Them?
What did she mean by…
Then I felt it. A wave of nausea so sudden and violent it shook me. I lurched off the bench and stumbled to a nearby trash can, retching violently. There wasn’t much in my stomach to expel—I’d barely eaten at the ceremony—but my body heaved anyway.
When the nausea finally subsided, I slumped against the wall, trembling.
And that’s when it hit me.
I hadn’t had my period in over a month.
My hands flew to my stomach as my mind raced back through the past weeks. Dimitri and I had made love—no, he’d fucked me—in his study. And he hadn’t used protection. And he’d finished inside me, and—
Oh God.
“No, no, no,” I whispered, my voice breaking. “I can’t be pregnant.”
An announcement crackled over the station’s speakers, alerting passengers to an arriving train.
The woman came up beside me. “I have to go now, child. But please, take care of yourself and your baby. You shouldn’t be out in the cold too long. Not in your condition.”
And then she was gone.
I was pregnant.
The words hit me like a freight train, and I stood there in that grimy train station, my heart pounding against my chest, my hands trembling.
What the hell was I supposed todo with this?
My thoughts were moving a hundred miles an hour, spinning through possibilities, none of them good.
I needed to get away. I couldn’t stay here—not with his shadow haunting every corner of Virginia, not with this secret growing inside me. The memory of his mother’s bitter resentment, accumulated over years, weighed heavily on me. I could still feel Selena’s grip in my hair, her mocking laughter as she humiliated me in front of everyone. And Dimitri—his voice cold and detached as he recited his rejection vows, as though I were nothing more than a stranger. He hadn’t even flinched.
I couldn’t let this child grow up with a father like him. I couldn’t let him know. No one could.
I fumbled through my bag for my phone, desperate to buy a ticket to anywhere, as long as it was away from Virginia. A card slipped out, catching the weak light above, and that’s when I saw it: the business card Alexander Crane had given me on my last night in Zurich.
I picked it up, my fingers brushing over the numbers on the card. Was this my lifeline? Goddess, I hoped so.
I powered on the phone I’d kept shut off, and the screen lit up with eleven missed calls from Dimitri. A bitter smile tugged at my lips—eleven calls, like that could undo the way he’d looked right through me, like it could stitch back the bond he’d shredded in front of the entire pack. For a second, I let myself imagine answering, hearing whatever hollow excuse he’d cooked up, but the thought curdled into rage. No. Not again. I dragged his name into the block list without hesitation, the digital snip of the final thread between us.
Then I punched in the numbers from the card. And he answered on the first ring. “Hello?”
“Mr. Crane?” My voice came out broken, barely a whisper. “It’s…it’s Isabella.”
“Isabella?” His tone shifted immediately to concern. “Are you all right? What’s happened?”
The kindness in his voice broke something in me. I started crying again, unable to form words.
“Isabella, talk to me. Where are you?”
“I need help,” I managed through my tears. “I have nowhere else to go.”
“Where are you right now?”
“Grace Train Station. In Virginia.”
I heard him suck in a sharp breath and curse under his breath. “Stay there. Don’t move. I’m sending a car to you right now.”
