“I didn’t know where else to go,” I blurted out. My voice cracked. “She won’t stop crying, and she’s red, and the hospitals ask too many questions… the cops… I can’t—” I stopped, staring past the doctor… Marcus… to the door, measuring the distance to get out if I needed to. My brain was already plotting an escape before I realized it. Would I take Gabbi? What kind of life could I give her?
“What’s her name?” Marcus asked gently, taking a careful step closer, his palms open as if to say,I’m not armed. It’s okay.
“My daughter. Gabriella. Gabbi,” I whispered. My grip loosened just enough for her blanket to slip. “She’s five months old. Her mom—” My voice cracked again. “She’s… I found her…” I couldn’t say the rest. Couldn’t drag the image of Annie dead, the needle, my crying daughter, out into the open.
Marcus nodded once, his gaze steady, kind but firm. “May I?” he asked, holding out his arms.
I hesitated, my hands trembling so hard I thought I might drop her. My brain screameddon’t, but my heart knew I had to. Slowly, Marcus cradled her with ease, his touch gentle but sure. I lurched after him as he turned down the corridor and into a room smelling of antiseptic. My legs were heavy, my balance gone. I used the wall to stay upright, watching every move he made, terrified to let her out of my sight.
“Okay, Morgan, we’ve got you both. It’s going to be okay.”
Gabbi let out exhausted whimpers. The room spun around me, and all I could think was that maybe—just maybe—I’d found the one place that wouldn’t turn us away.
I swayed on my feet, the edges of my vision closing in, and I almost collapsed against the exam table. My whole body was shaking, my knees threatening to give out. “Please,” I whispered, my voice breaking. “Help her.” The words sounded so small, too fragile for the weight of what I meant. I clutched at the metal edge of the table, cold biting into my palm, desperate to stay upright long enough to hear that she was going to be okay.
Alex stood in the doorway, talking to the doctor. “Do we need to go to the hospital?”
Despair clawed up through the fog in my mind. Hospitals meant cops, and cops meant questions I couldn’t answer. I just needed one night with her—one night to make sure she was okay, to be with her, to know she wasn’t alone. That was all I wanted.
“Anything,” I heard myself whisper. “I’ll find a way out of this mess if it means she’s okay. Please, help her.”
“When did she last have a wet diaper?” the doctor asked.
My throat closed up again, the memory flashing hard and fast—me standing outside Annie’s door, filled with so much hope that maybe this time she meant it when she said she was clean, that she’d stopped using, that she was taking care of our daughter. I’d been smiling, ready to believe her, ready to see Gabbi’s face. But when I opened the door, the smell hit me first. Then a baby crying. Then the sight I couldn’t scrub from my mind—her body on the floor, the needle still in her arm, Gabbi beside her, red-faced, reaching out for someone who wasn’t coming back. I blinked hard, dragging myself back to the room, to the sound of Gabbi breathing.
“I don’t know.” My voice cracked as I slumped into a chair, my hands shaking. “Her mother told me she cared for Gabbi,that she wasn’t using anymore, that I could trust her, but… I found both of them when I went to check… Gabbi was lying there next to her mom, there was a needle in her mom’s fucking arm, and Gabbi was crying?—”
The doctor’s gaze ran from my head to my toes and back up again. I felt stripped bare under it. He didn’t say anything, but suspicion flickered in his eyes, and panic surged through me. I wanted to scream that it wasn’t me, that I didn’t hurt her mom, that I’d tried to save her—but nothing came out. My throat was raw, my tongue heavy. I just needed to know, needed someone to tell me what I couldn’t bear to ask. “Is she okay?” I managed to stay conscious as I coughed, my vision blurring with black dots closing in from the edges.
“She’s uncomfortable and hungry,” Marcus said, checking Gabbi’s mouth and gums. “She needs feeding now, but we don’t keep formula on hand—Guardian Hall’s not stocked for babies.”
I blinked at him, struggling to process the words. She was hungry. Something simple. Something I could fix. My heart twisted with helplessness. I fumbled for my backpack—the old one I’d carried everywhere—and tipped it out on the nearest counter. Spare onesies, a half-used tin of formula, a bottle, and a handful of mismatched baby things tumbled free. Everything I’d managed to save from the people stealing from Gabbi’s mom. My fingers shook as I pushed them toward him.
He nodded once, already moving. I watched as he rinsed the bottle, then filled a kettle and poured the boiling water into a clean bowl. I leaned in, watching every step, trying to commit it to memory so I could do it myself next time. He dropped both bottle and nipple inside, the hiss of steam rising as he sterilized them.
I need to remember how to do this.
I need him to slow down so I can learn.
I blinked, everything around me tilting, my head too light. The world sounded far away, voices blurring together, and Doc and Alex were still talking. I tried to focus, but my body wasn’t listening anymore. My knees trembled, and the room spun. They talked over me about getting formula, and it being Christmas Day; none of that made sense.
“It’s Christmas?” I heard my own voice, small and disbelieving. The word felt wrong in my mouth, like something from another lifetime. The shock hit me hard, the realization that it was morning, that people out there were probably waking to gifts and laughter while I stood here shaking apart. My vision blurred, the floor rushed up to meet me, and everything went dark.
TWO
Cole
The Waldorf Astoriasparkled as if it were auditioning for a holiday movie—white lights cascading down marble pillars, a twelve-foot crystal tree gleaming in the lobby, and a live quartet playing something tasteful and expensive in the background. My parents loved this kind of thing—money on display masquerading as tradition.
I adjusted my cufflinks—the same ones my father had given me when I signed my first contract—and pretended I was having the time of my life, so people didn’t start to pity me being on my own as probably the youngest person at the event. The ballroom was packed with my parents’ friends—senators, bankers, CEOs. The women wore velvet and diamonds—the men in suits and ties.
I’d barely touched my champagne when a woman with an accent polished by a lifetime of privilege smiled at my mother. The woman was Evelyn Fairchild—chair of some philanthropic board, wife of a venture capitalist who’d bought and sold three tech companies before breakfast. I knew her because I made it my business to know everyone in this circle; knowing names and power structures was survival. She leaned in toward my mother,her perfume sharp enough to sting. “And this is your son?” She gestured to me with a practiced sort of vagueness that hinted she knew exactly who everyone was but preferred to play coy. It was the move of a woman who collected secrets the way others collected jewelry.
“Yes, my Cole,” my mother said, the kind of smile that could freeze a room into applause. “Head of Severs-Braxton now, took over the firm at twenty-eight. Brilliant mind, steady hand—he’s his father’s son.” She said it like a résumé line, not a heartbeat. The pride in her tone was more about what I represented than who I was. The expectation and the unspoken competition for parental bragging rights turned me into a trophy on display. I was used to it, but so over it.
“Our daughter, Amelia, just graduated from Yale with a degree in political science.” Then she gave a soft, dismissive laugh. “Oh, education,” she said lightly, as though it were a decorative accessory—useful for conversation, not for continuation. “Still, it’s always useful for a solid family life to have a wife who understands that world. That is, should a man be considering a future in the political arena?”
My mother glanced at me, a flare of hope in her eyes. I’d achieved everything she’d wanted of me, but politics?
