PART 1: The Call That Went Dead
“MY MOTHER ONLY TURNS SIXTY-FIVE ONCE! IF IT HURTS SO MUCH, CALL A CAB!”
Those were the words my husband, Vance, flung at me while I lay twisting on the floor of our house, thirty-nine weeks pregnant and bleeding with no sign of stopping. Rain hammered the windows of our Seattle home, and the whole place felt unbearably hollow around my screams.
“Vance… my water broke! There’s so much blood! Our baby isn’t moving!”
I pleaded for help between contractions, but through the phone I could still hear music and the bright clink of champagne glasses at a lavish party in Queen Anne. Somebody laughed. Somebody else called out for a toast.
Then my mother-in-law took over, her voice cold as ice:
“Vance, honey! Is she putting on a show again to ruin my birthday?”
My husband let out a sigh of pure irritation.
“Natalie, I don’t have time for your hysterics! Get a ride and go to the ER at Harborview. I’ll call you after dessert!”
AND HE HUNG UP.
My name is Natalie Brooks Mercer, and that night I understood that my husband would rather keep celebrating his mother’s birthday than help me save our son. The silence after the click was worse than any contraction. I lay there with one hand pressed to a belly that had gone terrifyingly still, the phone slipping in my sweaty fingers.
The pain tore through me in waves. I rolled onto my side and began to drag myself across the hardwood floor toward the entryway, an inch at a time, leaving a dark smear behind me. Every breath felt like a prayer I wasn’t sure anyone was hearing.
When I reached the hall table, I tried to brace myself against its leg and pull upright. My shoulder struck the edge, and a stack of mail slid off and scattered around me.
A thick ivory envelope landed right beside my face.
It had the name of a prestigious Seattle law firm printed on it in gold letters.
Why would a firm like that be sending me a confidential notice? I had never hired a lawyer in my life.
But another brutal contraction swallowed the thought before it could form. I bit down on my lip until I tasted blood of my own, and when the wave finally ebbed, I knew I had only one chance.
With the last of my strength, I reached up, turned the deadbolt, and let the door fall unlocked. Then I dialed 911.
“The ambulance is on its way! Please, stay conscious!” the operator kept saying.
I tried to answer her. I tried to say my son’s name, a name I had whispered to my belly for months. Only a thin, broken sound came out.
Then headlights swept through the rain and flooded the foyer with white light.
I heard hurried footsteps on the porch, heavy and fast. They were not the footsteps of a paramedic. They were too desperate for that.
The oak door swung wide.
“NATALIE! ARE YOU NATALIE BROOKS MERCER?”
An older man in an elegant dark coat, soaked to the skin, stood in the doorway with rain dripping from his silver hair. I recognized him instantly, even through the haze of pain.
WARREN STERLING!
The powerful billionaire who chaired the financial conglomerate where my husband worked. The man whose name alone was enough to make Vance tremble!
But something about him was even more disorienting than his sudden appearance. His gray eyes and his severe, straight eyebrows were uncannily like the ones I saw in the mirror every morning.
Warren dropped to his knees beside me, heedless of the blood on the floor and the ruin of his expensive coat. He looked at me as if he had just found something lost for thirty-two years.
Then that voice, the one that normally made boardrooms go silent, broke completely.
“DON’T MOVE, MY GIRL… I’M HERE NOW. YOU WILL NEVER BE ALONE AGAIN!”
I froze, even as another contraction gathered itself inside me.
Why was a billionaire I had never met speaking to me with such tenderness? And who, exactly, had he been searching for all those thirty-two years?
