Chapter 1 - The Ultrasound in His Pocket
At 11:42 the night before her wedding, Mave Callahan found an ultrasound in her fiancé’s tuxedo pocket.
The baby was eight weeks old.
The mother was her maid of honor.
For several seconds, Mave just stared at the name printed above the grainy image.
Gemma Roads.
Her best friend.
The woman who had hugged her at rehearsal dinner and whispered that tomorrow would be perfect.
Suddenly, six months of excuses made sense.
Brandon’s late-night “work emergencies.”
Gemma’s strange little smiles.
The guarded phone.
The weekends they were both mysteriously unavailable.
But the betrayal wasn’t the only thing that frightened her.
Four days earlier, Brandon had brought papers to Mave’s studio while she was exhausted from finishing her wedding gown.
Routine insurance forms, he’d said.
He poured her wine, kissed her head, and pointed to the highlighted signature tabs.
She signed every one.
Now, standing in the hotel suite with the ultrasound shaking in her hand, Mave remembered those papers.
And felt sick.
She pulled off her engagement ring, changed clothes, grabbed her passport and business notebook, and walked into the Chicago rain.
She had no plan.
She only knew she couldn’t stay.
Then headlights flooded the alley ahead of her.
A black Maybach stopped across the opening.
A man hit the wet cobblestones.
A sharp metallic crack followed.
Mave froze against the brick wall as an enormous man in a charcoal overcoat stepped from the car.
Then his head turned.
His steel-gray eyes found her immediately.
And before Mave could hide it, his gaze dropped to the crumpled ultrasound still clenched in her hand.
“You chose a bad alley tonight,” he said.
The stranger took the ultrasound from her fingers, unfolded it beneath the security light, and read Gemma’s name. Then he noticed the pale mark where Mave’s engagement ring had been.
“You’re not Gemma.”
“No.”
“Who is she?”
May you like
“My maid of honor.”
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