Back home, Ivy shut her bedroom door and opened the vitamin bottle where she’d hidden the medication keeping her pregnancy stable swapped into an unmarked bottle so no one would think twice about it.
Pregnancy alone made her drowsy, and the medication only compounded it.
She drifted off fast, her body running hotter by the minute, her head swimming.
Somewhere at the edge of it, she heard the housekeeper threatening to call a doctor.
“Don’t call anyone.” Ivy couldn’t even force her eyes open, but she caught the woman’s wrist and held on.
“I’m fine.
It’s just my body reacting to the injury.
I’ll be fine after some sleep.”
The family physician answered to the Wolfe family first.
If he examined her and found the pregnancy, or prescribed something that put the baby at risk, it would undo everything she’d been protecting.
The housekeeper couldn’t talk her out of it, agreed out loud, and called Nathaniel the second she left the room.
At that moment, Marcus was relaying the driver’s report to Nathaniel.
“Mrs.
Wolfe seemed alright on the ride home, sir, but a fever after stitches like that wouldn’t be unusual, an infection, maybe.
Are you planning to check on her today?”
As Nathaniel’s assistant, Marcus had seen the whole arc of this marriage unfold Nathaniel drugged and manipulated Julian Sinclair handing over a substitute daughter, the contract that followed all of it.
At first, Marcus had assumed exactly what everyone assumed that Ivy was a Sinclair plant, calculating, angling for a better life through someone else’s marriage.
But three years of watching her work had worn that assumption down to nothing.
She’d been patient with Nathaniel in ways that went far past duty, meticulous in her work, holding his entire life professional and personal together without ever once being thanked for it.
There was one night Marcus still hadn’t forgotten.
Nathaniel, drunk, had made her put on outfit after outfit that had belonged to Wren, forced her to mimic Wren’s phrases and mannerisms, humiliating her outright.
Most people would have broken under something like that.
Ivy had gone along with it, soft-spoken and obedient, clumsily copying a dance Wren used to do and kept dancing even after something in her foot gave out, sweat soaking through her clothes, never once asking him to stop.
He hadn’t let her stop, and she never once complained that he hadn’t.
At the time, Marcus had genuinely thought Nathaniel had crossed a line.
And afterward, once she’d gotten him settled into bed, she hadn’t bothered the family doctor at all; she’d caught a cab to an orthopedic clinic alone and never brought it up again.
Marcus genuinely worried that if Nathaniel didn’t make a real effort to win her back, a woman built like that would never come back on her own, no matter what he offered.
Nathaniel’s gaze snapped up, clearly irritated.
“I sent a driver for her.
She didn’t say anything?”
Marcus shook his head, thinking privately: what exactly did you expect a car ride to fix?
Words that sharp don’t get smoothed over with a driver.
Nathaniel’s mood soured further.
Ivy had made her decision she was going to treat him like a stranger from here on, with zero interest in closing that distance.
The housekeeper’s number lit up on the office phone.
The moment Nathaniel heard “fever,” his response came out clipped and cold.
“If she has a fever, she should see a doctor.
I’m not one.
Why call me?
She’s made it clear she doesn’t want my concern.”
Marcus sighed internally.
How is a man running a company this large still this stubborn about something this simple.
Watching Nathaniel hang up without a flicker of feeling, Marcus wisely dropped it.
“Sir, there’s a two-hour international call scheduled for noon.
You’ll likely miss lunch.
Should I grab you something first?”
Before she’d even finished speaking, Chloe swept into the office like she’d been listening at the door.
“Nathaniel, you barely ate this morning.
I already ordered us a table at The Magnolia Room.
Let’s go together.”
Marcus’s mouth twisted with distaste.
The Magnolia Room was one of the city’s most famous date spots.
Chloe showing up here, this publicly, with a still-married man, wasn’t subtle; it read like a direct broadcast of their relationship, and more than a little retaliation for yesterday’s humiliation.
Her intentions are about as subtle as a marching band.
She swears up and down she’s not competing with Ivy for him, and yet here we are again.
The performance is thick enough to choke on.
“Marcus, get the car ready.” Nathaniel grabbed his jacket and headed for the door.
Chloe lit up, thrilled he’d agreed so easily.
Today she’d deliberately styled herself after the version of Wren everyone talked about from her younger years.
Rumor had it Wren wore something almost identical on her first date with Nathaniel and, predictably, it worked exactly as intended.
“Nathaniel, do you like what I’m wearing today?” Chloe slid her arm toward his, but before she could even make contact, he stopped cold and looked at her, expression flat.
“Why are you dressed like this for work?”
Chloe hadn’t expected the callback to backfire this badly, and faltered.
“I”
“Focus on your job.
Stop overthinking things.” He checked the time, uninterested in dragging this out further, and headed straight for the elevator.
Chloe chased after him down to the lobby just in time to hear him tell Marcus, “Back to the estate.”
Her hands curled into fists, jaw tightening.
Ivy’s using her old tricks to pull him right back.
Has to be.
Unbelievable.
At the Wolfe estate.
Ivy surfaced from the fever just enough to notice how much she was sweating before slipping under again.
Her mouth felt scorched, cracked dry.
“Water…”
Someone brought water to her lips, then medicine.
Somewhere in the fog, instinct kicked in.
Pregnant women didn’t take random medication and she shook her head weakly, batting at the hand holding it.
“No medicine.
It’s bitter.
I’m not sick.”
Before Nathaniel could react, the fever reducer spilled across the sheets, knocked loose by her flailing hand.
He frowned down at her, at the stubborn set of her face even half-conscious, and could practically hear the argument she’d have put up if she were fully awake.
I never realized she had this side to her.
She barely flinched, getting stitched without anesthesia.
Why is this what finally rattles her?
He’d genuinely never noticed it before.
Ivy had always seemed immune to everything in front of him, rarely sick, endlessly tolerant, absorbing whatever came her way without ever bringing her complaints to him.
Soft on the surface, and somehow completely unbreakable underneath it.
A phone buzzed sharply nearby, snapping him out of it.
He rose instinctively and stepped a few paces from the bed.
If she wakes up and finds me here, she’ll assume I can’t let go.
That’s not what this is.
I just didn’t want her making things worse for herself, alone in this house.
Ivy never registered that he’d stepped away at all.
She surfaced again, hazy, reached blindly for her phone, and answered without checking the screen, accidentally hitting the speaker in the process.
A warm, familiar male voice came through.
“Vee, when are you finally moving in?
Just come stay with me.
I promise you won’t lose out on anything, and nobody’s going to take advantage of you here.”
Nathaniel froze mid-step, his expression turning to stone.
“Moving in?
With who?” He crossed the room and pulled the phone from her hand.
“No wonder you’ve been so desperate to put distance between us like my touch might kill you.
Is there someone else?
Old flame or new one?”
He’d never bothered looking into Ivy’s life before the Sinclairs never cared enough to.
He hadn’t cared about the Sinclair family at all, let alone whatever life a stand-in like her had lived before this one.
But thinking about it now she was beautiful, sharp, capable.
Of course she’d had people interested in her.
It wasn’t hard to believe there were a few names in her past worth mentioning.
Still, the thought of her rushing toward someone else, wanting to move in with him, offering that same quiet devotion to another man that she’d once given him, something in him wanted to break every bone in her body just to keep her from walking out that door.