Chương 4
“That wasn’t my question.”
“It is the answer that matters.”
“No. It’s the answer men give when the truth makes them look worse.”
Everett’s mouth tightened. “You spent three years beside the son of a man who destroyed this family.”
“I spent three years beside Weston.”
“A distinction he has never offered anyone else.”
“You don’t know what distinctions he makes.”
“I know he threw you into a storm.”
The pregnancy test pressed into Odalys’s palm. She had forgotten she was still holding it.
Everett noticed.
His gaze dropped, then returned to her face with a softness so deliberate it frightened her.
“So it is true,” he said.
Odalys felt the room tilt without moving. “Who told you?”
“No one had to.”
“You placed five cars outside the penthouse before Weston knew.”
“Because I know Kade men.”
“You told Lucien I might need medical care.”
Everett was silent.
The fire behind glass gave a low mechanical click.
Odalys stepped closer. “Who told you?”
Everett’s eyes went to the test again. “You used the pharmacy account attached to the Westbridge residence. The family office monitors expenditures connected to identities it created.”
For a moment she could only hear the rain striking the windows.
The purchase had been made that morning at a pharmacy near Madison Avenue. She had used cash for the tests, but the vitamins she bought with them had gone onto the card linked to the Priya Osei household account. Weston’s accountant paid that card. Odalys had never known anyone else watched it.
“You’ve monitored my purchases?”
“For your protection.”
“My shampoo protected you from what?”
“Do not make this smaller than it is.”
“You monitored where I slept, what I bought, when I traveled, and who I saw.”
“I kept you alive.”
“You kept an account alive. Priya Osei. A dead child whose name you put on my face.”
Everett’s restraint sharpened. “Your parents were killed when you were four. Your father’s enemies searched hospitals, schools, relatives’ homes. We needed a legal identity that would survive examination.”
“You stole one.”
“We purchased documents from a man who had access to records that were not yet digitized. It was a different time.”
“A child died.”
“And because that child’s record remained open, you lived.”
Odalys stared at him.
He said it without cruelty. That made it worse.
Everett crossed to a cabinet and poured water into a glass. “Sit down.”
“No.”
“You are pregnant.”
“I know.”
“You have been exposed to cold and stress.”
“I am not discussing my body with a man who itemized my life on a credit report.”
Everett set the water on the table. “Weston will come looking for you.”
“He ordered me out.”
“He will tell himself he wants answers. What he wants is control. A Kade does not tolerate an uncertainty he cannot own.”
“And a Marchetti does?”
Everett looked at her for a long moment. “You are angry.”
“That is not the diagnosis you think it is.”
A small sound came from the corridor. Elena stood there holding a stack of folded clothes. She had heard enough to regret arriving.
Odalys took the clothes from her.
“Is there a room with a lock?”
Elena glanced at Everett again.
“There is,” Everett said. “Third door on the left.”
Odalys picked up her bag.
“Odalys.”
She stopped but did not turn.
“The name belongs to you,” Everett said. “Whatever else you believe tonight, understand that.”
She touched the pendant at her throat.
“You don’t get to tell me what belongs to me.”
The room with the lock was larger than the apartment where she had attended college and colder than the rain. Someone had prepared it before her arrival. Fresh towels lay on the bed. A toothbrush remained sealed beside the sink. In the wardrobe hung clothes in her size, including a cream cashmere sweater from a label she had bought twice that winter.
Everett had not guessed her measurements.
She locked the door and placed a chair beneath the handle anyway.
Only then did she remove the robe.
The silk clung to her skin. Her hands shook as she changed into the black trousers and gray sweater Elena had brought. She avoided the mirror until she could not. Wet hair hung in ropes around her face. Her eyes looked too large, as they had during childhood fevers.
She set the pregnancy test beside the sink.
The two pink lines remained.
Odalys sat on the bathroom floor.
For the first time since Weston opened the doors, she cried.
It was not dramatic. No sound escaped her. Tears slid into the corners of her mouth while she stared at the grout between the tiles. She cried because Weston had looked at her as if every morning between them had been evidence. She cried because the first person to know about their child had learned through surveillance. She cried for a dead toddler in Queens whose name had been dragged through airports, bank offices, hospitals, and Weston’s bed.
After several minutes, she wiped her face with Lucien’s handkerchief.
The initials E.M. were embroidered in one corner.
She almost laughed.
The knock came twenty minutes later.
“Odalys,” Elena said through the door. “A physician is here.”
“I didn’t ask for one.”
“Mr. Marchetti did.”
“Tell Mr. Marchetti that my uterus is not a committee he chairs.”
Silence.
Then Elena said, “She is not his physician. She is mine.”
Odalys removed the chair.
Dr. Samira Patel was in her early fifties, wore rain boots beneath a navy coat, and looked annoyed enough to be trustworthy. She carried a small medical bag but did not open it.
“Elena tells me you had a positive home test,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Any pain? Bleeding? Dizziness?”
“No.”
“Do you know the date of your last period?”
May you like
Odalys answered.
Dr. Patel made a calculation on her phone. “You’re likely around six weeks. A home test does not tell us whether the pregnancy is progressing normally, but nothing you’ve told me suggests an emergency. You should arrange an appointment with an obstetrician. Not a family employee. Someone you choose.”
