My Husband Gave My Mother’s House to His Mistress

They move me to the wine cellar. The air smells like fermentation and old stone. Marcus and another man I don't recognize strap me to a metal table that wasn't here yesterday. Ivan must have had it brought in while I was sewing Kira's dress.

Dr. Reeves arrives with a black medical bag. He's the kind of doctor who lost his license years ago, the kind who asks no questions as long as the cash is good. His hands shake as he unpacks scalpels and clamps.

"You sure about this?" He glances at Ivan. "I've never seen anything like—"

"Just cut it out." Ivan stands in the corner, arms crossed. The Pearl sits in a velvet jewelry box on the shelf beside him, already prepared for Kira. "She'll be fine. She's tougher than she looks."

I try to sign—please, you're killing me, this will kill me—but the straps hold my wrists flat against cold metal.

Dr. Reeves doesn't use anesthetic. Says it might interfere with the extraction. The first cut splits my skin just below my collarbone, and the world goes white.

Pain isn't the right word. It's deeper than that. The scalpel carves through layers of flesh, and with each slice, I feel my connection to the ocean severing. The tides that have always pulled at my blood go silent. The deep-water voices that sang in my dreams fade to static.

The Pearl fights back.

A shockwave explodes from my chest. The wine bottles shatter in their racks. The foundation groans. Cracks spider across the stone walls, and dust rains from the ceiling.

"Hold her down!" Dr. Reeves's voice is high, panicked.

Marcus presses his weight against my shoulders. His face is turned away, but I see his jaw working, see the muscle jumping beneath his skin.

The scalpel goes deeper. Dr. Reeves's fingers probe inside my chest, searching, and then he finds it. The Pearl. My mother's legacy. The last piece of my father's people.

He pulls.

Something tears. Not flesh—something older. The thread that connects me to the ancient bloodline, to the curse, to the Ghost Marriage pact. It snaps like a fishing line under too much weight.

The Pearl comes free.

It glows in Dr. Reeves's bloody glove, pulsing with blue light that makes the shadows dance. He drops it into the jewelry box, and Ivan snaps the lid shut.

The light dies.

I stare at the ceiling. There's a hole in my chest where the Pearl used to be—a gaping wound that should be bleeding but isn't. Instead, it glows faintly, like the last embers of a dying fire.

"Clean her up," Ivan says. "Put her in the recovery room."

He takes the jewelry box and leaves. Doesn't look back. Doesn't check if I'm breathing.

Marcus and Dr. Reeves move me to a room off the kitchen. They lay me on a cot. Dr. Reeves wraps gauze around my chest, his hands still shaking, and then he's gone too.

I'm alone.

My heartbeat slows. Each pulse takes longer than the last, like my body is forgetting the rhythm. Cold seeps into my fingers, my toes. I watch frost form on my skin—delicate patterns that look like scales.

The curse is claiming me. Without the Pearl, I'm dissolving. Two days early, but it doesn't matter. The pact is broken. I'm breaking.

Footsteps.

A woman appears in the doorway. She's young, maybe thirty, with kind eyes and scrubs that smell like antiseptic. She kneels beside the cot, presses two fingers to my throat.

"Your pulse is almost gone." Her voice is soft. "I'm Diana Foster. Dr. Reeves hired me for aftercare, but this—" She looks at the wound in my chest. "This isn't aftercare. This is murder."

I try to focus on her face, but my vision is graying at the edges.

"I know about the White family," she whispers. "My grandmother was like you. She told me stories about the old pacts, the Ghost Marriages. You're running out of time."

She pulls a syringe from her bag. "This is adrenaline. It'll buy you a few hours, but that's all. You need to get to the Pierre Hotel. Now."

The needle slides into my arm. Fire spreads through my veins, forcing my heart to beat, beat, beat. I gasp, and air floods my lungs.

Diana works fast. She wraps my chest in clean bandages, helps me into a coat she must have brought from upstairs. "Can you walk?"

I nod. Barely.

"Ivan's with Kira. The Pearl turned gray the second he gave it to her. He's trying to figure out what went wrong." She pulls me to my feet. "We have maybe ten minutes before he realizes you're gone."

We move through the kitchen, through the servants' entrance. The garage is dark and smells like oil. Diana finds keys hanging on a hook—Ivan's Mercedes, the one he never lets anyone touch.

"Get in."

I collapse into the passenger seat. Diana starts the engine, and we're moving, tires crunching over gravel, then asphalt, then we're on the highway and the mansion is shrinking in the rearview mirror.

Manhattan is two hours away. I watch the frost spread across my hands, watch my fingers turn translucent at the tips. The curse doesn't care that the Pearl is gone. It's still counting down.

Diana's knuckles are white on the steering wheel. "Stay with me, Talia. Just stay with me."

But I'm already drifting. The ocean is calling, and this time, I don't think I can resist.