Kira's eyes met Denice's, and there was no warmth in them now. Nothing but victory. "She's not important."

"Not important." Denice repeated the words, tasting them. She was on her feet now, moving forward, her hands reaching for her son-"I'm your mother. I'm your-"

"Security!" Kira's voice sharpened, cutting through Denice's desperation. "This woman is disturbing my son. Please remove her."

Ansel began to cry. Silent tears, the way he always cried when he was truly frightened, his small face crumpling while his voice stayed trapped in his throat. He turned into Kira's embrace, hiding from Denice, from the stranger who was screaming and reaching and-

"Denice!"

Jasper's voice. Jasper's hands, rough on her shoulders, spinning her around. She saw his face-shocked, angry, afraid-and then she was flying, her back hitting the elevator wall with force that drove the air from her lungs.

She slid down, gasping, her vision sparking. Through the haze, she saw Jasper step in front of Kira and Ansel, his body a barrier between them and her. His stance was protective. Fierce. The way he'd once stood between her and a drunk in a bar, a lifetime ago.

"Don't touch him." His voice was ice. "Don't come near him. Don't-"

"He's my son." The words came out as a whisper, barely audible. "Jasper, he's my-"

"I don't know you." The words fell like stones. Each one a burial. "I've never seen you before in my life."

The elevator doors closed. Denice watched them through a film of tears, watched Jasper's face disappear, watched her son's small hand waving goodbye-not to her, never to her, to Kira, to the woman he'd been taught to call mother.

The elevator descended. Denice didn't move. She sat on the floor of the empty car, her back against the wall where Jasper had thrown her, and felt something inside her crack. Not break-crack. A fault line opening, deep and irreversible.

The lobby was bright, loud, full of people who had somewhere to be. Denice walked through them without seeing them, her bare feet leaving wet prints on the marble, her hospital gown gaping, her hand still bleeding. No one stopped her. She was invisible. She was nothing.

The doors opened to the street. The rain was still falling, harder now, a deluge that soaked her in seconds. She didn't feel it. She walked to the curb, stepped into the gutter, felt the water rising around her ankles.

She looked up at the hospital-fifteen floors, hundreds of windows, one of them holding everything she'd lost. She opened her mouth. She screamed.

The sound was inhuman. Animal. The sound of a creature with its leg caught in a trap, chewing through bone to escape. She screamed until her throat tore, until the rain filled her mouth, until she had no voice left and still she screamed, silently, into the storm.

Then she walked. She didn't know where. She didn't care. She walked until the hospital was behind her, until the city blurred into anonymity, until she found herself at her own door, her own miserable apartment, her own empty bed.

She didn't sleep. She sat in the dark, listening to the rain, and planned.