Chapter 4
I looked down through a haze of tears. The baby had a tuft of soft brown hair, tiny, perfect fingers that immediately hooked onto my gown, and when her eyes fluttered open, my heart stopped. She looked up at me with striking, unmistakable gray eyes—stormy, piercing, and terrifyingly clear.
**“Emily,”** I whispered through my tears, holding her tiny, fragile body as tightly as I dared against my skin. **“Your name is Emily.”**
When the nurses finally moved me out of the delivery suite two hours later, the contrast in treatment was staggering.
The hospital staff didn't wheel me toward the private wing reserved for high-profile families like the Morettis. Instead, because Vincent had ordered all primary resources, security, and private staff redirected to the upper level, I was pushed down a brightly lit service corridor and placed in an overflow area behind a thin, yellow canvas curtain.
No husband was waiting in the hallway with cigars or champagne. No parents sat in the waiting room with stuffed animals. I was a ghost in my own life.
Over the next few hours, whispered gossip from the nurses filtering through the canvas curtain revealed the full extent of the humiliation.
Sophia had been given the hospital’s top-floor luxury suite—a sprawling four-room complex complete with marble bathrooms, private security guards stationed at every elevator, catered meals, and three pediatric specialists personally flown in from New York, all arranged and paid for by Vincent. She had given birth to a healthy seven-pound boy named Lucas.
I sat in my narrow bed, clutching Emily against my collarbone, watching the shadows shift across the yellow curtain. My mind, once paralyzed by shock, began to harden into something sharp, bright, and cold as diamond. The pain was still there—a crushing weight in my chest—but beneath it, a desperate, fierce survival instinct ignited.
Around noon, I heard heavy, unmistakable footsteps approaching down the hard corridor. The canvas curtain was pushed aside.
Vincent stood there. He was still wearing his suit, though his tie was slightly loosened, his dark hair slightly rumpled. He looked exhausted, but there was a subtle, triumphant puff to his chest—the proud father of a new syndicate prince.
**“Vincent,”** I called weakly from the narrow bed.
He paused, stopping right at the edge of the curtain. He didn't come close to the bed. He didn't look at me.
I gathered the edge of the pink blanket and pulled it back slightly, holding Emily toward him so he could see her face.