Cruel Inheritance

Prologue

Five Years Ago

The tea tasted wrong.

Kira set down her cup and frowned. Chamomile. She'd made it herself, same as every night. But there was a bitterness underneath, sharp and chemical, like crushed aspirin dissolved in honey.

You're being paranoid, she told herself. Damien will be home soon.

She and Damien had been married for eight months. Happy. Stupidly, blindly happy. He was rising fast in his father's organization. She was finishing her degree online. They fought about whose turn it was to do the dishes and laughed about everything else.

The back door opened.

Kira turned, expecting Damien.

Marco walked in.

He wasn't dressed for a meeting. He wore dark jeans and a soft gray sweater — the one Kira had bought Damien for Christmas. The sight of it on Marco's body made her stomach tighten.

"Marco." She frowned. "I thought you were with Damien."

"I was." He closed the door behind him. Locked it. "He sent me ahead."

"For what?"

Marco didn't answer. He walked toward her slowly, his eyes fixed on her face. There was something different about him tonight. Something that made Kira's skin prickle.

"You look tired," he said.

"It's late. I was about to go to bed."

"Don't you want to wait for him?"

"He'll wake me when he gets home."

Marco stopped in front of her. Too close. She could smell his cologne — expensive, woodsy, nothing like the clean soap Damien wore.

"He won't be home for a while," Marco said softly.

Kira stepped back.

"Marco, what is this?"

He didn't answer. He just looked at her with those dark, patient eyes.

And then the room tilted.

Kira grabbed the edge of the table. Her knees buckled.

"What —"

"Don't fight it," Marco murmured. He caught her as she fell. His arms were strong. Wrong. "It's already done."

She tried to push him away.

"The tea," she whispered.

Marco nodded. "I'm sorry, Kira. Truly. But he has to lose something. It's the only way to break him."

She wanted to ask what he meant. Wanted to scream. Wanted to claw his face off.

Her body wouldn't obey.

The last thing she saw was Marco carrying her up the stairs toward a bedroom that wasn't hers.

The last thing she felt was terror.

Then nothing.

She woke to silence.

And Damien's voice — shattered, unrecognizable — saying her name like a curse.

"I trusted you."

Kira opened her eyes. The ceiling was wrong. The sheets were wrong. The weight beside her was wrong.

Marco.

He lay beside her, shirtless, his chest bare, his hair tousled. Her own dress was torn at the shoulder. Her legs were bare beneath the twisted sheets.

Damien stood in the doorway. His face was gray. His hands shook.

Behind him, two guards.

"Damien —" Kira's voice came out as a croak. Her throat was raw. "Nothing happened — I was drugged —"

"Don't." His voice broke. "Don't you dare lie to me."

"I'm not lying — check the tea — there's still tea in the kitchen —"

Marco sat up slowly. He rubbed his eyes. He looked at Damien with an expression of perfect, practiced shame.

"Damien." Marco's voice was heavy. "It's not what you think."

"Not what I think." Damien laughed. It was hollow. Dead. "I see my wife in bed with my best friend. Both of you half-dressed. And it's not what I think."

Kira tried to stand. Her legs collapsed.

"Please..... look at me ....... someone drugged me......."

He looked at her.

For one second doubt flickered across his face.

Then Marco spoke again.

"I'm sorry," Marco said quietly. "It's been going on for months. I should have told you. But I loved her too."

The doubt vanished.

Damien's face went blank. Empty. Like someone had reached inside him and pulled out everything that mattered.

He turned and walked out.

"Damien —"

Kira crawled off the bed. Fell down the stairs. Dragged herself across the cold marble floor of the foyer.

The front door was open.

His car was already pulling away.

She sat on the floor and waited for him to come back.

He never did.

Two weeks later.

Kira sat in a rented room. The walls were thin. The bed was hard. The window faced a brick wall.

She had been hiding since that night. First in a hotel. Then here. She had changed her phone number. Deleted her social media. Cut every tie to her old life.

She had also thrown up every morning for the past five days.

At first, she thought it was the memory of the drugs. Or stress. Or grief.

Then she realized.

She bought the test at a pharmacy three blocks away, wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap like a fugitive.

Two pink lines.

She stared at them until her eyes burned.

A baby.

But whose?

She tried to remember that night. The blackness. The nothing. She didn't know what Marco had done to her while she was unconscious. She didn't know if the baby was Damien's or Marco's.

The thought made her vomit into the sink.

She could end it. Go to a clinic. Never know. Never have to face the question.

But what if the baby was Damien's?

What if she killed the only piece of him she had left?

She pressed her hands to her flat stomach and wept.

Because she realized something terrible: it didn't matter whose baby it was. Marco would use it either way. If the child was Damien's, Marco would kill it to hurt him. If the child was Marco's, he would take it and raise it and turn it into a weapon.

The only way to protect this baby was to disappear. To let Damien believe the worst. To make sure neither man ever found her.

She would raise this child alone.

She would never know for certain whose it was.

She would love it anyway.

She packed her bag that night.

She left no forwarding address.

She never said goodbye.

And somewhere in the city, Damien Rosso sat in his empty penthouse, surrounded by bottles and broken glass, and told himself he hated her.

Five years later, looking at her daughter's face — Damien's eyes, Damien's stubborn jaw, Damien's crooked smile. Kira finally had her answer.

The baby was his.

And he would never know.