Unnamed Chapter
A sharp stab of pain in my lower belly rips me from sleep.
First, a dull, twisting ache deep under my skin. Then it sharpens. A pressure so intense I can’t draw a breath.
I fling my hand toward the lamp on the nightstand, flick the switch with trembling fingers, and the soft yellow glow floods the room.
I reach for my stomach on instinct, but the sheets are wet, warm, and when I pull my hand back, it’s red.
For a moment, I just stare at it.
At the color. At what it means.
Then panic hits.
“Colin,” I whisper, before I even realize I’m saying his name. My voice cracks like it’s not mine anymore.
I grab my phone from the nightstand. A new number he doesn’t know, ‘and dial his from memory, fingers shaking so hard I almost drop the device.
It rings. Once. Twice.
Three times. Voicemail.
I try again. And again.
And again. Nothing.
By the last call, my hands are trembling too violently to think. I barely manage to send three quick texts:
Something’s wrong.
Please pick up.
Colin, it’s me. I need you. Our baby needs you.
There’s no sign of him.
I stare at the screen until the words blur, until the pain gets too strong to sit still.
I grab the first coat I can reach and throw it over my pajamas, barely managing to stay upright on my feet. I shove my feet into a pair of flats, the closest thing I can find, and for a moment I can’t tell if it’s panic or reality, but it feels like I won’t stop bleeding.
Like it’s pouring out of me faster than I can hold myself together.
By the time I stumble out of my apartment, I can barely breathe. I lean against the wall, one hand gripping my stomach.
“Maya? Are you okay?”
I open my eyes and see Peter—the guy from across the hall, someone I’ve barely spoken to since I moved in—standing by his door, his hand on the handle.
“My baby,” I murmur, barely able to speak. “Hospital.”
His eyes go wide. They drop lower, and he exhales, “Fuck.”
He pulls his keys from the door and comes straight to me, steadying me.
“I’ll take you. I was out with some friends, but I only had one beer. You’re safe. I promise.”
I nod, but I barely register what he’s saying. I just need this pain to stop.
Peter holds me the entire way—in the elevator, to his car. During the drive, his eyes keep flicking back to me, like he’s making sure I’m conscious.
Every bump in the road feels like a knife twisting deeper. I press my hand to my stomach, whispering the same words over and over… please, please, please. Don’t let anything happen to him.
When we reach the hospital, Peter has to help me to the entrance. I can barely stand on my own.
The moment we cross through the doors, the receptionist calls for someone, and I’m rushed into a wheelchair.
Everything after that turns into a blur.
When I open my eyes again, everything smells like antiseptic and iron.
A white ceiling. Cold air.
A curtain half drawn around me.
I try to sit up, but the world spins.
I stare at the ceiling and realize I don’t even know if it’s morning or night. My throat feels burning and dry.
The doctor’s voice is calm. He stands near the foot of the bed, speaking in low, careful tones, words that feel like they belong to someone else.
He asks how I’m feeling. If I can listen. He asks a few more questions I struggle to answer.
“—there was a complication,” he says.
Something inside me fractures. A clean split straight through the center of me. The rest of his words dissolve into a blur:
hemorrhage... complications... emergency surgery... abdominal hysterectomy...
timelines... recovery... condolences...
They don’t sound like words. They sound like a distant, muffled drone, like I’m underwater, too far from the surface to breathe.
Before he leaves the room, the doctor asks if I want to speak to a counselor or a social worker.
I stare past him… at the ceiling, the fluorescent light, anywhere but his pity.
What would that change?
What would anyone say that could make this hurt less?
There’s nothing left to save.
My hand drifts to my abdomen, where there’s only emptiness now.
I blink once. Twice.
And then the tears come again. Because there’s nothing left to hold onto.
My eyes sting from crying, but I can’t stop staring at the white ceiling tiles above me. Every one of them feels like a countdown. To what, I don’t even know.
It was all for nothing.
The thought hits me so suddenly that I almost laugh. A broken, bitter sound that dies halfway through my throat.
All for nothing.
I did everything right.
Every stupid, desperate thought I ever convinced myself to believe. I followed all of it.
If I just loved him enough. If I just gave him everything.
He wouldn’t leave me. He would choose me.
I remember the day a girl from college told me her secret.
“Always keep the condoms somewhere warm,” she said, whispering like it was divine knowledge.
She had been dating a quarterback who was about to be drafted into the NFL. “It helps, you know” she laughed, “makes it more likely.”
I thought she was crazy. And then I became her.
When Colin started leaving condoms in my drawer, the first month after we started sleeping together, I did the same thing.
I moved them to the top shelf near the vent that blasted warm air in winter, I used to turn it on every day, just long enough. My secret insurance.
My way of making sure I wouldn’t lose him.
And when it finally happened—when the test turned positive in the first week of October—I couldn’t stop shaking.
I was terrified. Overwhelmed. But there was also this wild, bright hope blooming in my chest.
I thought, this is it.
This is how I’ll prove I can give him everything she can.
How I’ll show him I’m not just the mistake he keeps returning to.
I started planning. I was going to tell him in December—just before Christmas. Safe enough to say it. Special enough to make it mean something.
I pictured his face. The disbelief, then the slow smile when he realized I was carrying his child. I was already certain he would be a beautiful boy, just like his father.
He might have tried to deny it at first… but he would have loved our baby.
But nothing, nothing, ever happens the way I want it to.
Even that small dream, that tiny piece of him I thought I could keep, slipped away before I could do anything to stop it.
And now I can’t even try again. That’s what the doctor meant, beneath his careful words and sterile phrasing.
Never again. Never a second chance.
Never a child. Never a piece of Colin that was mine and his.
It was all for nothing.
Colin
If I thought delivering a major acquisition would buy me any goodwill, even a breath of relief, I was a fool.
Closing the Texas deal didn’t buy me time. Didn’t buy me grace. Didn’t buy me a damn thing.
Thirty minutes ago, I sat at that table surrounded by men who now look down on me—men who once wanted to be exactly where I am.
It didn’t matter that I had just secured a nine-figure deal. They weren’t interested in success. They wanted blood.
My blood.
The questions came fast, bullets dressed up as business concerns.
“How can we trust your due-diligence judgment after recent... lapses?”
“Will your personal reputation jeopardize post-merger stability?”
“Is leadership continuity even viable under your current circumstances?”
“If we lose key partners because of your name, what then?”
No applause for the acquisition. No acknowledgment of what I delivered.
Only suspicion.
And I was stupid enough to think the day had started well.
The phone won’t stop vibrating, it’s barely past midnight.
At first, I don’t even check who it is.
I just keep going through the contracts I brought back to the hotel.
After the shitty day I’ve had. After finding out what Philip did and that confrontation with May, the last thing I need is a call from an unknown number.
But then the calls keep coming. One after another.
Three missed calls. Then six.
I ignore every single one.
Then the texts start.
Something’s wrong.
Please pick up.
Colin, it’s me. I need you. Our baby needs you.
Maya.
I think with an exasperated sigh. I stare at the screen for a long time.
I wish I could say I feel something. Panic, guilt, sympathy.
But all I feel is exhaustion.
For all I know, it’s just another desperate attempt to claw back my attention, or my sympathy. And I have neither left to give her. So I set the phone aside and decide to go to sleep.
When I wake up from the alarm blaring beside me, there’s a new text. Sent less than twenty minutes ago.
A hospital name and a room number staring back at me. That one makes me call.
She answers on the first ring. Voice trembling, wet with tears.
“Colin. Please... can you come?”
“No,” I say flatly. “Whatever you have to say, say it over the phone.”
There’s a pause. Then a noise that barely resembles speech.
Just breath breaking apart.
“I lost it,” she whispers. “The baby. I lost our baby.”
Neither of us says a word. I can hear her sniffing on the other end of the line. And then, before I can stop myself, the words slip out.
“Thank fuck.”
I hang up. I set the phone down.
Feel... nothing. No guilt. No sadness.
Just relief.
The first thing I did when I got to the office this morning was email Legal. I told them to start preparing everything required for a restraining order.
I attached the doorbell cam video, her standing on our porch, the audio of her talking to Alicia like she belongs there.
I’m still lost in thought when Margaret’s voice comes through the intercom.
“Colin? The receptionist called there’s a... Mark Benoit in the lobby to see you. He says it’s urgent."
Mark.
I hesitate only a second. “Send him up.”
Minutes pass, and then my office door swings open. Mark doesn’t waste time with greetings.
He doesn’t look around.
He just heads straight for me. Jaw tight, eyes burning like he’s holding himself together by sheer force of will.
He takes a small flash drive from his pocket and sets it on my desk.
“What I’m about to show you,” he says, his voice low, “I’m doing for Cecily, and for my nephew and niece. Not for you.”
He pauses, meets my eyes. A warning, a promise.
“Prepare to get on your knees and thank me after you see what’s on it.”
I start to speak, but he cuts me off.
“One last thing,” he says, the warning clear in his tone. “This isn’t going to play in your favor.”
He holds the drive between two fingers, forcing me to take it from him.
My throat tightens. I swallow.
For Cecily. For Alicia. For Ethan. Without another word, I reach out and take it.