Reborn With His Baby: The Billionaire Will Beg This Time

"Mommy, what does chocolate cake taste like?"

The little boy's voice crackled out of the phone, small and hopeful, the way it always was.

"Grandma Constance showed me a picture. Daddy bought Theo a big chocolate cake, and Daddy was laughing the whole time. Can Daddy eat cake with me too? Just one time? For my birthday?"

Then a woman's voice, soft and bright and full of lies. "Daddy's very busy, baby. But I'll talk to him. I promise."

"Pinky promise? If you break it, you turn into a puppy."

"Pinky promise, Noel."

Ivy Hart pressed play again.

And again.

Snow fell from a black sky over Raven Point. Far below the cliff, the waters of Puget Sound smashed against the rocks, and the wind tore through her thin hospital gown as if it wanted to rip what was left of her apart.

Behind her, the whole of Seattle was lighting up with Christmas Eve fireworks.

Tonight was Noel's sixth birthday.

There was no chocolate cake. There was no Daddy laughing.

There was only a small black box in Ivy's arms, and her son was inside it.

He never got a single birthday with his father. Not one. Not even at the end.

Blood dripped onto the lid of the urn. One drop. Then another. Then too many to count. The cuts on her wrists were deep. She had made sure of that. She had maybe ten minutes before her body gave out.

That was all right. Ten minutes was enough.

"Wait for me, Noel," she whispered. "Mommy's coming."

Headlights tore across the snow.

A black Maybach rolled to a stop fifty feet away. The rear window slid down, and in the soft glow of the interior light, Ivy saw him.

Dominic Pierce.

The most powerful man in Seattle. The man who had owned her for six years.

The father of her son.

Beside him, wrapped in a cashmere coat over her own hospital gown, sat Ivy's stepsister, Celeste Shaw. Celeste's eyes were red. They were always red when Dominic was watching.

"Dom," Celeste whimpered, "she's not stable. What if she does something to Theo? What if-" She broke off into a delicate, perfectly timed cough.

Theo. Celeste's son. The Pierce heir that all of Seattle knew about, born one week after Noel, photographed at charity galas on his father's knee. While Noel grew up hidden in a back bedroom like a dirty secret, Theo got the birthday parties, the chocolate cake, the father who laughed.

"She won't," Dominic said.

He didn't even look at Celeste when he said it. He was looking at Ivy.

His assistant, Miles, opened the rear door, and Dominic helped Celeste out of the car as if she were made of glass. They walked through the snow together. His arm around her waist. Her head on his shoulder.

The perfect family.

"Stop right there!" Ivy screamed.

They stopped.

Ivy looked at Celeste. "Your son is wearing my son's eyes."

Celeste flinched behind Dominic's shoulder. "Ivy, please, I know you're grieving, but Theo needed that transplant, the doctors said-"

"I authorized it," Dominic cut in, cold and flat. "Noel's corneas went to Theo on my order. Celeste had nothing to do with it."

Ivy had known. Of course she had known.

But hearing him say it out loud, in that bored, steady voice, as if he were signing off on a merger, felt like a knife twisting under her ribs.

"He was six years old, Dominic! He was SIX!"

"The police ruled it an accidental drowning," he said. "That's the truth, Ivy. You have to accept it."

"Accidental?" She laughed. The wind whipped her hair back, and his eyes dropped to the left side of her face.

To the scar.

Five inches long, jagged, ugly. He'd put it there himself three years ago, with a letter opener, because she had tried to run.

"Your mother killed my father," he said. The old words. The old poison. "You owed my family a life. Now your son is gone. Consider the debt paid. Come away from the edge. I'll give you money. You can leave Seattle and start over."

A life for a life.

That was all Noel had ever been to him. A payment.

"Did you watch the file I sent you?" Ivy asked.

Something flickered across his face. "What file?"

"The one with sixty-three minutes of video. Your golden boy, Theo, making my son crawl on the floor like a dog while the staff laughed. Theo sitting on his back. The nanny slapping him when Theo fell and cried." Her voice cracked into pieces. "Noel kept saying sorry. He kept saying he'd be good. He was the one getting hurt, and he kept saying sorry."

Celeste went white.

Dominic turned his head, very slowly, and looked at her.

For one second, just one, Ivy thought he might actually see it. See Celeste for what she was.

"Don't listen to her, Dom!" Celeste grabbed his sleeve. "She's crazy, she'll say anything-"

Ivy raised her right hand. Clutched in her bloody fingers was a small black remote with a single red button.

"Theo's at Children's Hospital tonight, isn't he?" Her voice was eerily calm. "Room 412. Recovering from his surgery. There's a bomb taped under his bed."

Celeste's scream split the night.

"Watch the file, Dominic," Ivy said. "Right here. Right now. Watch every minute of what they did to our son. Or I press this, and Theo goes to keep Noel company."

"Ivy." For the first time in six years, Dominic's voice wasn't steady. "Put it down."

"Watch it!"

"She's going to do it!" Celeste shrieked toward the trees. "Shoot her! She's going to kill my baby!"

There was no bomb.

There had never been a bomb. The thing in Ivy's hand was the remote control for Noel's toy fire truck, and she had been holding it for three days because she couldn't make herself let go. She could never hurt a child. Not even that one. She had only wanted Dominic Pierce to feel, for one single minute, what it was like to stand there helpless while your son died.

She opened her mouth to tell him so.

The shot came out of the dark.

It punched through her chest, and the world went white and silent. The remote slipped from her fingers and skittered across the bloody snow. Men in black tactical gear poured out of the trees.

"IVY!"

Dominic was running. Dominic Pierce, who never ran for anything, who never raised his voice, was running toward her, shoving Celeste away so hard she fell into the snow.

Two officers caught him by the arms a foot from the edge.

His hand was reaching for her.

It was the first time in six years he had ever reached for her.

Too late.

Ivy wrapped both arms around her son and let herself fall backward into the night.

Snow brushed her cheeks like tiny kisses. Somewhere far away, a child was singing, off-key and sweet.

"Mommy, don't be scared. I'm right here."

Noel. Her Noel, with his gap-toothed smile, holding out his hand.

She smiled and took it.

The ocean swallowed her whole.

If I get another life, baby, she prayed, I'll protect you. I'll burn the whole world down before I let anyone hurt you again.

Black.

Cold.

Then pounding.

"Miss Hart! Miss Hart, open this door right now!"

Light stabbed into her eyes. Her ears rang.

She was standing in a bathroom. White marble. Gold fixtures. A woman stared back at her from the mirror, pale and wet-eyed.

Her own face. No scar.

Ivy looked down.

In her hand was a pregnancy test.

Two pink lines.

Ivy Hart had died on Christmas Eve, on a cliff, six years in the future.

And she had just woken up on the morning she found out she was pregnant with Noel.