THE ROSSETTI HEIRESS HAS STOPPED BEGGING

CHAPTER EIGHT

I was in the front lobby when the memories came.

Not the recent ones. The old ones. The ones that still smelled like my mother’s perfume and my grandfather’s cigars. I stood near the tall windows with my arms wrapped around myself, staring at nothing, and let them take me for a minute.

I used to believe in soft things. My father spinning me around in the garden until I got dizzy. My mother braiding my hair and telling me that one day a man would look at me like I was the only person in the room. My grandfather pressing a kiss to my forehead and saying the Rossetti name meant something, that I would never have to beg for love because the right person would give it freely.

I had walked into this marriage with those stories still living under my skin. I thought patience would turn into affection. I thought a child would soften Arthur. I thought if I just endured long enough, the house would stop feeling like a cage.

I was still standing there, lost in all of it, when the shouting started downstairs.

At first I thought it was another argument. Then I heard the panic. Real panic. The kind that strips the polish off people’s voices.

I moved before I decided to.

The main hall opened up in front of me and everything inside it stopped making sense.

Leo was on the floor.

My son. Small body jerking hard against the marble. Foam at the corners of his mouth. Eyes rolled back so only the whites showed. The nanny and two maids were on their knees around him, one fanning his face with her hands, another calling his name over and over like volume alone could pull him back.

“Leo—”

I didn’t think about the rules. I didn’t think about Arthur or the distance I was supposed to keep. I ran.

Someone tried to step in front of me. I slapped her across the face hard enough that the sound cracked through the hall.

“Get the f**k out of my way.”

I dropped to the floor and hauled my son into my arms. He was burning and freezing at the same time. His little body kept seizing, head tipping back against my shoulder. The foam smeared against my dress.

“Leo. Baby. Look at Mama. Please.”

He didn’t.

I stood with him clutched against my chest and ran for the front doors. The staff shouted behind me. Someone said I couldn’t take him. Someone else said to call Mr. Knight. I didn’t stop. I hit the driveway and the afternoon light and started screaming.

“Help! Someone—please—my son—”

A car slowed. An older man with kind eyes and a soft cardigan leaned out the window, already alarmed.

“Please,” I gasped. “Hospital. He’s—he’s not breathing right—”

He didn’t ask questions. He just pushed the passenger door open and told me to get in.

I held Leo the whole way. Talked to him. Told him stories about the garden and the dinosaurs and how we were going to leave this place. His seizures slowed but he stayed limp and too quiet. By the time we reached the emergency entrance my voice was gone and my arms were shaking.

They took him from me the second we cleared the doors.

I tried to follow into the ward. A nurse blocked me with both hands up.

“You have to wait outside. We’re doing everything we can.”

“He’s three,” I said. “He’s three years old. Please—”

“Ma’am. Outside.”

The door shut.

I paced the corridor until the floor should have worn through. I cried without sound. I pressed my forehead to the wall and prayed to every version of God I had ever half-believed in. I promised things. I bargained. I told Him he could take the rest of me as long as he left my son.

Minutes stretched.

Then the elevator opened and Arthur and Toria stepped out like they had been interrupted in the middle of something pleasant. She was in a designer coat, handbag still on her arm, hair perfect. He looked irritated more than scared.

I didn’t look at them.

Arthur’s voice cut down the hall. “What happened? Is he alright?”

I kept pacing.

Toria tried next, soft and concerned. “Isabella? They said there was an emergency—”

I turned.

Whatever she saw in my face made her stop mid-step. My eyes were swollen and red and empty of everything except the kind of hate that doesn’t need volume.

“What have you been feeding my son?”

Toria blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I said what have you been feeding him.”

She stuttered, already reaching for the tears. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about. He’s been tired, that’s all, I didn’t—”

I laughed. It came out bitter and cracked.

“The doctors said it’s poisoning. Something in his system. Enough of it to hit his nerves and his body like this. So I’m going to ask you one more time, Victoria. What have you been giving my son?”

Her face went pale. The fake tears arrived on schedule. She took a step back.

Arthur moved in front of her immediately, jaw tight, eyes full of the same disgust he always saved for me.

“That’s enough. You’re not going to stand here and throw accusations because you’re falling apart. Toria didn’t do anything.”

I looked at him and felt something inside me finally stop pretending.

“Shut your goddamn mouth.”

His eyes flashed.

“I know my son,” I said, voice shaking but clear. “He doesn’t just collapse. He doesn’t foam at the mouth and seize on the floor because the house is stressful. Someone put something in him. And the only people who have been controlling every meal, every cup, every second he spends away from me… are the two of you.”

Arthur grabbed my arm. Hard. His fingers dug into the bruises that hadn’t healed.

“Watch your mouth. Remember your place. You’re already on thin ice with the divorce. Keep talking like this and you’ll lose what little access you have left.”

I grimaced at the pressure and opened my mouth to answer—

The ward doors burst open with noise.

Panicked voices. Equipment. Someone shouting for more hands. The sharp, urgent sound of people trying to pull a life back from the edge.

My heart dropped through the floor.

I ripped free of Arthur and shoved past him. The door yielded under my shoulder. Inside there were three doctors and a nurse around the bed. My son looked impossibly small under the lights, body motionless, skin the wrong color. One of them was doing compressions. Another was calling out numbers I didn’t understand.

“Leo—”

The scream tore out of me raw.

“Leo. Baby. Please—Leo—”

Hands grabbed me from behind. Nurses. Strong. Pulling.

“You can’t be in here—”

“Don’t you dare die,” I sobbed, fighting them, eyes locked on his still face. “Don’t you dare. You stay. You stay for Mama. Please. Please, baby, open your eyes—”

They dragged me backward. My feet slid on the polished floor. I kept screaming his name until the door shut in my face and the only sound left was the muffled chaos on the other side and my own broken breathing in the hall.

Arthur and Toria stood a few feet away.

Neither of them said a word.

I slid down the wall until I hit the floor, arms empty, the smell of the hospital thick in my throat, and for the first time since the day he was born I understood what real terror felt like.

Not the beatings.

Not the water.

Not the locked rooms.

This.

The possibility that I had already lost him while I was busy surviving everyone else.