Chapter 1 - TWELVE DOLLARS
Five days after my C-section, my husband handed me twelve dollars and told me to take a city bus home with our newborn.
Then he climbed into my SUV and drove his mother to lunch.
That was the moment my marriage ended.
Dominic just didn’t know it yet.
I stood beneath the covered entrance of St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan with five-day-old Leo asleep against my chest.
Every breath pulled at the incision across my abdomen.
The November wind cut through my sweater.
“Dominic,” I said quietly. “You seriously expect me to take the bus?”
He barely looked at me.
“My mother has reservations.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“She’s been waiting almost forty minutes.”
He pulled three folded bills from his wallet and pressed them into my palm.
A ten.
Two ones.
Twelve dollars.
Behind him sat the black armored SUV my father had bought for me before the wedding.
Dominic loved that SUV.
More accurately, Dominic loved what people assumed about him when he stepped out of it.
He had slowly started calling it “our car.”
Then “my car.”
Eventually, he stopped asking before taking it.
Victoria appeared through the hospital doors wearing oversized designer sunglasses.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “Are we still standing here?”
“I just had surgery,” I said.
Victoria smiled thinly.
“So did I when I had Dominic.”
Dominic’s sister, Paige, laughed from the back seat.
His father, Richard, looked away.
“I need Leo’s diaper bag,” I said.
Dominic yanked it from the SUV.
Then dropped it at my feet.
I bent instinctively.
Pain tore across my stomach.
I gasped and grabbed the concrete column beside me.
A nurse rushed over.
“Ma’am, stop. Don’t bend like that.”
Dominic sighed.
“Can everyone stop making this dramatic?”
The nurse stared at him.
“She had major abdominal surgery five days ago.”
“She’s fine.”
Something inside me went cold.
Not angry.
Not hurt.
Cold.
I straightened slowly.
“Go to lunch, Dominic.”
His expression softened immediately.
“See? Thank you.”
He kissed the air near my cheek.
Not me.
Then he opened the passenger door for his mother.
I watched my husband drive away in my SUV while his family laughed about something through the tinted windows.
The nurse beside me whispered, “Do you have someone I can call?”
I almost said no.
Because for six years, I had trained myself to believe Dominic was my someone.
Then a city bus pulled up.
The driver lowered the steps when he saw my hospital bracelet.
An elderly woman moved from the first seat.
“Honey, sit here.”
Her kindness nearly broke me.
I sat with Leo against my chest and my diaper bag wedged between my swollen ankles.
Manhattan slid past the glass.
And I stopped making excuses.
My husband had not forgotten I was recovering.
He knew.
He simply didn’t care.
I reached into my handbag and took out a number I had memorized years earlier.
Dad answered on the first ring.
“Audrey?”
“Dad…”
My throat tightened.
“I need help.”
His voice changed instantly.
“Where are you?”
“On a city bus.”
Silence.
“What happened?”
So I told him.
Everything.
When I finished, he asked one question.
“Do you want to go back to him?”
I looked down at Leo.
“No.”
The answer came easily.
“I want out.”
Dad was silent for half a second.
Then he said, “Then you’re out.”
My father was General Charles Brooks.
Four stars.
Decades in uniform.
Dominic believed he was a retired federal administrator.
I had allowed him to believe it because Dad’s name had followed me my entire life.
My father once told me, “Learn who a man is before you tell him who your father is.”
Now I knew exactly who Dominic was.
“Dad,” I whispered. “The SUV is still legally mine?”
“Entirely.”
“And the apartment?”
A pause.
“Your attorney will explain that.”
“My attorney?”
“You’ve had one for eight minutes.”
Despite everything, I almost smiled.
Then Dad’s voice hardened.
“Do not warn Dominic.”
At the next stop, two black civilian sedans waited at the curb.
A woman in a charcoal suit stepped out.
“Mrs. Vale?”
“Brooks,” I corrected.
She nodded.
“Ms. Brooks.”
Inside the vehicle was a newborn car seat.
Blankets.
Water.
Pain medication approved on my discharge paperwork.
My phone buzzed.
DOMINIC:
Mom wants the SUV tomorrow too. Don’t make plans.
Then another message.
And clean up before we get home. Investors may stop by tonight.
I stared at the screen.
The woman beside me glanced toward it.
“Would you like me to take you home?”
“No.”
“Where would you like to go?”
I looked out the window.
“To my father.”
Across town, Dominic Vale was walking into a restaurant believing he had won another small argument.
He had no idea that beside my SUV in the parking garage stood a private attorney, a licensed repossession agent, and a man holding the original vehicle title.
And when Dominic came back from lunch—
May you like
the SUV was gone.
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