"Grace really enjoyed the dishes you cooked the other day. How about you stay and wait on her through her postpartum recovery?"
"Don't you dare—"
My phone erupted in my pocket, vibrating so hard I felt it in my ribs.
I fumbled it out with shaking hands. The nurse's voice on the other end was frantic.
"Ms. Harding, Jeanette's gone into cardiac failure. You need to get here—"
Before she could finish, Julian snatched the phone from my hand.
"One night apart and you're already this desperate to call your man, Gertrude?"
I stared at the phone in his grip. Something inside me snapped. A raw, guttural scream tore from my throat as I grabbed the fruit knife off the table and pressed it to my own neck.
"Julian!"
"If anything happens to Jeanette, I swear to God I will make every last one of you pay with your lives!"
The color drained from his face. He shoved the phone back at me.
I ran. I ran like a woman possessed, all the way to the hospital. But the second I burst through the doors, they were already wheeling her out, a white sheet pulled over her small body.
The pain hit so hard it locked every muscle in place. I couldn't move. I couldn't scream. I couldn't make a single sound.