JILL BERNHARDT SAT in her darkened office long after everyone else had left.

A law brief was open in front of her, and she suddenly realized she'd been staring at the same page for ten minutes now. On nights when Steve wasn't traveling or working late, she had taken to staying at the office. Doing anything she could to avoid him. Even when she wasn't preparing for trial.

Jill Meyer Bernhardt. Super lawyer. Everybody's alpha dog.

She was afraid to go home.

Slowly, she massaged the bruise on her backbone. The newest bruise. How could this be happening? She was used to representing women who felt like this, not hiding a secret in the dark herself.

A tear wound its way down her cheek. It was when I lost the baby, she thought. That's when it all started.

But, no, the trouble with Steve had started long before that, she knew. When she was just out of law school and he was finishing up his MBA. It started with what she would wear. Outfits that weren't his taste or showed her scars. Dinner parties where his opinion - politics, her job, any-thing - seemed so much stronger, more important than hers. Pretending it was his earnings that had paid for the down payment on the town house, the Beemer.

You can't do it, Jill. She had heard that since she met him. Jesus Christ, she dabbed............