And now the fantasy was collapsing.
My phone rang again.
This time, Marianne answered on speaker without greeting.
“Audrey?” Dominic snapped. “Finally. Where the hell are you?”
Marianne looked at me. I nodded.
“This is Marianne Ellison, counsel for Audrey Brooks.”
Silence.
Then Dominic laughed once. “Counsel? Are you serious?”
“All communication regarding Audrey and the child should come through my office from this point forward.”
“Put my wife on the phone.”
“No.”
“She is my wife.”
“And she is recovering from major surgery after being abandoned outside a hospital with an infant.”
Another silence.
Then Dominic’s voice dropped.
“She’s exaggerating.”
My father looked at the phone as if he could see Dominic through it.
Marianne said, “There is hospital discharge footage. There are witness statements. There are text messages. Choose your next sentence carefully.”
Dominic inhaled sharply.
In the background, Victoria’s voice cut through. “Tell that woman Audrey is unstable. She’s always been sensitive.”
My father’s eyes lifted to mine.
Something in them changed.
I knew that look.
It was the look he got when an opponent made the mistake of showing him the blade before the first move.
Dominic came back on the line. “Listen, Audrey is hormonal. She needs to calm down and come home.”
“She will not be returning to the apartment tonight.”
“That’s my son.”
Marianne’s tone remained steady. “Your son is safe with his mother.”
“With her father,” Dominic snapped. “This is kidnapping.”
“No, Mr. Vance. This is documentation.”
The call ended.
For several seconds, no one spoke.
Then my father said, “He will make this ugly.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I looked down at my hands. The hospital bracelet was still around my wrist.
“I know who I married now.”
My father came to the side of the bed and sat carefully beside me.
“No,” he said quietly. “You know who he let you see. That is not always the whole man.”
That night, I slept for ninety minutes at a time.
Leo woke to feed. The nurse helped me sit up. Dr. Mercer checked my bleeding. My father remained somewhere beyond the bedroom door, making calls in a low voice that stopped whenever footsteps passed.
At 2:17 a.m., my phone lit up again.
A video message.
From Natalie.