POV Caroline
The Calloway-owned apartment is beautiful and cold.
Marble floors that echo with every step. Floor-to-ceiling windows that frame the city like a painting no one asked for. Crown moldings and recessed lighting and furniture that costs more than most people's annual salaries, all arranged with the precision of a museum exhibit.
A gilded cage with excellent security and James Calloway in the penthouse above.
I unpack Will's letters first.
They live in a wooden box I've carried from Vienna to New York to this sterile monument to wealth, and I set them on the nightstand like a talisman against the cold. His handwriting fills page after page—looping and careless, the opposite of our mother's rigid script.
Caro, you won't believe what happened at the board meeting today...
Caro, I found this restaurant in the Village that serves the pasta you loved in Rome...
Caro, hold on. I'm working on something. By spring, everything changes.
I trace the ink with my fingertip, and for a moment, he's here. Not dead. Not buried in frozen ground while I'm being traded to the family of the woman who killed him. Just my brother, writing letters because he knew I needed proof that someone remembered I existed.
The last letter is tucked into his favorite book—a battered copy of The Great Gatsby he'd stolen from our father's library when we were twelve. I flip through the pages, expecting nothing, and a business card falls into my lap.
Dominic Bates, Attorney at Law.
Not the family's firm. Not Hartley & Associates, who have handled Ellsworth legal matters for three generations. Someone else entirely, with a Manhattan address and a handwritten note on the back in Will's script: For Caroline. When the time is right.
I stare at the card until the letters blur.
What were you planning, Will? What did you find?
The questions have no answers, and I tuck the card into my wallet beside the pregnancy test receipt I haven't been able to throw away.
One crisis at a time.
I pick up my phone and dial the number I found this morning—Dr. Ruth Stein's office, recommended by the internet's endless chorus of anonymous women navigating the same impossible choice.
"Women's Health Associates, how may I help you?"
"I need to schedule an appointment. For a termination."
The words come out steady. Clinical. Like I'm ordering lunch instead of ending a pregnancy I never asked for.
"Of course. We have an opening tomorrow morning at nine AM. Can you arrive fifteen minutes early with valid identification?"
"Yes. Tomorrow at nine."
"Perfect. We'll see you then, Ms...?"
"Smith," I say, because Ellsworth would trigger questions I can't answer. "Jane Smith."
She doesn't press. Perhaps she's heard a thousand fake names from women who need anonymity more than honesty.
I end the call and set the phone on the counter, feeling something unknot in my chest.
Tomorrow. Nine AM. The decision feels right—clean and final, the only thing in my life I can control. No Calloway merger. No mother's manipulation. No stranger's child growing inside me without my consent.
Just a choice that belongs to me alone.
I fall asleep with Will's letters on my pillow and wake to my phone shrieking at seven AM.
"Caroline." My mother's voice carries the particular edge that means she's already had her morning drink. "The Calloway board wants to meet you at eleven. Edward called personally to arrange it."
"I have a medical appointment this morning. I can't—"
"Reschedule. This is your future we're discussing, not some routine checkup."
"Mother, I really can't move this particular—"
"I don't recall asking for your opinion." Ice crystallizes in her tone. "You will be at Calloway headquarters at eleven o'clock, dressed appropriately, prepared to charm a room full of executives who will determine whether this merger proceeds. Your medical concerns can wait."
The line goes dead.
I call Dr. Stein's office with shaking hands.
"I need to reschedule my appointment. Something came up."
"I understand. Our next available opening is..." Papers shuffle. Keys click. "Three weeks from today. March seventh at ten AM. Will that work?"
Three weeks.
Twenty-one more days of carrying something I've already decided not to keep.
"That's fine," I manage. "Thank you."
I set the phone down and press my palms flat against the cold marble counter.
Even this—the most private decision a woman can make about her own body—is being stolen by circumstances I didn't create. My mother's ambition. The Calloway board's schedule. The merger that matters more than anything I might want or need.
I am so tired of being rearranged.
The building has a private gym on the third floor—another amenity of this beautiful prison. I go there because I need to move, to burn off the rage building in my chest before it consumes me entirely.
The elevator opens onto polished hardwood and floor-to-ceiling mirrors. State-of-the-art equipment lines the walls, and the space is empty except for one person.
James Calloway runs on a treadmill near the windows, his back to me.
His shirt is damp with sweat, clinging to the muscles of his shoulders and spine. Every movement is controlled, precise, the rhythm of a man who punishes his body the way others might punish their enemies. I watch the flex and release of his back, the steady pump of his arms, and I remember how those arms felt wrapped around me in a dark hotel room.
I should leave. Turn around, take the elevator back to my gilded cage, pretend I never saw him.
Instead, I stand frozen in the doorway, watching for a moment too long.
He catches my reflection in the mirror.
His stride doesn't falter. His pace doesn't change. But his eyes lock onto mine in the glass, dark and knowing, and neither of us looks away.
The treadmill whirs. My heart pounds. The mirror holds us both suspended in a moment that stretches like taffy, impossible to break.
"Enjoying the view?" His voice carries through the empty gym, low and rough from exertion.
Heat climbs my throat—anger, I tell myself. Only anger. Nothing else could explain the flush spreading across my skin or the way my pulse stutters at the sound of his voice.
"I was looking for the pool," I lie.
James hits a button, and the treadmill slows to a stop. He turns to face me fully, chest rising and falling, sweat gleaming on his collarbone. His smile is sharp enough to cut.
"The pool is on the fifth floor." He reaches for a towel, dragging it across his neck without breaking eye contact. "But you knew that already, didn't you, Miss Ellsworth?"
I don't answer. I can't answer, because he's right, and we both know it.
His smile widens, and something dangerous flickers in those dark eyes.
"I'll see you at the board meeting," he says. "Try not to get lost on your way there."
He walks past me toward the elevator, close enough that I catch his scent—sweat and cedar and something underneath that makes my stomach clench with a hunger I refuse to name.
The doors close behind him, and I stand alone in the empty gym, my reflection staring back at me from a dozen mirrors.
Anger, I tell myself again.
But my racing pulse tells a different story.