Years ago, I'd taken a knife meant for Greta when kidnappers had her. The wound damaged something vital. After that, I couldn't... perform the way I used to.
Our first child—conceived through IVF—had made it to seven months.
Then one night, Greta decided to "help" Noel Swanson when he'd been drugged with an aphrodisiac. She spent the night with him. The hemorrhaging that followed forced an emergency termination.
That baby had already formed. A boy.
I'd planned to give him a proper memorial, a place in the ancestral tomb.
But the fortune teller said a child lost before full term at an inauspicious time needed to wait. The timing wasn't right.
So I waited. Over a year.
Throughout this pregnancy, Greta had whispered in my ear countless times that she wanted to give John's name to this bastard child.
I never agreed.
But now, looking at the hopeful light in her eyes, all I could think about was how disgusted I was by her tears back then. How fake they must have been.
I knew Grandma Evelyn would never have chosen this name.
This was Noel's doing. He loved taking everything that was mine, and he'd planted the idea in Greta's ear.