Chapter 4 - The Price of Treachery
""I didn't know!"" I pleaded, hot tears finally spilling down my cheeks, burning against my wind-chapped skin. ""Meline, I swear to you on my soul, I thought it was just a precautionary hospital check. I thought you slipped and fell, that the doctors were just observing you! Elena told me she was hemorrhaging, she had no family in the city—""
""Stop saying her name in front of our son's grave,"" Meline whispered, her voice tightening like a bowstring. ""Just stop.""
She pulled an envelope from her pocket and tossed it onto the damp grass between us. It landed with a soft, heavy thud near my feet.
""Those are the divorce papers. Unconditional surrender. I don't want your penthouse. I don't want your shares in Vance Medical. I don't want a single penny of your generational wealth, Damen. To take your money would mean admitting that my son's life had a dollar value, and I would rather starve on the street than let your fortune buy off my grief.""
""I won't sign them,"" I sobbed, shaking my head violently. ""I'll resign from the board. I'll give up the company. I'll spend the rest of my life making this right. Just come home. Let me take care of you. You had major surgery just days ago, you're not even supposed to be walking!""
Meline looked down at the bronze marker. ""When they wheeled me into the operating theater, the ceiling lights were spinning so fast I thought I was dying. The surgeon told me there was severe abruption. He said my placenta had torn away from the uterine wall when I fell on those stairs—the fall you couldn't be bothered to look up from your laptop to ask about. For two hours, three nurses held my hands while they pumped units of blood into my veins to keep my heart beating.""
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She slowly raised her eyes back to mine, and the absolute void in them tore my chest apart. ""Do you know what kept me fighting to stay alive, Damen? It wasn't the thought of you coming through the doors. It was the hope that my baby might survive. And when they lifted him out and there was no cry—no sound at all—I realized God had spared him from ever having to know what kind of father he had. Sign the papers. If you have even an ounce of humanity left inside your hollow chest, sign them and never look for me again.""
She turned and walked toward the cemetery path where an ordinary yellow cab sat idling. I took two steps to chase after her, but my legs gave out completely. I collapsed over the small bronze plaque, burying my face in the sod, wailing into the wet earth while the sound of her car faded into the distant roar of Brooklyn traffic.
