After Burying My Son, I Buried Our Marriage

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Seven years had passed since I purchased that small white casket meant for a child too young to have needed one at all.

I was only twenty-two then, still recovering from a pelvis shattered in pieces and an abdomen that had been hollowed out by surgery after surgery. I'd thrown my body across the console to shield Edmund in the instant before the truck slammed into us. He'd walked away with nothing worse than bruised ribs, while I lost my uterus and, along with it, our six-month-old son.

The grief pressed down on me until I could hardly draw breath. On the day they buried hima day Edmund forbade me from attending, insisting I was too fragile to witness itI slipped out of my hospital room anyway. Down in the morgue's basement I found an empty display casket, and I climbed inside it, hoping the darkness might simply close over me and never let go.

That was where Edmund found me. He hauled me out bodily, his tears falling onto the thin fabric of my gown.

"Camila, please, stop this," he had begged, holding me so tightly that my broken bones throbbed in protest. "Children don't matter to me. It's you I need. You're everything I have. Justlive, for my sake."

So I lived.

And three years after that, he got his twenty-four-year-old secretary pregnant.

"An heir is something the Voss family requires, Camila. This isn't news to you."

There wasn't a trace of unease in Edmund's tone as he flicked the glossy sonogram photograph across the kitchen island toward me. No shame colored his voice, no hesitation slowed him downonly the flat, businesslike certainty of a man closing a deal.

I found myself staring down at that grainy black-and-white image of the small curled shape inside it, and something inside my chest caved in, the old ache of my own lost child flaring back to life in my veins.

"Vienna's young, her body's cooperating beautifully," he went on, straightening his tie in front of the mirror without so much as glancing my way. "The moment the child arrives, we'll bring it into the house. It'll grow up calling you Mother. Practically a replacement for the one we lost."

A tremor started in my hands.

A replacement for the one we lost.

He'd said it with such ease, as though our dead son were nothing more than a faulty item he was finally getting around to swapping out. Every vow he'd whispered to me on that frozen morgue floor had turned to nothing but dust in that moment.

I didn't scream. I didn't weep. The sheer scale of the betrayal simply left me hollow.

Reaching into my bag, I drew out the divorce papers I had already signed that morning and pushed them across the cold marble.

"Just sign these," I said quietly. "I've only ever had one child, Edmund, and being his mother is the only thing I want to be. You and Vienna deserve each othergo live your perfect life together. I want my freedom. And I want you to finally tell me where my son rests."

For a decade he had kept that grave hidden from me, insisting it was for my own good, that knowing would send me spiraling into another breakdown. I had pleaded with him on my knees more times than I could count, asking only for the chance to leave a single flower at my son's resting place. Every single time, he'd refused.

Edmund seized the papers from the counter. His knuckles went bloodless as he tore them once, then again, scattering the pieces across the floor at my feet.

"Do you actually believe you can just leave me?" he snarled, closing the space between us. "Playing the wounded party now, are you, Camila? Finelet's find out how badly you really want that grave."

His hand clamped around my arm hard enough to bruise, and he wrenched me out into the bitter Seattle downpour.

He kept driving until we arrived at the VIP wing of Seattle Grace.

Then he shoved me through the double doors of a luxury maternity suite, a room heavy with the scent of expensive vanilla mixed with sterile alcohol.

Vienna was stretched out on the plush hospital bed, picking at a bowl of imported grapes while she scrolled idly through her phone. She glanced up at us, and her mouth curved into a smile that was sweet on the surface and poisonous underneath.

"You actually brought her, baby?" she purred.

Edmund shoved me forward with enough force that I dropped to my knees at the foot of her bed.

"Listen closely, because I won't repeat this," Edmund said, his voice sinking into something cold and threatening. "You'll remain here. You'll wait on Vienna hand and foot. You'll see to it that she and my heir want for nothing. Do exactly as you're told until she delivers, and I'll finally tell you where your son is buried."

My breath caught in my throat. "Edmundno. Don't do this."

"And if you say no," he continued, his gaze utterly devoid of warmth, "his grave will be paved over by morning."

He understood precisely which lever would break me.

So I turned myself into a shadow in that room.

Three days passed in which I swallowed every scrap of pride I had left. I brought Vienna her ice water. I rubbed her swollen ankles while she griped about the hospital's food. Silent and empty inside, I watched Edmund arrive with armfuls of roses, pressing kisses to her forehead, murmuring the same tender words that had once belonged only to me.

The air in that room felt thick enough to choke on.

By the fourth afternoon, Edmund was bent over the bed, his palm resting with easy familiarity against Vienna's stomach. She laughed, drawing his mouth down into a slow, deliberate kiss, and over his shoulder her eyes found mine, gleaming with triumph.

My stomach turned. Breathing became impossible.

I fled the room, shouldering through the heavy doors into the empty, frigid corridor beyond. The winter chill bit at my skin, but it did nothing to hold back the panic clawing up my throat.

My chest locked tight. The walls seemed to press inward from every side.

Fingers shaking, I fumbled through my coat pocket for my medication, desperate for anything that would silence the pain, anything that would erase the image of the two of them together.

I pressed a white pill free from its foil packet, my hand trembling so violently I could barely guide it toward my mouth.

That was when the suite door banged open.

Edmund stood framed in the doorway, his eyes lit with a rage that made no sense.

"What do you think you're doing?" he demanded.

Before I could get out a single word, he closed the distance in one stride. His hand struck my wrist.

The pill shot from my fingers, skittered across the icy hospital tile, and vanished into the shadows of the hallway beyond.

A gasp tore out of me as I sank to my knees, my hands scrabbling desperately across the icy tile in search of that small white pill. I couldn't do without it. My chest felt like it was folding in on itself, and the edges of my vision had already begun to blur into darkness.

Edmund seized my shoulders and hauled me upright without any gentleness. "I'm talking to you, Camila! What are you doing with antidepressants? You were supposed to have moved past all this by now!"

"I can't... I can't get air," I managed between gasps, my whole frame shaking uncontrollably. Panic was rising over me like water closing over my head. "Edmund, pleasejust let me look for it. Please..."

He made a disgusted sound, his grip clamping down harder until his fingers pressed into skin already bruised from earlier. "Is this some kind of game to you? Another performance just to pull my attention back to you?"

"It's not fake!" I wept, my jaw trembling too hard to hold my teeth still. "I swear, this is realthe pain, it's realplease!"

"Enough of this!" His shout bounced sharply off the antiseptic walls around us. "You're putting on a show again, Camila. It's been an entire decade since we lost that baby. Ten years. Isn't it time you finally grew past this?"

Those words cut into my throat like broken glass. Grown past this.

The tears came freely now, and I sank down the wall until I was on the floor once more. "I only want to know where he's resting," I pleaded, fisting my hand into the fabric of his tailored coat. "Please, Edmund. Just give me that muchtell me where my son was laid to rest. Nothing more. Please..."

He gazed down at me, and whatever remained of warmth in his face hardened into something I no longer recognized. Bending close, his voice dropped into a low, menacing murmur.

"Keep up this hysterics for one more second," he warned, "and I'll pull the funding for your mother's treatment before the day's out. As for your sisterone phone call, and I'll see to it her modeling career doesn't survive the morning. Is that truly what you want?"

The breath left me entirely. My mother's care, which kept her alive. My sister's one and only dream. He held both of them in his fist, ready to crush them simply to bend me into submission.

"Please, nodon't," I whispered, my head shaking back and forth in desperation. "I'll stop. I'll be quiet, I promise."

"Better," he said flatly, smoothing down his suit jacket. "You're finished with those pills. You don't need them anymore. And there will be no divorce."

Through the blur of tears, I stared up at him, my chest still heaving with the effort of breathing. None of it made any sense to me anymore. "Why?" The word tore out of me, cracking apart as it left my mouth. "Why can't you just release me? You've got Vienna. You've got your heir on the way. Why keep holding on to me?"

A muscle worked in his jaw. He glanced away for the briefest moment before his eyes came back to mine. "Because I love you still."

Everything in me went still. Then a laugh broke loose from my chest, bitter and cracked down the middle. I shook my head slowly as the room began to spin around me.

"A man who loved me wouldn't have cheated," I forced out, the darkness now creeping steadily inward at the corners of my sight. Oxygen deprivation was already stealing the feeling from my arms and legs. "If this is love... then do me a favor and end it. Just kill me, Edmund..."

"Camila!"

His voice reached me as though filtered through deep water. The fluorescent lights overhead stuttered, the world tilted sideways, and then my eyes rolled back as the cold black finally swallowed me whole.

Consciousness returned slowly, my skull throbbing with each heartbeat. The sharp bite of antiseptic filled my nose. I found myself stretched across an unyielding hospital mattress in a room lit low and dim.

I attempted to push myself upright, but my limbs refused to cooperate, heavy as stone.

That was when voices drifted in through the door left slightly ajar.

"Are her vital signs holding steady?" Edmund's voice, clipped and impatient.

"Yes, Mr. Voss," came a doctor's answer, threaded with unease. "Though the panic attack was quite severe. She'll need her medication to keep the trauma under control"

"No." Edmund's interruption was blunt. "She isn't to have that medicine."

"Sir, if she goes without it, the suffering will be considerable"

"That's exactly the idea," Edmund said, and there was a cruelty lacing his words I had never once heard from him before. "Let her suffer. It's payment for costing me my heir."

My breathing simply stopped. I lay frozen in the darkness, unable to move, my heartbeat slamming against my ribs.

"Because of her," he went on, hatred saturating every syllable, "the CEO position slipped through my fingers. My own cousin took control of the company because I couldn't produce an heir in ten full years. She's the reason my entire life fell apart."

The doctor offered no reply at all.

"See that she stays alive," Edmund commanded coldly. "She doesn't get to die before her time. She owes me for every single thing she's taken from me, and she's going to pay it all back."

Sharp footsteps clicked against the hallway floor and came to a stop just beyond my door.

"Relax, Edmund. I've got her handled. She won't be doing anything foolish."

Whatever air remained in my lungs disappeared instantly. My blood turned to ice in my veins.

I recognized that voice. I had spent every year of my life shielding the person it belonged to.

Bianca. My own younger sister.

"You've kept her in line beautifully, Bianca," Edmund said, his tone easing into something warm with approval. "Nothing's tipped her off about the medical funds, has it?"

A light, careless laugh slipped from Bianca, and it sent a violent chill racing down my spine. "Camila's clueless. She still believes Mom's alive and recovering at that clinic in Switzerland. Keep the money flowing into my agency, and I'll keep writing Mom's letters for her."

"Good. And how's Vienna holding up?" Edmund asked.

"Resting comfortably," Bianca answered easily. "Told you it was a brilliant move, introducing my best friend to you. She's finally giving you the heir Camila could never manage."

I clapped a hand over my mouth, choking back the sob threatening to rip its way out of my throat.

My own sister. My own blood. The very person whose dreams I had just humiliated myself to protect.

She'd betrayed me completely. She was the one who had put Edmund and his mistress together in the first place.

And my mothermy mother had already been gone for years.

No scream rose out of me. No tears came either.

There's a strange truth about being broken into that many piecesit doesn't come with sound. What fills the silence instead is a hollow, deafening ring that drowns out everything.

My mother had died. My sisterthe same little girl I had shielded from our father's cruelty for years, the one whose dreams I had funded by giving up pieces of my own happinesshad handed me over to a monster without a second thought. And Edmund had known the truth the entire time. He'd taken a dead woman and turned her into the chain that kept me bound to him.

Hours passed while I lay motionless in that darkened hospital room, my gaze fixed on the ceiling until my eyes ached from the strain. There was nothing left for me to hold onto. No child. No mother. No sister I could trust. No husband worth the name.

The door clicked as it swung open.

I stayed still, feigning sleep, while the cloying mix of costly vanilla perfume and something sickeningly sweet rolled through the sterile air.

"Look at her, lying there. Pathetic, isn't it?" Bianca's voice. My own sister's voice.

"Quiet, don't wake her yet," Vienna whispered back with a giggle. "I want to watch her face the moment she sees what we've got."

I let my eyes drift open slowly.

The two of them stood together at the foot of my bed. Bianca was dressed in the designer coat I'd gifted her only last month for her birthday, looking every bit as striking as ever. Beside her, Vienna leaned in close, cradling a small mahogany box I recognized instantly.

My heart seized.

That box held my memories. I'd kept it tucked away in the back of my closet for yearsthe very box Edmund had sworn, over and over, that he'd disposed of long ago.

"Put that back where it belongs," I rasped, my throat raw and scraped hollow. I struggled to lift myself upright, though my body was still too drained from the earlier panic to cooperate.

A slow smirk spread across Vienna's face as she flicked the latch open. "Edmund dropped this off at my suite not long ago. Figured since I'm the one carrying his heir, I ought to check whether anything from your... failed attempt is worth keeping."

"Keep your hands off it!" I threw myself forward, only for the IV tubing to snap my arm back, sending a burst of sharp pain up through the vein.

Vienna dug her fingers into the box and drew out a small blue blanket, hand-knitted with careful stitches. I recognized every thread of itthe one I'd made with my own hands while pregnant, the one I'd kept wrapped around my belly each night as I hummed lullabies to a son I would never get to cradle.

"The wool's rather coarse, isn't it," Vienna murmured, running the fabric idly between her polished fingers. "And such a gloomy shade of blue, too."

"Edmund mentioned you could turn it into a rag for that purebred Pomeranian of yours," Bianca added, a smile curling across her mouth that held nothing but contempt. My own sister, looking at me as though I were something to be scraped off her shoe.

"Actually," Vienna said, malice glittering in her eyes, "I think the trash is where this belongs. Right where its owner should've ended up too."

She let the blanket fall to the floor, then ground her muddy designer boot into it deliberately, twisting the delicate blue yarn against the hospital tile.

Something inside me gave way completely. Whatever thin thread had been holding my mind together finally snapped.

I didn't fight back. I didn't cry out. I simply stared at the muddy print left behind on the last thing I had of my child.

"Oh, look, is she about to start crying again?" Bianca sneered. "Come on, Ches, let's go. This room's making me sick to my stomach."

They spun on their heels and left, their laughter drifting back down the corridor behind them.

Slowly, I pulled the IV needle free from my arm. Blood trickled down my wrist, though I felt nothing at all. I swung my legs out of bed, my bare feet meeting the freezing floor, and bent to gather the ruined blue blanket, pressing it tight against my chest before walking out of the room.

I didn't head toward Vienna's suite. I didn't go searching for Edmund, either.

I made straight for the stairwell and began to climb.

The heavy metal door leading to the rooftop groaned open under my push. Seattle's freezing rain struck me instantly, soaking straight through my thin gown and plastering my hair flat against my face. The wind screamed around me, though it was nothing next to the storm ripping through my chest.

I made my way to the edge.

Below me, the city lights smeared together into a dizzying blur, a plunge into wet, dark streets where the cars looked no bigger than ants. Just one step. That was all that separated me from the end of the pain. One step, and I could be with my son again. I could be with my mother again.

Edmund had gotten exactly what he wanted. He had shattered me completely.

"I'm on my way, my sweet boy," I murmured up into the storm, holding the ruined blue blanket close against my heart. "Mommy's coming to you."

I swung my leg over the icy railing, my toes finding the very edge of the concrete ledge. The wind shoved hard against my back, coaxing me forward.

I shut my eyes and drew in one final breath.

My grip on the railing loosened.

Then a handlarge, warm, unyieldingclamped around my wrist like a steel trap.

Before a single gasp could escape me, a powerful arm hooked around my waist and hauled me backward with startling force. My body collided with a broad, solid chest, and together we tumbled over the railing, crashing down onto the rain-soaked concrete of the rooftop.

"Let go of me!" I shrieked, fighting wildly against whoever held me. "Let me die! Just let me go!"

"Dying's the easy part, Camila," a low, velvety voice breathed close to my ear, and something about it sent an involuntary shiver rippling down my spine. It was a voice that seemed to command obedience without even trying.

He adjusted his hold, gently but firmly pinning my flailing arms against my sides so I couldn't hurt myself further. Through the sheeting rain, I finally looked up at him.

Midnight-blue eyes locked onto mine, set above a jawline cut sharp as glass, radiating a kind of dangerous power that made the frigid air feel suddenly suffocating. He wore a tailored black suit, seemingly indifferent to the storm raging around us.

"Who are you?" The words scraped out of me, my whole body shaking.

His mouth curved slowly into something dark, almost predatory. Reaching up, he brushed a wet strand of hair away from my cheek with surprising gentleness.

"I'm the man who took Edmund's company out from under him," he said, his tone smooth as silk, a dangerous promise flickering behind his eyes. "His cousin. Andrei Voss. Step off this ledge, and you hand them the victory they want. But take my hand instead, and I'll help you tear every last one of them down."

I remained frozen there for what felt like an eternity, my body wracked with uncontrollable shivers inside the soaked hospital gown. The hopelessness that had nearly driven me over the edge still lingered, but beside it now flickered something newa small, burning ember of fury.

I turned away from the ledge and made my way back down the stairwell.

Pushing through the heavy door of my hospital room, I found Bianca and Vienna hadn't left at all. Bianca stood by the mirror, plugging a curling iron into the wall socket, busily fussing over Vienna's hair as though my room had become their private beauty parlor.

I halted in the doorway, my eyes fixed on my own sister.

Two decades of my life had been spent as her protector. I had absorbed our father's drunken rage so it wouldn't fall on her instead. I had worked myself to exhaustion across three jobs, pelvis still healing from surgery, just to fund her very first modeling portfolio. All that time, I believed we were fighting through the world side by side.

But watching her now, catching the raw, unfiltered revulsion in her expression as she took in my drenched, pitiful state, something horrifying crystallized in my mind.

This wasn't simply about Bianca trading me away for Edmund's fortune. She despised me. She always hadI could see it now with perfect clarity. My sacrifices had never earned her gratitude; they'd only made her feel like a charity case, and that feeling had curdled into resentment over the years. She'd been consumed with envy watching me marry into the Voss family's billions while she scraped by chasing auditions. The abuse hidden beneath my gilded marriage meant nothing to heronly the wealth mattered. And now, having replaced me with her closest friend, she'd finally claimed the power she'd always wanted.

I had devoted my entire existence to shielding a girl who had simply been biding her time, waiting for the right moment to tear me down.

"Well, look who crawled back," Bianca scoffed, rolling her eyes dramatically. "Did that little rain shower help cool your temper down any?"

I said nothing. I only stood there, my eyes empty and lifeless, staring back at them both.

Vienna's expression soured, evidently displeased by my silence. She'd wanted tears. She'd wanted begging. Her gaze drifted to the scorching curling iron still clutched in Bianca's hand, and something dark and twisted sparked behind her eyes.

In the span of a blink, Vienna ripped the iron out of Bianca's grip. She pressed the blistering ceramic barrel against her own forearm for the briefest instant, then flung it aside and dropped to her knees, letting out a scream loud enough to shake the walls.

"What in God's name is happening in here?"

Edmund came crashing through the door, his face drained of all color.

Bianca dropped down beside Vienna instantly, slipping seamlessly into her role. "Edmund, hurry, help her! Camila's completely lost her mind! She went after Vienna with the ironsaid if her baby's dead, yours doesn't deserve to live either!"

"My armit's burning!" Vienna wailed, clutching desperately at her belly. "And the pain in my stomach, Edmund, pleasesave our baby!"

The instant he heard "baby," Edmund's expression twisted into pure horror. He swept Vienna up into his arms without a second's hesitation.

Not once did his eyes flick toward me. He never registered that I stood there soaked through, trembling, blood trickling from where I'd torn the IV free. All he offered me was a single, ice-cold warning as he swept past.

"Stay put, Camila. We're settling this once and for all when I'm back."

Once the room had cleared and Bianca had scurried out behind them, an oppressive silence descended, heavy as a shroud.

It took an unbearably long time before I found the will to move at all. I didn't bother searching for dry clothes. I simply lowered myself onto the edge of the bed, numb and empty, and waited.

An hour later, Edmund returned, seizing my arm and dragging me upright with brutal, clinical efficiency.

"Vienna's suffered a serious third-degree burn on her arm, and it's your fault," he growled. "She's hysterical, and the doctor's warning me that the stress could endanger my heir. Here's your choice, Camilaeither you go under the knife right now for a skin graft to fix what you did, or I have your son's grave sealed under concrete by tonight."

Whatever color remained in my face drained away entirely. I must have looked like nothing more than a corpse still standing upright.

I didn't try to defend myself. I didn't point out that Vienna had done it to herself. I simply held the gaze of the man for whom I had once thrown myself into the path of a speeding truck, and whispered through cracked, dry lips, "If I give her my skin... will you finally tell me where he's buried?"

Something seemed to lodge in Edmund's throat before he could answer. After a long, strained pause, he muttered, "Fine."

That night found me wheeled into surgery. Whether it was simple exhaustion from my body or some deliberate order from Edmund, the local anesthetic failed to take hold. I felt every unbearable second as the scalpel carved skin away from my thigh.

By the time I surfaced in the recovery room, Edmund was already standing at my bedside, my leg wrapped tightly in bandages that throbbed with every breath I took.

The first words that scraped out of me were barely a whisper. "Tell me... where is my son buried?"

Edmund's face darkened, and the atmosphere around him grew suddenly heavy. His hand shot out, gripping my chin with bruising force, his eyes burning with dark fury.

"And if I tell you," he murmured, low and threatening, "what's stopping you from running straight to his grave and ending your life there?" His grip tightened until it hurt. "Understand this, CamilaI've already told the board about Vienna's pregnancy. My heir will be here soon enough. Until that day comes, there will be no more scenes from you."

I stared at him, frozen, before wrenching his hand away and dissolving into uncontrollable sobs. "You gave me your word, Edmund! You said you'd tell me! You don't get to take that back now!"

"I am his mother!" The scream tore free from somewhere deep inside me, ten years of agony finally breaking loose. "He was part of my own body once, back when I still had a womb to carry him in! Now that he's gone, what gives you the right to keep him from me?"

My tears left him entirely unmoved.

A despair colder and more absolute than anything I'd known before swallowed me whole. I slid off the bed, ignoring the blinding pain shooting through my bandaged leg, and sank to my knees at his feet. One final performance as the broken, devoted wife remained left to give.

"I'm begging you..." The sobs came so hard I could barely draw breath between them. "All I want is to know where he rests. I swear I won't interfere with anything you're planning. Just let me see him, just once. I'm on my knees in front of you, Edmund! Pleasetell me!"

"That's enough."

He rose abruptly, yanking irritably at his tie, and looked down at me with nothing but pure disdain written across his face.

"Take a good look at yourself, Camila. This is pathetic. Do you honestly believe your dead son would want a mother as broken and miserable as the one kneeling in front of me?"

I went completely rigid, palms pressed flat against the frigid floor, my whole body shuddering uncontrollably. Just as I felt certain my heart might simply stop beneath the crushing weight of his cruelty, his voicecold, thin, indifferentfinally drifted down to me.

"Angelique Church Cemetery. Plot 278."

"Angelique Church Cemetery. Plot 278."

Those words repeated themselves over and over in my head like some kind of prayer as the taxi drove off, leaving me alone before the tall, black iron gates. The searing pain radiating up my bandaged leg meant nothing to me. Neither did the fact that beneath my coat I still wore nothing but a thin hospital gown, stained with dried blood.

I made my way through the rows of gray headstones, limping against the bite of the winter wind, until I finally reached that small, isolated corner of the cemetery grounds.

Plot 278.

Just a small, unmarked slab of stone waited there. No name carved into it. No date. Only a patch of cold, neglected earth that time had forgotten.

My legs buckled beneath me, and I sank down into the frozen dirt, my fingers trembling as they traced along the stone's rough surface. A full decade. For ten entire years, my child had lain out here in the dark, utterly alone.

"My precious boy," I breathed, my voice splintering apart as a violent sob ripped through my chest. "It's Mommy. I'm finally here. Forgive me for taking this longI'm so terribly sorry."

With shaking hands I pulled open my coat and drew out the ruined blue blanket, still caked with the mud from Vienna's boot. I smoothed it out carefully and laid it across the frigid stone, as though it might somehow keep him warm.

I couldn't bring myself to leave. Instead I stretched out on the frozen ground beside the grave, curling my body around the stone the way I would have held him in my arms. All through the night I spoke to him, humming the lullabies I'd carried silently in my heart for years, weeping until my voice gave out completely and no more tears would come.

By the time the pale gray light of dawn crept over the horizon, my body had gone entirely numb.

Somehow I forced myself upright and dragged my broken, exhausted frame toward the cemetery warden's office. The elderly man seated behind the desk stared at me in open alarma pale, shaking woman who looked more ghost than living person.

"I want to purchase the plot beside 278," I said, my voice scraped raw.

"Ma'am, those plots don't come cheap, and honestly, you look like you belong in a hospital"

Before he could finish, I reached down and wrenched the enormous diamond wedding ring from my finger with a violent twist. The symbol of ten years spent trapped in a nightmare. I slammed it down onto his desk, the stone catching the light.

"That ring alone is worth well over a hundred thousand dollars," I told him, my eyes empty and dead. "Keep whatever's left over. I only want the ground beside my son. And I want it settled right now."

The warden swallowed hard and nodded, understanding settling over his features.

Deed in hand, I made my way back to the gravesite. Overhead, the sky had darkened into an angry, bruised shade of purple, and moments later it broke open entirely.

A brutal, freezing downpour crashed down over Seattle, soaking through my clothing within seconds and chilling me straight down to the bone. Still, I didn't move toward shelter. I dropped to my knees directly into the mud, right on the ground I had just purchased.

"Take me too," I called out toward the weeping, empty sky, rain mixing with the tears streaming down my face. "Please. Just let me stay here. Bury me right here beside him."

I lowered my head onto the muddy earth and closed my eyes, letting the icy rain pound against my back without resistance. I remained there, unmoving, as afternoon slowly bled into evening. My pulse slowed. The cold no longer registered as painonly a heavy, peaceful numbness settling over everything.

All I wanted was to sleep.

And as complete darkness finally swallowed the cemetery whole, the world around me dissolved into nothing.

Two days passed.

Inside the VIP maternity suite at Seattle Grace Hospital, a newborn's piercing cries filled every corner of the room without pause.

Edmund pressed his fingers against his temples, a headache pounding relentlessly behind his eyes. Vienna lounged across the hospital bed, scrolling through her phone, seemingly deaf to the red-faced infant wailing in the bassinet just a few feet from her.

"Vienna, get him to stop screaming," Edmund snapped, his patience worn thin to nothing. "My mother and half the board are due here within the hour to meet the heir."

"I just went through labor, Edmund!" Vienna whined without so much as glancing up from her screen. "I'm not wrecking my recovery rocking a baby. Where the hell are the nurses?"

"They're occupied," Edmund growled back. He glared down at the screaming child, irritation flaring hot and sudden inside him. Dirty diapers and crying fits held zero appeal for him. All he wanted was the title that came with fatherhood, none of the mess attached to it.

That was when a thought occurred to him.

Camila.

She'd gone silent for days now. Suspiciously silent. She should have been here, tending to them, keeping Vienna comfortable, handling all the unpleasant work that came with raising a child so neither of them would have to.

"Useless woman," Edmund muttered under his breath, fishing his phone from his pocket. "She's probably wallowing in self-pity back at the house. I'll have her down here playing nanny within twenty minutes."

He dialed her number, his polished leather shoe tapping an impatient rhythm against the floor.

The phone rang once. Then twice. A third time.

Finally, the call connected.

"Camila, where in God's name are you?" Edmund snapped the instant the line opened, his voice thick with venom. "Get yourself to this hospital immediately. Vienna needs someone watching the baby, and if you're not standing here before the board walks in, I swear I'll"

"Hello."

Edmund went still. A man's voice answered himlow, cold, and completely unrecognizable.

His fingers tightened around the phone, an unfamiliar unease crawling slowly up his spine. "Who is this? Why are you answering my wife's phone? Put Camila on right now."

A heavy, unsettling silence stretched out on the other end. Only the faint whisper of rain and wind carried through the line.

Then the voice returned, flat and utterly without feeling.

"I apologize, sir. But the person this phone belongs to has already been laid to rest."