“Mr.

Ravenel, this is a delivery room.

You cannot bring her in here.”

I turned my head against the soaked pillow.

Camden — my husband of four years — stood in the doorway in a bespoke suit without a crease in it.

And half a step behind him, one manicured hand resting on the visible swell of her own pregnancy, stood Noelle.

My former intern.

He crossed to my bedside with both hands in his trouser pockets.

He did not touch me.

He did not lower his voice.

He looked at the fetal monitor with the flat, appraising attention of a man skimming a disappointing earnings report, and then, at the very peak of my body’s ordeal, he said the thing he had come to say.

Chapter 2 — The Killing Blow

“Noelle has already given me a son,” Camden said.

“He is fifteen months old.