Chapter 1 - THE PHONE BESIDE THE TOILETMark shoved my head down before I understood that the argument had stopped being an argument.

One second I was standing beside the bathroom sink telling my husband I would not sign anything I hadn’t read. The next, his hand was twisted into my hair and my knees struck the tile.

The toilet lid was already open.

“Mark—”

My face hit cold water.

Instinct took over. I clawed at his wrist, kicked against the cabinet, tried to lift my head, but he leaned his weight over me and held me down.

I was twenty-eight weeks pregnant.

That fact became the only clear thought in my head.

Not the humiliation.

Not the smell.

Not even the terror of my lungs beginning to burn.

The baby.

When he finally hauled me backward by my hair, I collapsed beside the toilet coughing so violently that my ribs hurt.

“You make everything difficult,” he said.

I dragged air into my lungs.

“What is wrong with you?”

He kicked me hard in the side of my abdomen.

My shoulder struck the vanity.

For several seconds I couldn’t move.

Mark stood between me and the bathroom door in jeans and the dark hoodie he had worn home from work, breathing heavily as if I had exhausted him.

“Nobody believes you, Rachel,” he said. “Nobody ever will.”

That sentence frightened me differently.

It sounded practiced.

For months, Mark had been calling me emotional in front of other people.

Pregnancy brain.

Stress.

Hormones.

He joked that I forgot conversations we had never actually had. If I contradicted him around friends, he smiled and said, “See what I mean?”

I had hated it.

I had not understood it.

Now his phone vibrated on the bathroom floor.

Mark looked down.

So did I.

The screen lit.

A message preview appeared beneath a contact saved only as C.

Did she sign? Examiner moved it to Friday. Do NOT let her call Marston.

Mark lunged for the phone.

So did I.

My fingers reached it first.

He grabbed my wrist.

“Give me that.”

I twisted away.

“Who is C?”

His face changed.

Not rage this time.

Fear.

I tapped the notification, but the phone was locked. Another preview appeared before he ripped it from my hand.

We’re exposed if she sees the original consent.

My heart began pounding for a reason that had nothing to do with the bathroom anymore.

“What consent?”

“Give it a rest.”

“Who’s Marston?”

Mark shoved the phone into his pocket.

“Rachel, you just fell. You’re upset. You need to stop making this worse.”

I stared at him.

He was already rewriting it.

While I was still sitting on the floor.

I pushed myself upright using the cabinet. A deep ache ran across my abdomen.

“I need a doctor.”

“You need to calm down.”

“I’m pregnant.”

“I know exactly how pregnant you are.”

There was something about the way he said it.

Specific.

Cold.

Like my pregnancy was a deadline.

He stepped toward me again.

I reached behind my back, found the small glass soap dispenser on the counter, and threw it into the bathtub.

It shattered loudly enough to make him flinch.

I used that second.

I shoved past him, ran down the hallway barefoot, grabbed the spare key from the bowl by the garage door, and got outside before he caught me.

I didn’t go to my car.

He could block the driveway.

I ran across our damp front lawn toward our neighbor’s house in Glen Allen, outside Richmond, with one arm underneath my stomach.

Mrs. Kim opened her door before I reached the porch.

She saw my wet hair, my scraped knees, and the way I was holding my belly.

“Rachel?”

“Call 911.”

Behind me, Mark stepped onto our front porch.

He didn’t follow.

He simply called across the lawn in that same careful voice.

“She fell in the bathroom. She’s panicking.”

Mrs. Kim looked at him.

Then at me.

I whispered, “Please don’t let him come over here.”

Her expression changed.

She pulled me inside and locked the door.

Twenty minutes later, while paramedics were placing me on a stretcher, my phone—still synced to my Apple Watch—showed an incoming call.

My older brother.

Caleb.

I almost answered.

Then I remembered the message on Mark’s phone.

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C.

And for the first time in my life, I let my brother’s call ring unanswered.