If you aren’t—” I couldn’t finish. The dark under that if was too deep to look into.

The next six hours were a worse torture than anything Conrad or Marcus had put me through.

We sat in the waiting room, a pane of thick glass between us and our daughter, watching nurses adjust IV antibiotics to hold the creeping infections at bay.

Preston sat beside me. For the first time in our relationship there was no armor, no corporate wall. He reached out and took my hand. His fingers were cold.

“Hannah,” he murmured, staring at the floor. “When he showed me that report — when he told me you’d broken down and left — it broke me.

I threw myself into the merger because if I stopped for even a second, I thought I’d come apart.