Chapter 2
The woman stayed for 47 minutes.
Iris knew because she had learned not to look at clocks when pain was involved, and yet somehow, time always announced itself anyway. It ticked in the pipes, hummed through the refrigerator, crawled across the window in strips of late-afternoon sunlight.
At exactly 4:47, the woman came down the stairs.
Her lipstick was still perfect.
That, more than anything, made Iris frown.
Women who left Nicholas Valmont’s bedroom usually came down with loose hair, flushed skin, a lazy smile they did not bother hiding. This woman looked as polished as when she had arrived, except her mouth had tightened into a thin red line and her eyes carried something Iris had not expected.
Fear.
She paused near the front door and turned back toward the staircase.
“You’re a selfish bastard, Nicholas,” she called, her voice sharp enough to cut crystal. “Even dying, you still think the world should rearrange itself around you.”
Iris froze.
The woman’s gaze snapped toward her. For one terrible second, they stared at each other.
Then the woman laughed.
Not kindly.
“Oh,” she said. “You didn’t know.”
Iris’s fingers tightened around the dish towel in her hands.
The woman’s expression shifted into something almost pitying, but too cruel to be real.
“Of course he didn’t tell the help.”
The door slammed behind her.
The sound rolled through the mansion like thunder.
For several seconds, Iris did not move. The word had already entered the room and was now sitting in the middle of it, undeniable and obscene.
Dying.
She looked toward the stairs.
The house was silent.
Too silent.
She climbed slowly, one hand on the polished banister, feeling the same strange dread she used to feel as a child when entering rooms where adults had been whispering. At the top of the stairs, the corridor stretched long and pale before her, every door closed except one.
Nicholas’s study.
A sliver of amber light spilled onto the carpet.
Iris approached and stopped outside.
Inside, she heard glass break.
Not fall.
Break.
“Mr. Valmont?”
No answer.
She pushed the door open.
Nicholas stood by the bar cart with one hand braced against the wall, his shoulders rising and falling as if breathing had become a negotiation. A shattered tumbler glittered near his feet. Whiskey stained the white rug in a spreading amber wound.
He did not look at her.
“Leave it,” he said.
His voice was wrong.
Iris stepped inside anyway. “You’re bleeding.”
A thin red line marked the side of his palm where the glass had caught him. He glanced at it as if it belonged to someone else.
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.”
“I said leave it.”
The anger came fast, but it had no heat. It was a ruined thing, a guard dog too tired to stand.
Iris ignored it.
She went to the bathroom adjoining the study, pulled the first-aid kit from the cabinet, and returned. Nicholas had sunk into the leather chair behind the desk, one hand pressed to his eyes.
On the desk lay a folder.
University of Chicago Hospital.
This one was open.
Iris saw only a few words before she looked away.
Progression. Malignant. Limited response.
Nicholas noticed.
A humorless smile crossed his face. “Well. That saves me a conversation.”
Iris stood very still with the first-aid kit in her hands.
“How long?” she asked.
He laughed once, softly, bitterly. “You go straight for the hardest question.”
“You always taught people not to waste your time.”
“That sounds like something I’d say when I was insufferable.”
“When?”
The faint smile disappeared.
Nicholas looked toward the window. Chicago burned gold beyond the glass, the city alive and indifferent.
“Six months,” he said. “Maybe less. Maybe more if I let them turn me into a science project.”
The kit slipped in Iris’s hands. She caught it before it fell.
“No.”
He looked at her then.
It was a small word. A childish word. A word with no power against hospitals, sealed envelopes, tumors, specialists, and the quiet collapse of a body that had once seemed untouchable. But it was the only word Iris had.
“No,” she said again, as if repeating it might make it true.
Nicholas leaned back, exhausted. “Iris.”
“You’re 29.”
“I noticed.”
May you like
“You have doctors. You have money. You have—”
“Everything,” he finished. “Yes. That’s what everyone keeps saying. As if money can bribe cells into obedience.”
