Chapter 4
He went to her.
He did not run, bolt forward, cry out, or lose his head in a burst of noble terror, the way men do in stories where love still holds some power over the body.
No. Adrian Mercer simply made his choice with the same lethal precision he used to sign contracts, select sites for clinics, and silence people in meetings with a single look.
His fingers loosened on my shoulder as if I were an object he had to release in order to pick up something more valuable.
In that fraction of a second, what I felt was not even the fall, but a terrible, absolute weightlessness.
Not the physical kind, not from the yacht listing beneath us, but the kind in which a woman realizes for the first time that all these years she has been holding on not to a hand, but to the illusion of one.
My hip struck the wet deck. My palm skidded over the rough surface, tearing the skin away in a flash of burning pain, but even the pain was secondary, almost mundane, because all I could see was my husband’s back, broad and familiar down to every line, moving swiftly away from me toward Nikki.
She lay by the rail, clutching the metal bars and screaming as though the entire world were obligated to stop sinking at once for the sake of her beautiful terror.
Adrian caught her under the arms, pulled her against him, and shielded her from the crowd with his body.
Sitting on the deck in my soaked dress, my knee throbbing with a hot pain that felt like it belonged to someone else, I suddenly saw them as though from the outside: him, dark, strong, composed; her, golden and trembling, clinging to him with her whole body.
Somewhere in that picture, I was supposed to have been the wife.
His lawful wife. His real wife. The one he saved first, not because she was weaker, but because she was his.
Instead, I was on the floor while another woman was in his arms, and that simple, almost primitive arrangement struck harder than any words.
Everything that could be proven, their bodies had already proved.
"Lana!" Kyle shouted, reaching a hand toward me, but two frantic guests rushing for the lifeboats shoved him aside. One stepped on the hem of my dress. The fabric jerked me backward, and I nearly fell again. Only then did I remember the life jacket. I still had it. I was crushing it against my chest so tightly my fingers had gone numb, the straps cutting into my palms, the coarse rubber smelling of salvation, which had now become one more thing to bargain over. I tried to stand. The deck slid away under my feet. Thin streams of water ran toward port. People slipped, swore, shrieked. Someone screamed that his mother was still below. Someone demanded a doctor. Someone prayed so quickly it sounded as though he were trying to strike a deal with God before the next impact. I got to my feet, swayed, and grabbed a wet bench. That was when I saw one of Adrian’s guards opening the passage to a lifeboat only for his people.
For the chosen few. Apparently, even death had a VIP section.
"Adrian!" I shouted. My voice broke and drowned in the wind, the smoke, and other people’s panic, but he heard me.
Of course he did. We had lived side by side for three years.
He knew how to hear me even when he pretended not to.
He turned. Nikki clung to his shirt. Vivian appeared behind him, pale, her face distorted with fear, but even now she gripped a small bag of documents as tightly as though it held oxygen instead of paper.
I raised the life jacket. I did not offer it. I only showed him.
"I’m carrying a baby," I said, no longer screaming but speaking loudly, one syllable at a time, so the wind could not steal a single letter. "Your baby. If you still remember what marriage can lead to, and not only what cheating can."
He came toward me. Fast. Too fast. There was no remorse in his stride, and I understood that immediately.
Remorse does not walk like that, with a straight back, a clenched jaw, and eyes that issue commands instead of pleas.
Nikki started after him, but Vivian caught her elbow and hissed something I could not hear.
I only saw Nikki bite her lip and look at me with such hatred that anyone might have thought I was not defending a life, but stealing her final scene.
Adrian stopped one step away from me. Up close, he smelled of smoke, cold water, and the same cologne that had once made my knees weak.
Now it made me nauseous. Not pregnancy nausea.
Nausea of the soul. That must be what memories smell like when they begin to rot.
"Give me the life jacket," he said.
No “Lana, please.” No “I’ll fix this.” No “We’re both getting out.
” Just that again: give. As though my entire life had been one long exercise in surrender.
Give up your voice, your past, your parents’ name, your right to ask questions.
Give up the bedroom. Give up your husband.
Give up your chance to live. I smiled at him.
My lips trembled because the smile came out frightening and new, nothing like the woman I used to be.
"And what do I get in return?" I asked. "An apartment for a year? An allowance? A medical certificate saying I died of ingratitude?"
His eyes narrowed.
"This is no place for your theatrics."
"My theatrics?" I almost laughed, and the sound scraped my throat raw.
"Adrian, you just staged the grand debut of your pregnant mistress in front of every society viper in Manhattan. You led her to the microphone and made me shake her hand. Now that the yacht is sinking, you’re asking for my life jacket.
I’m sorry, darling, but if this is theater, you’re not the director.
You’re a prop who spent far too long believing he was God. "
He moved his hand as though he meant to grab my elbow, then stopped.
The cameras? The witnesses? Security? Or the remnants of something human lodged inside him like a splinter?
I no longer knew. The wind flung a wet strand of hair across my face, and I pushed it away with trembling fingers without releasing the life jacket.
A dull ache pulled at my stomach. Not hard, but enough to make my fear for the baby sharp and clear.
I could no longer afford to be merely an abandoned wife.
Abandoned wives have the luxury of falling beautifully.
Mothers are required to survive without beauty, with teeth and nails and no music.
"Lana," he said more softly, and the sudden gentleness made it worse because I knew that tone. It was the voice he used to persuade investors to surrender controlling interest. The voice he used to make doctors keep quiet. The voice he had once used while stroking my hair after yet another failure and saying, “Don’t work yourself up.”
"Listen to me. Nikki is pregnant. She’s farther along. She cannot get cold, take a fall, or panic. You’re stronger. You can hold on until help arrives."
Stronger.
So that was it.
When I needed to be loved, I had been too broken, too much the foster kid, too grateful. When I needed to be saved, I had suddenly become stronger. Such useful female strength: people remember it only when they need somewhere to unload your death.
"You’re bargaining even now," I said. "Even now, you’re calculating which one of us is worth more. She and her baby are an asset. Me and mine are unverified information, right? Something to check, documents to request, a matter to put before the board?"
"You know how that sounds," he said through his teeth.
"Better than you know how you look."
He turned away for one second. Toward the lifeboat.
One of the guards was already helping Nikki over the low rail.
I watched Vivian hand him the same bag, small, dark leather, probably stuffed with documents, passports, money, and keys to other people’s lives.
The guard took it carefully, almost respectfully, and placed it on a seat in the lifeboat.
On a seat. I stared at that bag, and something inside me went completely silent.
Not calm. No. There are different kinds of silence.
There is the silence before a prayer and the silence before a gunshot. The second kind settled inside me.
"There’s room for the bag?" I asked.
Adrian followed my gaze. Irritation, almost annoyance, crossed his face for an instant, as though I had chosen the worst possible moment to quibble over a minor detail.
"Those are documents."
"And this is a human being."
"Don’t start."
"I’m already finished, Adrian. You just noticed too late."
A new wave of screams struck us from behind.
The yacht listed more steeply, visibly now.
The waterline beyond the rail drew closer, and the deck beneath our feet became a sloping, rain-slick plane.
A crew member shouted through a megaphone, but the words broke into fragments.
“Starboard side... life jackets... do not push...” Do not push.
Such a tender request to make of people who were no longer people, only fear dressed in expensive coats.
I finally tried to slip one arm through the life jacket, doing what I should have done from the start, but Adrian immediately stepped closer and grabbed a strap.
"Let go," I said.
"Lana, don’t make me repeat myself."
"And don’t make me regret ever loving you."