Chapter 4 - A MOTHER’S BARGAIN
Roman read the message three times.
Then he sat down.
Not gracefully.
Not like the composed man who could enter a boardroom and shift the temperature without raising his voice.
He simply sat.
“My mother didn’t write this.”
Daniel remained expressionless.
“The message came from a phone registered to her private office.”
“That proves nothing.”
“There are ninety-three messages.”
Roman stopped speaking.
I reached for the photograph.
The screenshot showed a conversation between Patrick and a contact labeled B.B.
Patrick: If she refuses the documents, pressure may accelerate the pregnancy.
B.B.: No permanent harm to the child.
Patrick: Obviously.
B.B.: Cassandra can be handled afterward. Isabel cannot.
I read it again.
The words blurred.
Isabel cannot.
Not my daughter.
Isabel.
An asset.
A future vote.
A surname.
A line on a trust document.
My hand began shaking.
Roman noticed.
He reached toward me, stopped himself, and let his hand fall.
Smart.
“Where is my mother?” he asked.
“Under guard at the estate.”
“Arrested?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Daniel’s expression sharpened.
“Because federal agents are more interested in seeing who she calls.”
Roman looked toward the hospital door.
“I want her here.”
“No,” I said.
He turned.
“No?”
“She stays exactly where she is.”
“Cassandra—”
“If Beatrice believes the plan failed completely, she destroys whatever evidence remains.”
“She may be innocent.”
“And if she is, waiting six hours won’t change that.”
He hated that I was right.
I watched him realize it.
Nine years married to Roman had taught me something strange about powerful men.
They were often less frightened by being wrong than by being unable to act.
Roman wanted movement.
Cars.
Orders.
People summoned.
Doors opened.
I wanted patience.
Because I had spent four months learning what happened when everyone moved exactly where Patrick expected.
“You said you knew beforehand,” Roman said quietly.
“Some of it.”
“How much?”
I studied him.
Enough lies had lived between us.
So I told him.
“Four months ago, I received an envelope at the women’s clinic.”
His brow furrowed.
“What envelope?”
“No return address. Inside were photocopies of preliminary trust documents and a hotel receipt.”
His face tightened.
“Alessia.”
“Yes.”
“Who sent it?”
“I still don’t know.”
I had assumed it was someone trying to hurt me.
Eventually I realized it was someone trying to warn me.
“The trust draft contained clauses I didn’t understand,” I continued. “So I took it to Rachel.”
“You went outside the family attorneys.”
“Obviously.”
Roman almost smiled.
It died before it reached his eyes.
“Rachel found the incapacity language. Then Daniel found Arden. Then the money transfers.”
“And you said nothing.”
“I needed to know whether you were part of it.”
That landed.
“Did you think I was?”
“I didn’t know.”
“Cass.”
“You were sleeping with Patrick Rourke’s daughter while someone was preparing to take legal control of mine.”
He looked away.
“You forfeited the benefit of my assumptions.”
A nurse entered, checked the fetal monitor, adjusted my medication, and left.
For two minutes neither of us spoke.
Finally Roman asked, “Did you plan Thanksgiving?”
“Yes.”
“The entire thing?”
“The confrontation.”
“The ring?”
“No.”
That surprised him.
“I decided that when she walked in.”
“Why give it to her?”
“Because everyone expected me to attack her.”
Roman’s eyes narrowed.
Exactly.
There he was.
The strategist.
Finally catching up.
“If I screamed at Alessia,” I said, “Patrick wins. If I physically attacked her, even better. Pregnant, unstable wife humiliates innocent socialite at Thanksgiving.”
“The psychiatric report becomes believable.”
“Yes.”
“And giving her the ring?”
“Made Patrick comfortable.”
Roman stared at me.
I could almost see him reconstructing the evening.
My calm voice.
My deliberate humiliation.
The folder.
The evidence.
Alessia seated across from me.
Patrick thinking the women had become enemies.
“You used his expectations against him.”
“I used everyone’s.”
Including Roman’s.
That part hurt him most.
Daniel’s phone rang.
He stepped outside.
Roman rubbed his face.
“When did we become this?”
“We didn’t.”
He looked at me.
“You did.”
I kept my voice quiet.
“You became a man who believed protecting a family meant controlling everyone in it.”
He absorbed that.
“And me?”
“I became a woman who stopped telling her husband when she was afraid because she knew he would treat fear like a problem to manage.”
For a long moment, only our daughter’s heartbeat filled the room.
Fast.
Steady.
Alive.
Roman stared at the monitor.
“When she’s born…”
He stopped.
“What?”
“I don’t know whether you’ll let me near either of you.”
The old Cassandra would have comforted him.
The woman lying in that hospital bed was too tired to rescue people from consequences they had chosen.
“That depends on what you do next.”
His eyes lifted.
“Not what you say.”
Daniel returned.
“We have movement.”
I sat straighter.
“Beatrice?”
“She made a call.”
“To whom?”
“A prepaid phone.”
Roman cursed.
“Can you trace it?”
“We did.”
Daniel looked between us.
“The phone is currently inside St. Matthew’s Hospital.”
My blood went cold.
Roman stood instantly.
“Where?”
“Second floor.”
We were on the third.
Daniel continued.
“It moved five minutes ago. West stairwell.”
Roman pressed the security button beside my bed.
“Lock this floor.”
Daniel was already calling his team.
I looked at the door.
Every instinct told me to run.
My body could not.
My daughter reminded me with another tightening beneath my ribs.
Roman moved to the doorway.
“Stay here.”
I laughed once.
He looked back.
“Sorry. Habit.”
“At least you noticed.”
His mouth tightened.
Then the hospital alarm sounded.
Not fire.
Infant security.
A nurse shouted in the corridor.
Footsteps thundered past.
Roman stepped outside.
I heard someone yell, “Stop!”
Then a crash.
Daniel drew his weapon and followed.
I was alone.
For perhaps three seconds.
The bathroom door opened.
I had not seen anyone enter it.
A woman stepped out wearing hospital scrubs.
Mask.
Cap.
Gloves.
She held a syringe.
My hand went to the call button.
She crossed the room fast.
I yanked the IV line from my arm and swung the metal pole.
It struck her shoulder.
She screamed.
The syringe fell.
I kicked it beneath the bed.
She lunged.
I hit her again.
Pain ripped across my stomach.
“Help!”
The woman grabbed my wrist.
Then the door exploded inward.
Roman hit her with enough force to send both of them into the wall.
Daniel arrived seconds later.
Security flooded the room.
The woman was restrained.
Roman turned immediately toward me.
Blood ran from a cut above his eyebrow.
“Cass.”
“I’m okay.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“So are you.”
“No.”
His gaze dropped.
My dress was damp.
Then more fluid ran down my leg.
A nurse rushed in.
My heart dropped.
“Is that—”
She checked quickly.
Then looked at the doctor entering behind her.
“My water broke.”
Roman went completely still.
The doctor checked the monitor.
“Thirty-two weeks,” he said. “We may still be able to delay delivery, but we need to move now.”
As they transferred me to another bed, Daniel crouched beside the fallen syringe.
He looked at the label.
Then at Roman.
“What is it?” I asked.
Daniel’s expression changed.
“Oxytocin.”
The room went silent.
A drug capable of triggering contractions.
Someone had sent that woman to force me into premature labor.
Roman looked toward the attacker.
“Who paid you?”
She turned her face away.
Daniel reached into the woman’s pocket.
He removed a phone.
One message remained open on the screen.
Do it before Cassandra talks to Roman.
Below it was a photograph.
Not of me.
Of Beatrice.
Taken less than ten minutes earlier.
Bound to a chair.
A gun against her head.
Roman stared at it.
Then we understood.
His mother had not ordered the attack.
Someone had stolen her phone.
Someone wanted us to think she had.
Patrick was in custody.
Which meant there was another architect behind the plan.
May you like
And whoever it was had just made the first mistake.
They had revealed that Patrick Rourke was never the most dangerous person at our Thanksgiving table.
