Chapter 5: Khloe Wakes

Khloe woke with one hand pressed against her empty stomach.

Panic entered her before memory did.

She looked down.

The curve that had been part of her body for seven months was gone.

“No.”

A nurse rushed toward the bed.

“Mrs. Thorne, please don’t move.”

“My baby.”

“Your daughter is alive.”

Khloe gripped the nurse’s wrist.

“Where?”

“In neonatal intensive care. She was delivered early, but she is receiving excellent treatment.”

“I want to see her.”

“You’ve just had surgery.”

“I want my daughter.”

Her voice cracked on the final word.

Gabriel entered moments later.

Khloe saw the truth in his face before he spoke.

Not death.

Something else.

Something nearly as devastating.

“Uncle Gabriel.”

He came to her bedside and took her hand.

“Ava is fighting.”

“Marcus?”

“Outside.”

“Why isn’t he here?”

Gabriel hesitated.

Khloe remembered the suite.

Isabella’s red dress.

The shove.

The marble.

Marcus appearing in the doorway.

Then Isabella’s trembling voice.

She attacked me.

“Did he believe her?” Khloe asked.

“No.”

“Did he hesitate?”

Gabriel said nothing.

Khloe looked away.

That silence answered enough.

“What did the camera show?”

“Everything.”

“Then why are you looking at me like someone died?”

Gabriel pulled a chair closer.

“Because the camera recorded something about your parents.”

Khloe’s face went still.

“My parents died in a highway accident.”

“We may have been wrong.”

“No.”

“Khloe—”

“No. The brakes failed. The car left the road.”

Gabriel lowered his voice.

“Someone may have forced them off it.”

Khloe stared at him.

“Who?”

Before Gabriel could answer, the door opened.

Marcus stood there.

His tuxedo jacket was gone.

His shirt was wrinkled, and Khloe’s dried blood stained one sleeve.

For the first time since she had known him, he looked completely powerless.

Khloe’s eyes moved from Marcus to Gabriel.

Then back again.

“You knew,” she whispered.

Marcus stepped forward.

“I knew there were questions.”

“How long?”

“Khloe—”

“How long?”

His voice broke.

“Before our first date.”

The monitor beside her began beeping faster.

Khloe released Gabriel’s hand.

Every memory of her marriage shifted.

The restaurant where Marcus had supposedly noticed her across the room.

The scholarship offered by a Thorne foundation.

The apartment lease that had unexpectedly been approved.

The job that had brought her into Marcus’s orbit.

None of it had been chance.

“You didn’t meet me,” she said.

Marcus did not deny it.

“You selected me.”

“I wanted to protect you.”

“From what?”

“From my family.”

Khloe’s eyes filled with tears.

“You were my family.”

A nurse stepped between them as Khloe’s blood pressure rose.

Marcus was forced toward the door.

Before he left, Khloe looked directly at him.

“Did you marry me because your father killed my parents?”

Marcus could have lied.

He had lied for six years.

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Instead, he said the one thing that destroyed whatever remained between them.

“At first, yes.”