Page 3 of Broken Bonds

What family?

Lionel grew up in the system. He didn’t get adopted. He has no one. I’m his wife, the only family he has. He’s told me this several times.

“Thanks, Max,” a blonde woman with a grim face answers. “CBX News, with the latest update. The business world has woken up to the news that one of the most renowned entrepreneurs on the West Coast was attacked last night, Lionel Kral…”

I have no idea what she says after that because a photo fills the screen and time stops.

It’s Lionel.

They’re saying it’s him, but I can’t believe it.

My world collapses.

Lionel, my husband. The man they call a tycoon… is fighting for his life.

I’ve entered an unknown dimension.

I don’t have a compass, and it’s dark.

Lionel, the man I promised to love until death do us part—is a liar.

Chapter 2

I peer at the thin gold band around the finger on my left hand, remembering the moment Lionel put it there. That day he unexpectedly asked me to marry him—in the middle of SDF airport.

Until death do us part.

Death.

He’s balancing on the tightrope in a city he wasn’t supposed to be in.

Why was he buying a building in downtown Los Angeles?

We don’t have that kind of money, and even if Lionel gets the promotion he’s owed, we still won’t have that kind of money.

Unless you’re a prominent West Coast entrepreneur—and a liar.

The reporter is still talking, and then they cut to an image of the hospital my husband is in, while I’m here, sitting on my couch trying to manage the chaos churning my insides.

“A moment ago, we saw Mrs. Johanna Kral leave in a black SUV,” the journalist announces. “But despite the number of press waiting outside the hospital, she didn’t stop to speak with us.”

Johanna Kral, who is she? Another wife? His mother? And why I didn’t know anything about her existence?

I don’t know what to think, but one thing is clear; I don’t know anything about the life of the man I call my husband.

Nothing.

I fist handfuls of my hair and tug. What am I suppose to do?

I refocus my attention on the television where they repeat the clip of a fancy black car with tinted windows exiting the hospital grounds. A man is driving and a blonde woman sits in the passenger seat. I can’t see much of her since one hand covers her mouth, and large sunglasses hide the rest of her face.

“Stella, it’s him, baby. The man in that hospital is your husband.”

I know it’s my mother’s voice saying those words, but they seem so foreign.

“You have to go,” she insists.

It takes me a while to process that information as my body continues to tremble, but those words fall on my shoulders like an avalanche.

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