Beg Somewhere Else, Lucas

Sophia's POV

I had booked the private room at Larkin's for the night after our anniversary six weeks ago, back when an anniversary dinner was something to look forward to. Lucas said we were still going.

"Family problems get settled face to face," he told me in the car. "Not behind closed doors."

When the hostess opened the door to the back room, I understood what he meant.

Diane sat at the head of the table. Vanessa was on her right. His uncle Ray and two cousins I'd met maybe four times filled the other chairs, every one of them holding a wineglass and avoiding my eyes. The anniversary bouquet I'd ordered, white peonies and blue hydrangeas, had been moved from the center of the table to sit beside Vanessa's plate.

The linen napkins were embroidered with the Mercer family crest. Diane must have brought them from home.

Inside my purse, my fingers found the ultrasound photo. The glossy paper was cold.

On our wedding day, Lucas had slid the ring onto my finger in front of two hundred people and said, "Nobody will ever make me give up on you." His voice had cracked on "nobody." I'd heard it.

Now he walked around the table and pulled out a chair. It was the one next to Vanessa.

I stayed by the door. "What is this?"

"Sit down, Sophia," Diane said. "We're all family here. Let's stop pretending this is only about you."

I sat in the only empty seat left, across from my husband. Someone had already poured me a glass of red wine. I moved it away.

Vanessa stood before the appetizers came, tapping her glass with a fork. Her hand shook just enough for everyone to notice.

"I wasn't going to come tonight," she said. "Honestly, I wanted to hide. When you find out you'll never carry a baby, other people's happiness is really hard to be around." She pressed her lips together. "But Diane said I belonged here. So I want to thank the people who didn't let me go through this alone."

She took out her phone and turned it toward the table. Ray's wife leaned in and said, "Oh, honey."

It was a selfie in a hospital waiting room. Vanessa was in a paper gown with her head on Lucas's shoulder. He was looking down at her and smiling.

I knew that shirt. It was the gray one I'd ironed.

The date was printed in the corner of the screen. March fourteenth.

My second prenatal appointment. I'd sat alone in the waiting room at Dr. Patel's office while a couple across from me held hands, and my phone had buzzed with his text. Emergency at the office. Can't get away. Sorry, babe.

My fingers closed around the napkin in my lap until the embroidered crest pressed into my palm.

He'd also missed the follow-up after the embryo transfer. A month later the pregnancy books had disappeared from the nightstand, and I'd found them boxed up in the hall closet. He said the clutter bothered him. After that came the late nights, the calls he took on the back porch, the car pulling into the driveway after midnight.

I had thought she needed him now and then. Really, he'd been handing her every hour that belonged to me and our babies, and doing it for months.

"I never wanted to take anything from Sophia," Vanessa finished, her voice wobbling. "I just wish she didn't need to celebrate what I've lost."

Diane reached up and squeezed her wrist. One of the cousins murmured, "That's not fair to you."

I put the napkin on the table.

"Lucas." Everyone went quiet. "You brought me here so your family could watch. Fine. Then say it in front of them. What exactly do you want me to do?"

He didn't hesitate. He reached into his jacket, took out the separation agreement, folded open to the signature page, and set it beside my bread plate. A black pen went on top of it.

"I want you to end the pregnancy," he said. "Like I asked you to last night."

Ray coughed into his fist. Nobody else made a sound.

"She just had surgery, Sophia," Diane said quietly. "Hasn't that poor girl been through enough?"

I opened my purse and took out the photo. The crease from my fist was still in it, a white line running between the two shapes. I laid it flat on the tablecloth and slid it toward him.

"Look at it. Just once, Lucas. Really look."

He didn't pick it up. He put two fingers on the corner and flipped it over, so the blank back faced the ceiling.

"Stop using two babies who aren't even born yet to punish Vanessa."

"Punish her?"

"We can have kids later. I'll give you kids later, when this has all settled down." He glanced at Vanessa, and his voice softened. "She doesn't get a later. Do you understand that? She doesn't get another chance."

I opened my mouth to tell him about the forty-one injections in my stomach. The two retrievals that came back empty. The night I bled through a pair of jeans in the parking garage and he'd carried me upstairs. The whole list was right there on my tongue, everything I'd already paid.

He held the pen out to me.

I closed my mouth. He had been there for most of it. Telling him again wouldn't change a thing.

Halfway down the table, one of the candles guttered and went out. A thin line of smoke curled over the peonies.

"I'll make it simple," Lucas said. "Keep those babies, and you lose me."

I looked at the ring on my finger, the one he'd put there while he promised nobody would ever make him give up on me. It turned out nobody had needed to. He'd managed it himself.

I worked it over my knuckle. It stuck for a second and then came free. I leaned across the table and set it on the napkin in front of him, right on top of the Mercer crest.

"I choose my children."

Diane said my name sharply. I ignored her, turned the ultrasound photo face up, and walked out.

The night air hit me on the sidewalk outside. I made it ten steps before a hand clamped around my wrist and spun me around.

"Don't do this out here," Lucas said through his teeth. A couple walking past glanced at us. "You're embarrassing my mother."

"Your mother set up a tribunal on my anniversary."

"Our anniversary. And you're the one making a scene." His grip got tighter. "If you walk away tonight, don't ever come back."

I looked at his hand on my arm, then at his face.

"Then I won't."

I pulled my wrist free and walked to the curb. The wind caught the photo and bent it back against my fingers, and I held it to my chest so it wouldn't blow away.

In my purse, a phone buzzed. It wasn't my regular one. It was the slim black one with the encryption I hadn't touched in front of Lucas once in five years.

The screen said Aster Capital.

"Graham," I answered.

"Sorry to call this late." Graham Okafor sounded tired, the way he always did after nine. "About tomorrow's approval meeting on the Mercer project. Should I have the vice chair run it again, like the last three times?"

Through the restaurant window I could see the private room. Lucas had gone back in. He was standing over Vanessa's chair.

"Why are you asking me?"

"Because Mercer called the office twice today. He wants the investment terms for the new medical center confirmed early, and he's pushing hard." Graham hesitated. "Madam Chairwoman, Mr. Mercer is demanding a meeting with you tomorrow."

Three years. For three years Lucas had chased Aster's money, rewriting his pitch decks at our kitchen table and coming home sour every time the vice chair sent him back for revisions. He used to say he'd give anything for ten minutes with whoever really ran that fund.

"Tell him I'll be there," I said. "In person."

There was a short silence on the line. "Understood. Nine o'clock."

I hung up.

Through the glass, Lucas took one of the Mercer napkins, my ring still sitting beside it, and gently wiped the tears from Vanessa's face.

Tomorrow at nine, he would walk into the investment boardroom he'd been begging to get into for three years.

He had no idea that the woman waiting for him in the chairman's seat would be the wife he'd just thrown out of his house.