Chương 1
"""Sabrina Cross was standing barefoot in Elena’s bedroom when Elena came home from her prenatal appointment, wearing Elena’s ivory silk robe as if nine years of marriage had already been reduced to something another woman could pull from a hanger.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Elena kept one hand beneath the weight of her stomach and the other around the doorframe, because the baby had spent the drive home pressing hard beneath her ribs and because suddenly the floor felt less dependable than it had ten seconds earlier.
Sabrina tightened the robe at her waist.
“Roman thought the guest room would be more comfortable for you,” she said.
Elena looked past her.
Roman stood near the windows with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled to his forearms.
He had negotiated with men who carried guns under dinner jackets without once lowering his eyes, but now he studied the pattern in the rug.
“Given your condition,” Sabrina added.
That was when Roman looked up.
“Elena.”
She waited.
He seemed to have expected anger, which offended her almost as much as the robe.
“What?” she asked.
“This doesn’t have to become ugly.”
Something inside her went very still.
She crossed the room to the dresser, removed her wedding ring, and set it beside a ceramic dish containing three hairpins and a penny.
Roman watched the ring instead of her face.
“Elena, don’t do this.”
“You already did.”
She pulled a suitcase from the closet.
At eight months pregnant, bending had become a negotiation with gravity, so she braced herself against the bed while dragging it free.
Roman took half a step forward.
She looked at him.
He stopped.
That hurt more than if he had done nothing.
Nine years earlier, Roman Marino had carried her through the lobby of a Miami hotel because a broken sandal had cut her heel and he had refused to let her walk barefoot across marble.
Now he could not decide whether helping his pregnant wife lift an empty suitcase would send the wrong message to his mistress.
Elena almost laughed.
Instead, she began packing.
She chose leggings, sweaters, underwear, two loose dresses, toiletries, her medication, and the folder containing her prenatal records.
She left the emerald earrings Roman had given her on their fifth anniversary.
She left the Cartier watch from their seventh.
She left the black dress Sabrina had once complimented at a charity dinner while touching Roman’s arm too often.
Sabrina disappeared sometime during the packing.
Elena noticed only because the room became easier to breathe in.
Roman remained.
“You don’t have to leave tonight,” he said.
Elena zipped the suitcase.
The sound seemed indecently loud.
“I’m not asking you to leave,” he continued.
“No?”
“No.”
She faced him.
“What are you asking?”
His mouth tightened.
“I’m asking you to be realistic.”
There it was.
Roman’s favorite refuge was reasonableness.
He could make cruelty sound like an unfortunate clause in a contract.
“You’re eight months pregnant,” he said.
“I’m aware.”
“Where are you going?”
“I have somewhere.”
“Where?”
She put her passport into her handbag.
“Elena.”
“You gave up the right to know where I sleep when you put her in my bedroom.”
“I did not put her in your bedroom.”
Elena stared at the robe hanging from Sabrina’s shoulders in her memory.
Roman rubbed the back of his neck.
“She came in here to shower because the plumbing in the west guest suite—”
“Stop.”
“It’s the truth.”
“I don’t care.”
“She wasn’t sleeping in here.”
Elena looked at the bed.
For one ugly second she hated herself for wondering whether the sheets smelled different.
Then the baby moved.
A heel or elbow pressed outward against her coat.
Elena placed her palm there automatically.
Roman saw the movement.
His expression changed.
He had always become strangely boyish when the baby kicked, as if fatherhood were something miraculous happening near him rather than a responsibility already happening to him.
“Elena.”
“No.”
“I haven’t touched you.”
“You don’t get to use the baby to make this conversation easier.”
His jaw hardened.
“That isn’t what I’m doing.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing.”
The sentence landed between them without drama.
That was what made it hurt.
She took the small framed photograph of her mother from the nightstand and wrapped it inside a cardigan.
Roman watched.
“Is that all you’re taking?”
“Yes.”
“This is your home.”
“Apparently it has a flexible definition of wife.”
He flinched.
She wished she felt better for causing it.
She didn’t.
By the time Elena reached the stairs, her lower back was aching.
She refused to let Roman see it.
She carried the suitcase one step at a time, gripping the banister while the wheels bumped behind her.
He followed three steps back.
At the bottom, Marco Bell stood near the foyer arch with a folder in his hands.
He had managed Roman’s household operations for fourteen years and possessed the rare ability to look unsurprised by almost anything.
Tonight he failed.
His eyes moved from Elena’s suitcase to Roman.
“Mrs. Marino?”
“I’m fine, Marco.”
“You shouldn’t carry that.”
“I’ve got it.”
Marco looked at Roman again.
Roman said nothing.
Marco walked over and took the suitcase from Elena anyway.
“Fire me tomorrow,” he told Roman.
Roman’s face darkened.
“Put the bag down.”
“No.”
“Marco.”
“She’s thirty-four weeks pregnant.”
“Thirty-five,” Elena said.
Both men looked at her.
She almost smiled despite herself.
“Apparently nobody listens at appointments.”
Marco carried the suitcase outside.
The rain had started while Elena was packing, cold October rain that silvered the stone steps and made the driveway shine beneath the security lamps.
Her car waited near the entrance.
Roman followed her beneath the portico.
“Stay tonight.”
Elena opened the passenger door and Marco put the suitcase inside.
“Why?”
“It’s late.”
“It’s seven fifteen.”
“The roads are bad.”
“I drove them an hour ago.”
“Elena, for Christ’s sake.”
She closed the door.
There was the Roman she knew.
May you like
Not the careful businessman.
Not the man constructing reasonable sentences while his marriage bled out around his shoes.
