PART 2
The bus doors opened at the next stop, and I almost did not have the strength to stand.
My legs trembled beneath me. Leo stirred against my chest, his tiny mouth making soft movements in his sleep, his warm cheek pressed to my hospital gown beneath the loose cardigan I had thrown over myself that morning. I tightened my arm around him and reached for the pole with my free hand.
The bus driver turned in his seat.
“Ma’am,” he said gently, “you sure this is your stop?”
Before I could answer, two black SUVs pulled to the curb outside.
Not Dominic’s SUV.
These were different. Quiet, polished, and unmistakably expensive in a way that did not need to be announced. The doors opened before the vehicles fully stopped, and four men in dark suits stepped out into the Chicago afternoon.
For the first time that day, I let myself breathe.
One of them, Marcus, my father’s head of security for nearly fifteen years, came straight toward the bus. His expression did not change when he saw me, but I saw something tighten around his eyes.
He had known me since I was nineteen.
He had walked three steps behind me through charity galas, courthouse entrances, foreign airports, and once through a crowd of reporters when my father’s company had been falsely accused of bribing a city official.
I had never seen him look frightened before.
“Mrs. Vance,” he said softly.
The name scraped against me.
“Not for much longer,” I whispered.
Marcus did not react. He only extended his hand.
“Let’s get you and the baby somewhere safe.”
The bus had gone silent. A teenage girl with headphones had lowered her phone. An older woman near the front held one hand against her chest. The driver watched as if he understood more than he wanted to say.
I tried to step down, but pain tore through my abdomen so sharply that the world flashed white.
Marcus moved quickly. He caught my elbow without touching Leo, steadying me with careful precision.
“I’m sorry,” I breathed.
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
His voice was so calm that I nearly cried.
A woman in a navy coat stood and reached for my bag. “I’ll carry that for you, sweetheart.”
“Thank you,” I said, and meant it more than she could have known.
Outside, a second guard opened the back door of the first SUV. A medical bag was already waiting on the seat. Beside it sat a woman in scrubs I recognized faintly from my father’s private physician network.
“Mrs. Vance,” she said, “I’m Dr. Elaine Mercer. Your father asked me to examine you as soon as possible.”
I lowered myself into the seat with a gasp I could not hide.
The moment the door closed, the city noise faded.
For five days, I had tried to be reasonable.
For five days, I had ignored the way Dominic sighed whenever Leo cried, the way Victoria criticized how I held him, the way Natalie wrinkled her nose at my hospital room and said, “It’s a shame private suites were all booked.”
They were not booked.
Dominic had refused one because he said it was “unnecessary spending,” even though he had ordered a six-thousand-dollar watch from Switzerland that same week.
Dr. Mercer leaned forward. “I’m going to check your vitals. You’re very pale.”
“I’m fine.”
“No,” Marcus said from the front seat, eyes on the road. “You are not.”
The words broke something open in me.
Not because they were cruel.
Because they were the first honest words anyone had said about me all day.
I looked down at Leo. He had not woken. Somehow, through abandonment, cold air, public buses, and strangers staring, my son slept as if the world had not yet touched him.
I pressed my lips to his soft hair.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.