Part 1I Traded My Body To Save My Mother

Reid despised me.

For years, the money that kept my mother alive—the chemotherapy, the private nurses—was nothing but a cash-for-sex arrangement, a transaction fueled by his contempt. Ten thousand dollars a night. All because I, a surgical resident, delivered a diagnosis Phoebe—his newest obsession—didn't want to hear: infertility.

My license had been suspended, pending an investigation he instigated, forcing me to rely entirely on his brutal charity. The only thing of value I owned, my grandmother’s wedding ring, was liquidated just to cover my mother’s final surgical consultation. After that, I’d planned to take her away, out of his orbit, out of his sight.

But Reid wanted to prove his devotion to Phoebe. He allowed, even encouraged, her—a ruthless gossip columnist—to leak the sordid details of our marriage. I became the city’s joke, the greedy wife trading her body for rent.

On New Year’s Eve, my mother saw the headlines.

She jumped from the eighth floor of the hospital.

I knelt there on the cold tile, the scent of antiseptic and steel in my nostrils, holding her soft, lifeless body. Her final, whispered breath was the only thing I heard in the room: “Kendall, your father and I didn’t name you to compromise.” I rested my hand on her wrist, feeling the slow, terrible fade of her pulse.

Outside, the Manhattan skyline exploded in fireworks—a brutal, dazzling display of Reid’s lavish, romantic gesture for Phoebe. Everyone was looking up, their phones raised to capture his grand love story. I was looking down, losing the last person in the world who loved me.

The clock struck midnight.

My heart is over him.

* * *

The New York City skyline always hosted fireworks for New Year’s, but Reid’s bespoke display started half an hour before the ball dropped. Everyone in the elite crowd murmured about the cost, the permits he’d pulled, the absolute certainty that Reid Blackwell was truly in love this time.

Just last night, desperate for the five thousand dollars still needed for Mom’s pending surgery, I’d gone to him. He’d humiliated me in a downtown penthouse bar, pointing at the bottle of single malt and sneering, "A thousand dollars a sip, Kendall. Earn it.” Now, for Phoebe, he offered a spectacle with both hands.

Reid’s phone began vibrating repeatedly—a desperate attempt, no doubt, to gloat over his televised romance with Phoebe, who was photographed watching the show from his yacht. My mother's medical debt had always forced my compliance.

I ignored the screen, walking past the waiting room and into the clinic. I located the floor plan and booked a termination appointment in the Family Planning department.

The eighth floor.

I leaned half my body out the narrow window, the frigid December wind snapping around me. It was sobering.

A second later, a hand clamped onto my waist, dragging me back inside. The familiar, expensive aroma of his Cuban cigar flooded my senses.

It was Reid. His face was a mask of fury.

“Are you insane, Kendall? The eighth floor? You think that's high enough?” He shook me. “You’d just end up a quadriplegic mess I’d have to pay to keep alive in some hellhole nursing home!”

He was wrong. The eighth floor was enough.

This was the first time he’d been to the hospital in the three years since Mom was confined to her bed. For a brief, insane moment, I thought maybe a flicker of conscience had brought him here.

Instead, I got an interrogation.

He looked at me with cold certainty. "You tipped off the network about Phoebe, didn't you? Go apologize to her. Now."

My mother's death was less important than his mistress’s job.

I forced a smile, the muscles in my face protesting. “Lost a job? Maybe she had it coming.” The bitter amusement vanished. “If she had the guts to publish trash journalism about my life, she should be ready to face the consequences.”

“What part of the article was a lie, Kendall? Your body, my money—it was a transaction! That’s all it ever was!”

His words—a transaction—made my head swim. The heat of tears pressed behind my eyes. I couldn’t help myself; I needed an answer, the final shard of truth. “Then why... why did you marry me?” I whispered. Even after my family’s company, Crestwood Group, went bankrupt and we were drowning in debt, he had sought me out and proposed marriage.

Reid’s smile was chilling. “To make it legal, Kendall. Anything else would have been soliciting.”

His words were a scalpel, finding the last, desperate sliver of hope in my chest and excising it without anesthesia. He was right. I was the fool who had mistaken a contract for connection.

“Her issue has nothing to do with me,” I stated calmly, refusing to take the blame for the sabotage. Just as I refused to take the blame for his mother.

Mrs. Lin, my mother's former nurse, rushed in, tears streaming down her face, apologizing for her lapse in attention. “Your mother specially made cream stew. She told me to go heat them up. She wanted you two to eat them together, a little New Year’s ‘reunion.’”

The word reunion seemed to snap something in Reid.

The temperature in his eyes dropped to absolute zero. He strode forward and grabbed my throat, his thumb pressing dangerously against my carotid artery.

“Reunion? You get a reunion?” His voice was a low, dangerous growl. “You brought down my mother, my family! And you’re hiding in this hospital for a nice, little goodbye? You should have been the one who died in that kidnapping!”

In the past, I would have dissolved into frantic explanations and tears. But my tears had been spent in the half-hour since I found Mom.

I simply leaned my neck into his grip.

The utter finality, the dead calm in my eyes, must have shocked him. Reid abruptly released me.

“You want to die? I won’t make it that easy, Kendall.” He stepped back, a predatory look in his eyes. “You’ll stay right here, bound to me, and you’ll be miserable.”

I slumped to the ground. He kicked the thermos of cream stew, sending them scattering across the floor.

“Since you won’t apologize,” he said, looking amused, “pick them up and eat them. Or maybe I should tell Mrs. Lin’s daughter that her tuition funding is gone. What’s her major again? Columbia pre-med?”