I take a break from packing to read the latest text from Grant. He tells me he'll be late, and I should eat something before we head out.

He isn't wrong about my need to stay fed. Just wish I could tell him why.

I order a sandwich from a local delivery place, something light and scrumptious to tide me over until we stop for a late dinner somewhere between here and Chandlersport. Ten minutes later, there's a knock at the door. I'm expecting the delivery guy when I open it.

Instead, there's two hallow-eyed ghosts who stop my heart. “Mom? Ethan?”

It's like taking a baseball bat across the knees. I grab the frame to prevent a full collapse.

“Don't scream, cheri. Please!” He throws his arms around my waist.

Of course, I scream bloody murder with all my might.

“Hold onto her, but be careful!” mom yells, shutting the door, getting in my face as the Frenchman holds me in a death grip meant for a wild dog more than a person. He's still got what looks like a white cast across his nose, a parting gift from the last time he tried to do this. It should've been the last time if anything in this world made sense.

They're both here. My own mother is helping him do whatever horrible thing he's after. Two incomprehensible facts that give me a blinding headache.

“Honey, please! Stop before you hurt yourself. Calm down. We just came to talk.”

I don't know how she's watched as many dramas as she has without realizing the phrase calm down never works. Still, I somehow quit shaking just long enough to open my eyes, without trying to tear the skin off Ethan's palm with my teeth.

“I'm not talking about anything as long as he's here. Get this psycho away from me. Now!” Struggling, my hands go to his chest, and push as hard as I can.

Sighing, mom nods. “Go,” she says.

Monsieur Creep-o takes his hands off me and backs up reluctantly, idling by the door, a defeated shine in his eyes. “I'll respect your space, cheri. But please, give your mother a chance, if you won't do the same for me. She's sincerely trying to help you.”

“Somewhere we can talk? Preferably with good lighting?” Mom asks, taking my hand ever-so-gently.

I'd slap it away and run, if only the animal I never wanted to see again wasn't guarding the door. There's nothing I can do before Grant comes home. I have to pretend I care what this is about

Motioning her to the reading nook under the staircase leading up to our master suite, I run through the short list of reasons why lighting could possibly matter in this situation. I draw a total blank.

“Why are you really here?” I ask, knowing there's no easy answer.

“We want to stop you, honey, before there's a terrible mistake. I can't tell you what to do, but what kind of mother would I be if I didn't let you see the truth? I know about you and Grant, honey. So does your father, and Ethan, too.”

“And it's none of his goddamned business! He isn't even family, mom. He isn't anything!” I'm shouting in her face. God help me, the sad, wounded look on her face is the only thing that stops me from walking away.

“Three minutes, Rebekah. Please. All I ask. If you think I'm still wasting your time when they're up, I'll leave with Ethan immediately. You'll never hear from us again.”

I don't know what's gotten into her. Curiosity makes me want to hear her out, if only so I'm able to shoot it down. I plop down on the sofa next to her with a sigh.

“Thank you, Rebekah. This won't take long. I swear, after you see this, you'll understand why I had to come,” mom whispers. She reaches into her purse and pulls out a small laptop, sitting it on her knees while it powers up.

“What's this? Why so secretive?”

She doesn't answer. “Watch.”

Her finger guides the cursor to the almost empty desktop. A video opens a second later. It's grainy, grey, and white. I have to strain my eyes to recognize the bar, but once I see it's Sanford's, the other details fall into place.

There's Grant at the bar. He's speaking to a woman I've never seen before. Two girls, in fact, both slumped over each of his shoulders, hanging on his every word. They're both buxom blondes with overpainted lips and colorful highlights in their hair. Ink blue on one, and neon pink on the other.

When they talk, the words are clearer than I'd expect, considering the low res video quality.

“You ladies don't know how lucky you are. I'm getting too old for this two-for-one shit.” Grant says, leaning into Bluey's hand as she strokes his beard.

“Old? Honey, you're not even married yet.” She giggles as he runs his hand against her underneath the table.

The same strong hand I've craved. The same one I've had in mind, all over me, over and over.

A jealous arrow skids through my chest. I force myself to keep watching.

My eyes are glued to the screen, running on pure hatred as the man I love gets grabbier with these scheming whores. Pinkie's head rolls when he reaches out, fondling her breast. “Ohhh yeah. Tell me you're staying single, big boy,” she whines.

“One more month,” he tells her, his voice a low rumble. The same tone I hear him use when his lips are done warming mine, moving onto softer, sexier territory.

The video breaks up for a split second, before they're back. Perfectly long enough for the tears to fill my eyes. “Fuck marriage. A man gives up too much for a wife. Don't know how the fuck I'd survive without two tongues fighting over this cock. She's young and stupid, at least. She won't see it coming.”

“Coming?! We know a thing or two about that, sir. May I?” Pinkie breathes her question, throwing her arms around his big neck. Grant stands, both his muscular arms draped around them, guiding them toward the door after he reaches for a few rumpled bills in his wallet, and throws them on the counter.

“Yeah. Long as you're not allergic to cats, we're on.”

The screen cuts to static and the clip is over. I could say I'm a lot of things: horrified, agonized, destroyed.

Mostly, I'm just numb. I don't move until mom moves her cursor across the screen to another folder, burying my burning face in my hands.

“I'm sorry, honey. There are a few more like this. We also have his travel expense reports pulled from accounting if you want the exact dates he screwed around on you. Your father assured me they're all after the time you started working for Neolithic. I'm not sure when the two of you became...well, official. But it's plenty to get my blood hot, to hurt for you, Rebekah. To think you trusted that man, and he went and –”

“Mom – just stop!” Throwing my hands up, I push her away when she tries to give me a weak hug. “I don't want to see more.”

That goes double when my phone starts buzzing in my purse. Snatching it out, I look at the screen, bile rising into my throat. It's the first of many calls Grant tries to make that night, followed by the first of the frantic voicemails and texts blowing up my inbox.

“He's shameless. This isn't your fault, cheri,” Ethan appears over my shoulder, one more stomach turning sight in the carnival this evening has become. “He's very good at what he does, turning you against family and friends.” He reaches up, touching the edge of his nose over the bandage.

As hard as it is to ignore him, I try, standing as I give my mother a furious look. “Where's dad? I need to talk to him. Now.”

Her lips tremble a little. I swear, if she's hiding anything else, I'll empty out my bank account and buy a ticket to Iceland, New Zealand, Argentina. Anywhere on Earth that lets me escape this mess of lies pulling my soul apart.

“Let me try him, honey. He knew you wouldn't hear it if he showed up with us. I had to deliver the message because I think – I hope – you don't hate me.” She's right. I don't hate her just yet, unless she's fucking lying like everybody else. Holding up her phone, I watch her dial him, tapping her tongue lightly against her teeth as she waits for him to pick up.

“He's dealing with your betrayer, cheri,” Ethan tells me, pretending I want anything from his psycho mouth. “Ensuring the axe doesn't swing your way when he knows what you do...”

“I don't care. I have to talk to dad,” I snap, turning my back to him, pacing the condo.

He sounds so earnest. But I refuse to take any word for granted from this strange, offensive man who's screamed in my face and flung me around like a rag doll.

Even if Grant did every sin in the book, it won't send me running to him.

I carry myself to the window, hiding my tears, listening as mom mumbles a few words behind me that sound an awful lot like she's leaving a message. My hand goes against the sleek glass overlooking Manhattan. Closing my eyes, I let the chill sweep through me; confused, cold, and lonely.

It's amazing how close this place came to feeling like home just a couple weeks ago.

It was home when he was here.

Home when we stood on the balcony, tasting the city's winds, a sweet contrast to his awesome embrace. I relished his honest heat, secure in his arms.

Home when I shared his bed. Passion was our credo. Now, I can't believe I missed the lies every time I stared into his deep blue eyes, so loving, seemingly mine in the seconds before they rolled back in his head, before he cried out, emptying himself in me.

Home when I thought I'd become a wife and mother here. He infected me with hope, with dreams, and nourished them with cancer lies.

Home? It never was, and it won't ever be.

How – tell me, fucking how – was I ever this naive?

Our run-in with Mina at Grant's club should've been ample warning. Instead, I let him talk me down, decided to run to him, opening my heart at the worst possible moment. I'd thought there was nothing worse than the secrets between dad and Ethan, an arrangement I still know next to nothing about.

I thought I'd found a guardian angel, as harsh and true and beautiful as the fierce blade and rugged wings inked on his chest. He was the devil all along.

His lies didn't rip my heart out alone. I helped him do it because I chose not to question, to go along with believing any love could be this perfect.

A heavy hand falls on my shoulder. I whip around, ready to kick his balls off when I see Ethan standing there, but he pushes mom's phone into my palm. “Your father, cheri. I'll grant you some privacy.”

I wait until he's out of earshot before I hold it to my ear. “Dad?”

“Rebekah, get in the car with your mother, and go. It's not safe in this city as long as you're sharing it with him. Shaw is a loose cannon. I've just left his office after explaining our little intervention. He knows you know, and now it's time to come along.”

“Come along?” I repeat the phrase with rage funneling through my blood. Like it's so easy. I've just lost the only love of my life, and my backup options aren't exactly glamorous. “I'm not going anywhere with him, dad. Call off Ethan, first, and maybe I'll think about it. Why you thought I'd ever magically forget what he did, I'll never –”

“He'll take a separate car,” dad says, cutting me off. “Getting you out of there's my number one priority, dear. Perhaps I thought you'd be a little more forgiving after seeing the video, but –“

“But nothing. He's a lunatic, just as bad as Grant, maybe worse.” I honestly don't know anymore. “I'm not going anywhere without knowing what I'm getting into, why you keep dragging him around. I know about your mess with Fabius, dad. I'm finished being lied to.”

There's a long pause. “You know...what, exactly?” he whispers quietly.

“I overheard you and Ethan on the phone that day. Before the stupid dinner where he got in my face, and then did it again when I was at another restaurant a few weeks later. I'm not your toy. Not your bribe. I don't know what you want me to do with him, but I'm telling you, I'm not having it. I'm not leaving one monster for another.”

“Rebekah, I – damn it.” Another long pause, tempting me to fling open the door and throw the phone down into Friday night's New York traffic. “I was wrong to force your hand, okay? I'm sorry for trying to steer you toward a man you had no interest in.”

It's the most shallow apology I've ever heard. Shameful heat rushes through me from the knees up. I'm being duped again, and it just never ends.

Nobody cares. They want me to play along, and they want to use me.

My face cracks, contorting as the hot tears come, harsher than before. I don't bother wiping them away.

He's only apologizing because he wants me back under his thumb. No other reason.

“Rebekah, listen to me,” he says, desperation seeping into his voice. “Whatever my sins, which are all business, I assure you, I never betrayed your fragile trust and kept on doing it. You caught me. You aired your grievances. I've heard them, and I'm coming clean. Ethan, your mother, me...you're welcome to hate us. Go ahead, stamp your feet, curse our very names. We'll keep loving you. Doesn't change the fact that we'll never hurt you like that worthless, skirt-chasing boar on video.”

I can't stand anymore. I'm shaking too badly. I go down hard on my knees, hearing the phone clatter against the floor, dad still calling my name.

“Rebekah? Hello? Hello?!” The phone spins to a stop in front of me. I hear him, but I'm not answering. My throat is too locked with sadness to speak. He can probably hear my sobs because he keeps going. “Clearly, this isn't pleasant. Not for anyone. Can you imagine if we hadn't shown you the tapes? If you'd married him? Then where would you be, darling girl? He'd have stabbed you harder, deeper, over and over again, whenever I made the moves I had to make with our company. Don't you see yet? Don't you understand?”

“No, no, no!” I croak, slapping the ground with both palms, wishing I had the energy to smash the phone, and silence his radioactive truth.

“He never loved you, dear. He shared my sin to the thousandth degree – used you for business – but he did worse than I'd ever plan on my worst day. You were leverage to him. Not even good enough to satisfy him in bed, or he wouldn't have wasted his time chasing down those miserable, painted up whores in Maine with their –“

“Jeremiah, stop.” Mom's voice. I look up, and she's holding the phone, sympathy stretching her face like a drum as she looks down at me. “What the hell's wrong with you? Can't you tell she's had enough?”

Of course not. He's the most callous, oblivious man in the world when people don't jump to his whim, even when he's pulling back the curtain, showing me the world as it really is.

I hate him more than any other man on the planet, save one.

Before, it was Ethan, but there's got to be some mental illness to explain his insanity. He never callously plotted to destroy my heart like Grant. I have a new number one hate, and it blazes as strong as our love did just hours ago.

My parents keep talking, Arguing back and forth over the line. I can't take this.

“Mom...just give me a minute,” I murmur, wiping my face with my hand.

“Anything, honey.” She pulls the phone away, kneeling next to me with a tender hand on my shoulder, helping me up. As detached and selfish as she can be, at least she gets basic human empathy sometimes. “Jeremiah, call him off. This is a family matter. If you can't send Ethan away as long as she needs, our little girl isn't coming home. I'll take her myself, and we'll both leave if you don't first. I did my part bringing her back to her senses. If you can't do this one teensy-tiny, stupidly simple thing, then –“

“Fine. You worry too much, Cora,” he snarls under his breath. “It's business. I'm not his slave. Quite the contrary. Just get her home.”

It takes a couple minutes after she hangs up to help me to my feet. I take one more long break, collecting my breath, making sure my legs won't give out again before I shuffle with her to the door. I take my sweet time because I want to be sure Ethan is really going to leave us alone.

But I also want to take one last good, long look at this place where I once had love, and lost it on the altar of lies. It's the closest the baby inside me will ever be to his or her father.

With God as my witness, Grant Shaw won't be in my life another second after I step out his door, turn my back, and walk out forever. I won't even take another look at the rich yellow lights glowing from his top floor penthouse in the rear view mirror.

I'm gutted, head spinning, and about to pluck my eyes out with my bare fingers from rubbing them raw.

Whatever else I am, I'm no one's fool.

* * *

I hate driving by Chandlersport. I loathe seeing the long unpaved road snaking into the forest, leading straight to his cabin even more, but I manage to keep it together as our sedan rolls past, a couple more hours away from its destination.

It helps to have a chauffeur in the driver's seat, who's also playing chaperone. Dad doesn't trust me to make the journey to the quiet retreat in Presque Isle, Maine by myself. I'm too fragile to do anything, in his mind, even though my therapist convinced him it'll do me some good to be away from New York, free from the unhappy mansion with only mom for company.

They won't let me see Tay. They tell my best friend to stop calling because I've had some kind of psychotic breakdown.

She still texts me anyway on a cheap emergency phone I picked up at the drugstore. It's the only way I can do anything without being tracked.

It's insane. Infuriating. Soul crushing. Everything I would've rebelled against with my whole heart in a previous lifetime, before I watched the other videos on the laptop. They broke me.

Mom left it laying out one day. Tay's conversations urged me to take a second look, to find out how big of a 'cheap ass lying man-whore' he really was. Her words, not mine.

I took the bait. Sneaking the laptop into the library, my fingers were shaking when I found the folder.

The second video was from Club B.I.G. Dated one day after the fallout with Mina, and she'd come crawling back to him, fake tits and all. I found her sitting on his lap, in the very same booth we shared the night before, when she barged in on us getting hot and heavy.

“She's young and stupid, at least. She won't see it coming.” Again, Grant said the same words. The very same monstrous, conniving, heartless lies aimed at blowing a hole through everything I thought we had.

By the third video, I'm in tears. This time, it's a bar near Broadway. I see his hand moving on an unfamiliar woman who gives him the same blind, hopeful innocence I must've held in my puppy eyes several times over.

They laugh. They kiss. His hands go places in the corner, hiking up her skirt, exposing her lace pink panties to anyone paying attention behind them. She loves it because it's so naughty. Public passions. A cruel reminder how I felt about our mid-day office liaisons.

I'm sick I ever got down on my knees and took his cock in my mouth at Neolithic. My heart drops in my chest when I remember how eagerly I spread myself open for him, took his lying, bearded face against my thighs, and bit into his shoulder, stifling his name escaping, always before he threw my legs over his shoulders and fucked me one wall away from our colleagues.

His words say it all. The same wretched refrain. As if he hasn't made it clear to every last one of these sluts how he really feels about me.

Young. Stupid.

She won't see it coming.

No, and she never did. She opened her heart so much it had no defense.

I slammed the computer down when I finished, probably breaking it in the process, so hurt and disgusted I didn't have the heart to tell Tay what I'd found.

I didn't want her to feel worse for putting me up to it in the first place, for introducing me to this vicious man who told me I was everything, while treating me worse than nothing.

Behind my back, I was disposable.

Well, maybe not completely. The calls didn't stop until I blocked his number. I never listened to the voicemails, worried he'd make me second guess. The same with the texts he sent looking for an opening, for sympathy, for...Christ, I don't even know.

Dad and Ethan must've gotten the upper hand at Neolithic. It's the only reason he'd keep coming after me with his pleas, his desperation. I must've seen the word please light up my screen a hundred times before I cut him off. Never once did I'm sorry accompany it.

It's too late to matter, anyway. I gave him a break once, and look where it got me.

There's no going back.

I'm pregnant, I'm alone, and I want to leave New York behind for good. I stare out the window at the heavily forested country. Somewhere, several miles behind us, there's a small blue-grey cat in a posh cabin, waiting for his master to come home.

Maybe he's even in town for all I know, drinking away his woes at Sanford's, finding another faceless whore or ignorant virgin to start all over again.

It's not my concern. I live for the secret quickening in my belly every single day.

My hand drifts to my belly. I haven't told anyone yet, not even Tay, but it's inevitable dad finds out sooner or later. I'm hopeful the kid will at least throw Ethan off when it's finally born.

My eyes pinch shut, sore and throbbing, as they often are since the day I had everything ripped away by the stone cold truth in cheating clarity. I never thought I'd do this so alone, bringing a child into this world.

But after being betrayed by everyone, one way or another, what does it matter? This child is my world. I won't let my mistakes, my trust, and my blindness ruin my little boy or girl before they've even come into the world.

I'll do whatever it takes to give them a better life. And that starts with making sure they never so much as hear the name that's become a savage curse, Grant Shaw.