The Other Woman’s Appointment
Chapter 03 - The Other Woman’s Appointment
The next morning, Dominic came to the hospital with flowers.
White roses.
The kind men buy when they want witnesses to think they are sorry.
He wore a charcoal suit, no tie, hair damp from a shower, face carefully unshaven. He looked like a grieving husband in a pharmaceutical commercial.
Sophia had warned security.
Dr. Reed had warned the nurses.
I had warned myself.
Still, when Dominic appeared in the doorway holding those roses, some foolish part of my body remembered loving him. It remembered his hand on my lower back at my father’s funeral. It remembered dancing barefoot in the kitchen our first Christmas. It remembered the first time he called me “home.”
Memory is cruel because it keeps the good parts even after the bad ones explain them.
His eyes moved over the bruise on my face, the bandage on my arm, the empty place where my ring had been.
Then he looked at the ultrasound image on my tray.
For half a second, I thought he might break.
He did not.
He performed breaking instead.
“Audrey,” he whispered.
The nurse behind him said, “You have five minutes.”
Dominic gave her the wounded look that usually worked on women over fifty.
She looked at him like she had raised sons and knew better.
He stepped inside.
“I didn’t know.”
I said nothing.
“I swear to you. I didn’t know about the pregnancy.”
“You knew about the fall.”
He swallowed.
“I thought you were being dramatic.”
It was almost impressive, how fast cruelty could put on a sweater and call itself misunderstanding.
“You left me on the floor,” I said.
“I came back.”
“No. Mrs. Alvarez came back.”
He looked away.
The white roses trembled slightly in his hand.
“I panicked.”
“You packed.”
His eyes snapped back to me.
That one landed.
He placed the flowers on the windowsill because there was nowhere else to put them. A visitor from another life.
“I know you’re angry,” he said.
“I’m not angry.”
He exhaled like that relieved him.
“I’m done.”
His face changed.
There it was. Not grief. Not remorse. Fear.
“Audrey, don’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“Destroy us because of one terrible night.”
I looked at him for a long moment.
“One terrible night?”
His jaw tightened.
The mask slipped.
“I have protected you for years,” he said quietly. “Do you know what people would say if they knew I couldn’t father a child?”
I almost pitied him.
Almost.
“They would say you were infertile.”
“They would laugh.”
“At you?”
“At us.”
“No,” I said. “At you.”
The room chilled.
Dominic leaned closer.
“You think that company is yours because your father left you shares. But I built the relationships. I made people trust the Sterling name.”
“The Sterling name was mine before it was yours.”
His mouth twisted.
That was another thing I had ignored.
How much he hated that.
His last name was Sterling too, by coincidence, but mine carried buildings, clinics, old contracts, my father’s reputation. Dominic liked pretending he married into love and accidentally found influence.
The truth was less flattering.
He had pursued me after learning exactly who I was.
A knock sounded.
Sophia stepped in without waiting.
Behind her stood Dr. Reed and a hospital administrator.
Dominic straightened.
“Is this necessary?”
“Yes,” Sophia said.
She carried a folder.
Dominic stared at it.
I had come to learn that guilty men watch folders the way prey watch shadows.
Sophia turned to me. “Paige Marlow is downstairs.”
The room shifted.
Dominic’s face went flat.
“Why?”
“She has an appointment in the fertility clinic.”
His silence answered before he did.
Dr. Reed’s eyes narrowed slightly.
I looked from Dominic to Sophia.
“Paige is pregnant?”
Dominic said, “This is not relevant.”
Sophia smiled without warmth.
“Paige believes it is.”
For the first time since he entered, Dominic looked truly scared.
He stepped toward the door.
The administrator blocked him politely.
“Mr. Sterling, security has been informed you are not to access the fertility clinic without written clearance.”
Dominic’s voice dropped. “She is my employee.”
Sophia said, “And apparently your fiancée.”
The word hit me oddly.
Fiancée.
So the little white box in the photo was what I thought.
Dominic had brought a woman a ring on the same night I lost a child.
There are facts that should make you scream.
Instead, they make the room go very still.
“Let her up,” I said.
Dominic spun toward me. “Absolutely not.”
I looked at the nurse.
“Please ask Ms. Marlow if she would like to come here.”
Dominic moved so fast Dr. Reed stepped between us.
“Don’t,” Dr. Reed said.
One word.
Dominic stopped.
Maybe it was the doctor’s height.
Maybe it was the fact that for once, another man did not admire him.
Five minutes later, Paige walked into my hospital room.
She was smaller than she looked in photos. Pretty in a polished way, with glossy brown hair, a cream coat, and careful makeup around eyes that had been crying.
She was not wearing the ring.
She held it in her hand.
A square diamond in a white gold setting.
My insurance account had probably paid for it.
Paige looked at me and then at the floor.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
I did not accept it.
I did not reject it.
I waited.
Sophia closed the door.
Dominic said, “Paige, don’t say anything.”
Paige laughed once, bitter and small.
“That’s all you ever say.”
He reached for her arm.
She stepped away.
Good for her, I thought, and hated that I thought it.
Paige looked at Dr. Reed. “You said Dominic’s records show he can’t have children?”
Dr. Reed did not answer until I nodded.
“Yes.”
Paige pressed the ring into her palm so hard her knuckles whitened.
“He told me you were the problem,” she said to me.
Of course he did.
“He told me he and Audrey never had a child because she refused treatment. He said he wanted a real family.”
The word real landed like a slap.
My baby, wanted quietly and lost quietly, was real.
My grief was real.
My marriage, even at its worst, had been real to me.
Dominic raised his hands. “Paige, you’re upset.”
She turned on him.
“I’m twelve weeks pregnant.”
The room went silent.
Then Sophia said, very softly, “That is interesting.”
Dominic’s face emptied.
“You told me it was mine,” he said.
Paige looked at him like she finally understood the shape of the trap because it had closed on her too.
“You told me it had to be.”
“Whose is it?” he demanded.
Her face changed.
There it was.
The next secret.
Paige did not answer.
Sophia stepped forward. “Ms. Marlow, did Dominic offer you money from Audrey’s holding company?”
Paige’s eyes filled.
“He said he was leaving her. He said the accounts were basically his. He said once the baby was born, his mother would help make sure Audrey couldn’t interfere.”
Dominic whispered, “Stop.”
Paige looked at me.
“He said you were fragile. Cold. That you didn’t even want children.”
I reached for the ultrasound image.
My fingers touched the edge.
Paige saw it.
And for the first time, she looked ashamed in a way I believed.
“I didn’t know,” she said.
I was tired of that sentence.
But I also knew something terrible and useful.
Dominic had not fooled only me.
He had fooled women in different rooms by telling each of us the other was less human.
Sophia asked Paige one question.
“Do you have messages?”
Paige nodded.
Dominic sat down in the visitor chair as if his legs had stopped trusting him.
Paige unlocked her phone and handed it to Sophia.
While Sophia read, Dr. Reed checked my monitor because apparently betrayal affected heart rate.
Then Sophia stopped scrolling.
Her face sharpened.
“Dominic,” she said, “why did your mother send Paige a list of phrases to use in a future custody statement?”
Dominic closed his eyes.
Paige whispered, “Custody statement?”
Sophia read aloud.
Audrey is emotionally detached.
Audrey resented the donor process.
Audrey spoke of feeling trapped.
Audrey may have staged the fall for attention.
The last line made Dr. Reed turn completely still.
Paige shook her head. “No. I never said that. She wrote that.”
Dominic did not deny it.
Sophia looked at me.
“This started before the fall.”
I looked at Dominic.
He had brought flowers to a crime scene and expected applause.
“What were you planning?” I asked.
He stared at the floor.
Paige answered instead.
“He was planning to announce my pregnancy at his mother’s birthday dinner.”
I almost laughed.
Marianne Sterling’s birthday was in two days.
A family dinner at the club.
Silver candles.
White flowers.
The Sterling portrait on the wall.
And Dominic, with Paige at his side, announcing the baby he could not possibly have fathered while painting me as unstable, barren, and inconvenient.
My lost child had not been part of his plan.
My survival had not been either.
Then Sophia’s phone buzzed.
She read the message and looked at me.
“Marianne just filed an emergency motion.”
“For what?”
Sophia’s mouth became a thin line.
“To have Dominic appointed temporary guardian over you.”
Paige covered her mouth.
Dominic stood.
I looked at my husband, the man with white roses and no shame left to wear.
May you like
Then I looked at Sophia.
“Let her try.”
