My Husband Left Me Dying for Her. I Made Him Regret It novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Room Six

The baby's heartbeat holds, the stranger turns out to be a federal forensic accountant, and someone calls the hospital asking if the pregnancy survived.

The heartbeat came out of the machine.

It was fast and small and stubborn.

"One hundred sixty," the doctor said. "That's a strong number."

I stared at the gray smudge on the screen until it swam.

"The bleeding came from behind the sac," she said. "It may settle on its own."

"May."

"You were hit by a car last night, Ms. Fiore. May is a very good word this morning."

She wiped the gel off my stomach, left me a printout, and went to see someone sicker.

The door said six. The window looked onto a parking lot full of gulls.

I had seven stitches above my left ear and a hip the color of an eggplant.

Both my feet were wrapped in gauze from the gravel.

A man was asleep in the plastic chair by the window.

His long legs were folded under him and his glasses were pushed up into his hair.

The front of his white shirt was stiff and brown.

My blood.

Nobody from Todt Hill had come.

The man woke all at once, already apologizing.

"Sorry. They said I could stay if I didn't touch anything." He found his glasses on the second try. "Is it...?"

"Still there."

His whole body sagged with relief.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. Good."

"You look worse than I do."

"You have stitches in your head. That's a low bar, and I'm still under it."

He held out a paper bag from the gift shop.

Inside was a pair of fuzzy socks with cartoon dachshunds on them.

"Your feet," he said. "They only had dogs or sharks. Sharks felt hostile."

I put them on over the gauze. It took a long time and he didn't help, which I liked.

"You hit me with your car," I said.

"I did. I'm sorry." He rubbed his face. "I gave the officer my license, my statement and my dashcam. I was doing twenty. You walked out of the dark in a white nightgown."

"And you stopped."

"I'm told that's the minimum."

I looked at the gulls for a while.

"Did an ambulance come? Before you put me in your car?"

He hesitated.

"I asked dispatch on the drive. Mine was the only call they got."

I'll call you an ambulance.

Silvio had said it with his hand in my hair.

I folded the printout in half, then in half again.

"You said something last night," I said. "In the rain. About a wall."

He winced.

"That was a terrible thing to say to a woman lying in a puddle."

"So say it better."

He took a flat leather wallet out of his back pocket and opened it on the blanket.

It was a federal ID for Aaron Mathers, forensic accountant.

The U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan.

"I've worked the Castellucci file for four years," he said. "I have a wall in my office with every company on it. Eleven restaurants. A linen supply. A concrete plant. Your photo's in the middle, from the Holdings annual report."

"Why the middle?"

"Because every line runs through you." He pushed his glasses up. "Your books are the cleanest I've ever seen. I've spent four years failing to find one thing wrong with them."

"There's nothing wrong with them."

"That's what's wrong with them."

It almost made me laugh. It pulled my stitches.

"What were you doing on that road at one in the morning?"

"Watching the wedding convoy leave." He didn't look away. "Off the clock. I wanted to see who rode in which car."

"And then you hit the boss's wife."

"Then I hit a woman in a nightgown. I didn't know who you were until I saw your face."

The heartbeat was still in my ears.

Hooves on a wood floor.

"I know what you could do with me," I said. "A wife thrown out in the rain. Bleeding. Angry."

"I'm not going to do it."

"Everyone in your job would."

"Then they can hit you with their own cars." He closed the wallet. "Nothing you say in this room goes anywhere. Not one word gets used unless you hand it to me yourself. That's a promise."

"I haven't said a word."

"Then it's an easy one to keep."

I looked at him for a long time.

The rumpled hair. The ruined shirt.

The socks with dogs on them at the end of my bed.

"Go home, Mr. Mathers," I said. "Change your shirt."

He stood up slowly.

He put a card on the tray table beside the water jug.

"My cell is on the back. I paid for the room. Don't argue with the billing office, they're scarier than your husband."

"He's not my husband."

"No," he said at the door. "He isn't."

Then he was gone, and the room was very quiet.

My phone buzzed on the tray.

Silvio.

A single red heart.

Then a second message under it.

"You done being dramatic? Arianna had the best birthday of her life. Come home tomorrow and we'll talk."

I read it twice.

I turned the phone face down beside Aaron Mathers's card.

The nurse came in to take my blood pressure, a big woman with reading glasses on a chain.

She wrapped the cuff around my arm and pumped.

"Your numbers are fine, hon." She frowned at the dial. "Funny thing, though."

"What?"

"A woman called the desk at six this morning. Asked whether your pregnancy survived the accident." She let the air hiss out. "She said she was family."

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