Marcus stared at the closed grain of the wood. The tenderness drained from his face drop by drop, like a cheap dye washing out, until the familiar shadow of the man beneath showed through. His fingers began to drum against the mahogany—once, twice—then faster, a frantic, erratic rhythm that couldn't decide what it wanted to be.
She had changed.
It wasn't just that she was harder to soothe; she was colder, steadier, possessed by the kind of autonomy that didn't bother asking for permission.
He reached out mentally, searching for a handle, a soft spot, a familiar hook, and found nothing but glass. That lack of friction, the way she was slipping through his grip, made his skin itch with a sudden, violent irritation.
Riva walked back to her office at the far end of the hall. She shut the door and checked the lock—one sharp, instinctive click—before she allowed herself to lean against the cold wood. She closed her eyes for a heartbeat, drawing in a breath that felt like it had been filtered through ice.
Every time she played the part—every time she endured his sugar-coated concern and those calculated, "accidental" touches—it felt like balancing on the edge of a razor. One wrong shift, one stray emotion, and the bleed would be fatal.
Outside, the Los Angeles sky was a violent, spotless blue—a light so bright it was abrasive. It was nothing like the prison sky in her memory, that permanent, pressing ceiling of gray that felt like it was trying to crush the marrow from her bones.
But the gray walls hadn't broken her. She was already hollow by the time the gates slammed shut, her world bled dry months earlier in a flash of red.
The worst part—the part that never scabbed over—was the baby.
Four months before the gates slammed shut, she found out she was pregnant. After the betrayal and the lawsuits, after everyone vanished the second her name turned toxic, that tiny heartbeat was all she had left. It was the only thing in the world she could still protect.
She dragged herself through the wrought-iron gates of Bella's villa, hollowed out by months of litigation that felt endless. Her mouth tasted like burnt coffee and no sleep. The exhaustion went deeper than her bones; it was what you get when your name has been dragged through so many courtrooms and tabloids it stops sounding like you.
She hadn't come to beg. She hadn't come to fight. She'd come to tell him.
A butler with a face like carved stone led her down a corridor that smelled of white lilies and expensive floor wax. The air was too cool, too clean—the kind of calm that felt personal. He opened the doors to a glass conservatory washed in the last light of afternoon.
Inside, Marcus and Bella stood shoulder to shoulder, admiring a rare iris as if a misplaced petal was the world's only problem. Bella's hand rested on Marcus's forearm—casual, possessive. The sun caught the diamond on her finger, throwing hard flashes across the room.
When Marcus saw Riva, his face didn't soften. His eyes flicked with irritation, then went cold, like she'd brought dirt into a clean house.
"What are you doing here?" he snapped. "Haven't you done enough damage?"
Riva swallowed, the words scraping against her throat. "I'm pregnant."
For a beat, the room went dead. Only the low, mechanical hum of the climate control filled the space. Then Bella laughed—sharp, bright, almost happy. Her gaze swept over Riva, slow and thorough.
"Oh, Marcus," Bella said, head tilted, smiling sweetly. "Someone's still trying the oldest trick in the book. How… desperate."
Marcus's face went pale, then hot, then flat.
"Get rid of it," he said.
The words landed neat and final. "Before it's too late. I won't have you using a pregnancy as a stunt."
There was no hesitation. No confusion. Just a decision made and filed away.
"Riva," he continued, voice level, "don't do this. This child isn't happening. I won't acknowledge it, and I sure as hell won't let it have a mother who's heading to prison." His mouth tightened like he was reading numbers he didn't like. "That wouldn't be a life. It would be a disaster."
Bella drifted closer, her voice slick as oil. "He's right, you know." She sighed, almost tender. "Think of the poor thing's luck. Cursed from the start."
Something in Riva gave.
"No," she said, and it came out smaller than she wanted. "You don't get to—"
The fight caught fast. Sharp, ugly words. Riva stepped forward; Marcus moved to block her; Bella slid between them with a practiced, wounded look. A brushed shoulder. A shove. In that glass room, everything felt too bright and too loud.
Then Bella "accidentally" tipped a heavy brass flower stand.
It went down with a brutal clang—metal on stone. Riva jerked back on instinct, her heel skidding on the polished floor. For a split second, she was weightless.
Then she hit.
Hard.
Her lower back slammed into the jagged edge of a marble step. Pain tore through her spine and ripped across her abdomen so hard it stole the air from her lungs. She couldn't scream; she could only gasp, eyes wide, her body locking in shock.
Warmth spilled between her thighs—too fast, too much. She looked down and saw the pale rug blooming red against all that careful white.
Marcus stood over her. He didn't reach out. He didn't kneel. He didn't even flinch. He just frowned as if she'd spilled a drink.
He turned to the maid rushing into the room. "Call a car. Get her to a hospital." His gaze cut back to the blood pooling on the marble, his voice sharpening with annoyance. "And don't let her bleed all over the place."
In the ambulance, the world smeared into sirens and harsh fluorescent light. Her skin went cold and tacky. Her vision tunneled. Above her, the paramedics spoke in clipped, low bursts.
"She's pretty far along," one said. "God, what a shame…"
Riva tried to ask. Her tongue was lead. The darkness crowded in.
Right before it took her, she felt it—that tiny, frantic pulse inside her, fighting.
Then it slowed.
Then it was gone.
It wasn't just the child. It was the last clean piece of her life getting scrubbed out.
She kept the score.
Suddenly, her encrypted phone gave a small, polite buzz against her palm.
Ghost.
Riva swiped it open. It wasn't a sentence—just a burst of photos and a few blocks of data.
In the first long-lens shot, Marcus was entering a villa. A slim woman followed a step behind him. The image was soft around the edges, blurry with distance, but Riva didn't need to see the face. The posture was enough.
Bella Lawrence.
Then came the screenshots of the money trail—cropped, dense, mapped out like a maze—until the lines finally pointed offshore, to a Cayman entity labeled only "S-C."
She'd seen these kinds of fragments before.
In court. In her last life.
Back then, they'd been the "clean version"—trimmed, polished, and carefully explained away. Marcus and Bella had taken messy facts and scrubbed them into a narrative, and that story had nailed her to the wall: Emotionally unstable. Using a marriage to mask financial fraud. It was a label you couldn't wash off once it stuck. It had cost her everything.
Her fist tightened until her nails bit into her palm. The anger was useful—it was fuel—but she wouldn't let it cloud her judgment.
This still wasn't enough.
Most of it lived in the gray, the kind of material that makes for a great headline but a weak case. She needed the hard pieces.
The contracts. The full transfer paths.
She needed someone on the inside who'd actually watched the hands on the ledger. Most of all, she needed a witness—someone willing to stand up when it mattered and point the finger at Marcus.
Footsteps sounded in the hall outside.
Before the sun goes down, she has a face to see.