The mahogany desk in my penthouse office held no warmth, only the cold, polished symmetry of an empire that had cost me my soul. Four months had passed since I stood in that silent, cavernous mansion on Fifth Avenue, surrounding myself with seven cardboard boxes that had dismantled fifteen years of devotion in seven minutes. Four months since I stood before Isabelle on a wind-swept corner in Soho, watching her hand me a thin cream envelope before walking away into the autumn drizzle, her boots clicking a steady, irreversible rhythm against the damp pavement.
Inside that envelope was a single sheet of paper from St. Jude’s Women’s Hospital, dated the fifth day of my absence. It was not a medical invoice or an account of her tumor resection. It was a pathology report, accompanied by a sonogram bearing a faint, translucent crescent—a gestation sac measuring six weeks. Beneath the technical jargon, written in the steady, elegant hand that had once sketched the patterns for my first collection, were eight words: You left for Rome. I lost our child.
