Delphine's design table

heavy, ugly thing, pregnant with financial threat. She didn't touch it. She'd learned not to touch thin

t up,"

lder line blank. She'd carried one for three years, used it for fabric and thread and the occasional coffe

want it,"

at the workshop-Magda's place in SoHo, her only sanctuary-and had storm

ehensible. "You don't want the card. You don't want the apartment. You don'

vor

o Griselda, but saying it to his face felt different. More real. More dangerous.

n of bone and tendon, the heat of his anger transferring directly into her skin. His fingers dug into the bone, int

sumed to sober up for the drive downtown. "You think anyone will hire you? Shelter y

gh her pulse hammered against his grip. "For Griselda's conv

aw something she hadn't expected: not anger, not contempt, but fear. The desperate fear of a man who'd built his life on fo

Richards specifically requested you. Both

ll be dis

"Do you understand? One word from him, and

t my c

rist so suddenly she stumbled. "You're my wife.

of red that would purple by morning. She thought of documenting it, o

e and spoke vows Griselda wrote. It means three years of being invisible in your

he denial died on his lips, too

vide nothing, because I want nothing. Just my name back. Just t

me in years: the boy she'd believed him to be, buried beneath the man he'd become. The kin

an heir,

laughed. A single sound, shocked and genuine. The sheer audacity of the deman

use

she couldn't determine. "The controlling shares transfer on the birth of my first c

d her. She tried again. "You think I wo

selda would-she's always wanted children. She'd be involved, of course, as family. But le

Meredith Hodge, who'd taken her in and taught her that love was always conditional, always transactional. She th

ked up

face, made him almost handsome again, almost

as heavy, substantial, the physical manifestation of ever

bent

applied more pressure, leaning her weight into her hands. The snap was loud in the small room. The card resisted, then yielded, the magnetic strip cracking

the pieces

other found me in. I will never be your broodmare, Braxton. I will never be

have heard, out into the SoHo afternoon. The rain had stopped. The cobblestones glea

didn't turn. She walked until the workshop was behind her, until the street numbers changed, until

ain, and again, Braxton's name appearing and d

she finally le