Chapter 12 Roz
ROZ
Roz stepped out of her car and stared up at the Harrington estate, its grandeur looming against the gray morning sky.
The sprawling stone mansion, an architectural marvel, had once been a symbol of her family’s prestige and wealth, but now it just felt cold, empty, and suffocating.
She paused on the front steps, her hands buried deep in her coat pockets, as the wind whipped around her.
Every nerve in her body screamed for her to turn back and retreat, but she couldn’t.
Evelyn had summoned her, and when Evelyn Harrington summoned, you answered.
The door was opened before she even knocked, one of the house staff ushering her in with a quiet nod.
The sound of her boots echoed on the marble floors as she moved through the hall, the polished family portraits watching her every step.
Her gaze lingered on one, her father’s stoic face beside a much younger Evelyn.
They looked invincible and untouchable. The Harringtons always did.
“Your mother is in the sitting room, Roz,” the staff member murmured, but Roz didn’t need directions. She knew the layout of this house as well as she knew an OR.
Pushing open the heavy door to the sitting room, Roz found her mother exactly where she expected, sitting in her grand leather armchair by the fireplace, a china teacup balanced delicately in her hand.
Evelyn didn’t look up immediately, her sharp gaze fixed on the flames.
Roz’s heartbeat pounded as she stepped inside, letting the door close behind her.
“Sit.”
It was a command, not a request. Evelyn didn’t need to raise her voice to wield power. Her control lay in the steel beneath her words, in the unflinching gaze she finally turned toward Roz as she sat down across from her.
For a long moment, there was only silence. The fire crackled faintly, but it did nothing to warm the chill seeping into Roz’s bones.
“You’ve embarrassed me, Rosalind.”
Roz’s throat tightened. “Mother, I—”
“Don’t.” Evelyn’s voice cut like a scalpel, sharp and precise. “I’ve spent decades building this family’s name, your father and I both. Do you think I’ll let you ruin that with your reckless decisions? With her?”
Roz’s jaw clenched as the words hung in the air. Her. The disdain in Evelyn’s tone was unmistakable.
“You don’t know her,” Roz said carefully, her voice low but steady.
Evelyn’s eyes narrowed, her lips pressing into a thin line.
“And I don’t need to. I saw enough last night to know exactly what’s going on.
” She leaned forward, placing the teacup gently on the table between them.
“You’ve worked so hard, Rosalind, so hard to get to where you are.
And for what? To throw it all away for some fleeting… infatuation?”
Roz’s hands fisted in her lap. “It’s not fleeting.”
“Then it’s worse than I thought,” Evelyn snapped, her calm facade finally cracking.
“You can’t have both, Rosalind. Do you understand me?
You cannot have the career you’ve worked for, the respect you’ve fought for, and…
this.” She waved her hand dismissively, as though the relationship, her love for Sam, were nothing more than a stain on Roz’s otherwise pristine record.
Roz’s pulse thundered in her ears, her chest tight with anger and hurt. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“Oh, don’t be so na?ve,” Evelyn said, rising to her feet.
She was tall, regal, the firelight casting sharp shadows across her face.
“You’ve seen what happens when people with power and responsibility like us make foolish mistakes.
You’ve spent your whole life proving yourself in a man’s world.
What do you think they’ll say about you when they find out? ”
Roz stood, her hands trembling as she fought to keep her composure. “Let them talk. I don’t care.”
“Of course you care!” Evelyn hissed. “You care what your colleagues think, what your patients think, what Catherine and Olivia think. You’ve always cared, Rosalind, because you know how quickly respect can vanish.”
The words struck a nerve, and Roz felt her resolve waver. Evelyn stepped closer, her voice softening into something almost maternal but no less cutting. “You’re smarter than this, Roz. You’re stronger. Don’t let one foolish mistake destroy everything you’ve built.”
Roz swallowed hard, blinking back the sting of tears as she forced herself to meet Evelyn’s unrelenting gaze. “So what are you asking me to do?”
“I’m not asking,” Evelyn said coldly. “This ends now.”
Roz’s breath caught, her hands tightening into fists. “You’re asking me to choose.”
“No,” Evelyn replied, turning back toward the fire. “I’m telling you to choose.”
The room spun for a moment, her mother’s words slamming into her like a punch to the gut. She wanted to scream, to tell Evelyn she had no right, that this wasn’t her life to dictate. But Evelyn was already done with the conversation, her dismissal clear in the way she stood with her back to Roz.
Roz turned on her heel and strode out of the room, her boots echoing on the marble floor. She felt hollow, like something vital had been ripped from her. But worse than that, she felt like a child again, small and powerless under Evelyn’s unrelenting control.
The air outside hit her like a slap as she stumbled down the steps, her chest heaving with breaths she couldn’t seem to catch. Her car felt like the only safe place left, and she slammed the door shut behind her before resting her forehead against the steering wheel.
Evelyn’s words rattled around in her head: “You cannot have both.”
Roz didn’t know if she was furious or heartbroken or both. But as she sat there, alone in her car outside the house she had never truly belonged to, one truth became painfully clear: Evelyn Harrington always got her way.
And Roz didn’t know if she was strong enough to fight her.
Roz sat in her car for far longer than she intended, the leather seat cold against her back and the silence unbearable.
The Harrington mansion loomed behind her like a dark shadow, its pristine facade hiding decades of control and manipulation.
She gripped the steering wheel tightly, her knuckles white from the pressure as Evelyn’s words played on repeat in her mind.
“You cannot have both.”
The ultimatum felt like a chain, locking her down, suffocating her.
Her breath came sharp and shallow, her pulse an erratic rhythm of anger and helplessness.
She hated that her mother could still get to her, still strip her down to her rawest insecurities with just a few calculated words.
Roz had spent her entire life fighting to carve out a place for herself—first in the family, then in the unforgiving halls of medicine.
And yet here she was, reduced to a child desperate for approval.
Her phone buzzed on the passenger seat, pulling her out of her thoughts. She glanced at the screen.
Sam: “Everything okay?”
The simple words hit her harder than she expected.
She stared at them for a long moment, her thumb hovering over the keyboard.
Sam had no idea what had just happened, and Roz didn’t know how to tell her.
How could she explain the suffocating weight of being a Harrington?
How Evelyn’s words had crawled under her skin like poison, leaving her shaken and uncertain?
She typed a response. Deleted it. Typed another. Deleted that too. In the end, she turned the screen off and dropped the phone back onto the seat. Sam deserved honesty, but Roz wasn’t sure she had anything left to give right now.
The drive back to her apartment was a blur. Roz wasn’t sure if it was the lack of sleep or the emotional toll of Evelyn’s ultimatum, but the world outside her window felt distorted. Gray skies, blurred the outlines of trees and buildings, everything melting together.
When she finally stepped through her apartment door, the emptiness of the space hit her like a wall.
She dropped her keys onto the counter, the sound unnaturally loud in the silence.
The apartment was immaculate, cold, and sterile, a reflection of how tightly she had kept her life compartmentalized.
Sam’s presence had started to warm these walls, though.
The memory of her laugh and the way her body fit against Roz’s under the covers, it lingered here, like a ghost Roz couldn’t banish.
Roz kicked off her shoes and sank onto the couch, her head falling into her hands. The room still smelled faintly like Sam’s perfume, a subtle reminder of what was at stake. Evelyn’s words echoed louder now, blending with the memories of Sam’s touch, Sam’s kisses, Sam’s steady presence.
“You cannot have both.”
Roz’s throat tightened. Evelyn wasn’t wrong, not entirely.
Roz had worked too hard for too long to let anyone jeopardize her career, least of all herself.
Every inch of respect she’d earned as a surgeon had come at a cost. The whispers in the break rooms, the sideways glances from male colleagues who resented her rise—they had always been there, waiting for her to stumble.
A scandal like this would only feed the fire.
And yet…
Sam.
The thought of ending things with her felt unbearable, like carving out a piece of herself and leaving it behind.
Sam had cracked open something inside her, something soft and vulnerable, something she didn’t know still existed.
Sam didn’t look at her like she was a Harrington or just another ambitious surgeon.
Sam looked at her like she mattered. Like she was worth fighting for.
Roz leaned back against the couch, staring up at the ceiling. She wanted to be selfish. She wanted to keep Sam and hold onto the warmth and the quiet strength Sam brought into her life. But her mother’s voice was there, a shadow in the corner of her mind, cold and unrelenting.
“You can’t have both.”