Chapter 2

She signed.

Not because she believed him. Not because she was broken.

Because she needed time.

The pen shook in her hand. Blood from her cracked lips had dried on her chin. The epidural site on her spine throbbed with a dull, nauseating ache, and her body felt like a battlefield—hollowed out, trembling, leaking.

She signed, and Roman took the papers without looking at her.

"You'll be discharged tomorrow," he said, already turning to leave. "The settlement funds will be in your account by Friday. The penthouse is no longer available to you. I've had your things packed."

Your things. As if she were a tenant being evicted.

"Where is my son?" she asked.

"He's with his mother," Roman said.

The word—mother—was a blade inserted between her ribs and twisted. Margaux. He meant Margaux. The woman who had never carried this child, never felt his kicks at three in the morning, never vomited for sixteen weeks straight, never had her body split open to bring him into the world.

His mother.

Elise said nothing. She watched Roman walk out of the room, his expensive shoes clicking against the linoleum. The door swung shut with a soft, clinical whisper.

She was alone.

The silence was enormous. It pressed against her from all sides—the empty bassinet, the deflated IV bag, the faint antiseptic smell that couldn't quite mask the copper scent of her own blood.

She didn't cry. She had expected to. She had imagined this moment a thousand times during those final weeks of pregnancy, lying awake next to a man she knew was planning to discard her. She had rehearsed the grief.

But the grief didn't come. What came instead was something far more dangerous.

Clarity.

She reached for her phone—the cheap prepaid one she'd bought three weeks ago from a bodega in the Bronx, paying cash, telling no one. The phone Roman didn't know existed.

She dialed the number she had memorized.

It rang twice.

"Kessler and Associates. How may I direct your call?"

"Nora Kessler," Elise said. "Tell her it's the Steele matter. Tell her he served the papers tonight."

A pause. A transfer. Then a voice, sharp and alert despite the late hour.

"Elise. Are you safe?"

"I'm at Mount Sinai. They took the baby."

"Did you sign?"

"Yes."

A brief silence. Then: "Good. That's what we planned. The documents you signed tonight are going to be the rope he hangs himself with. The altered consent forms from the clinic—I have the originals. The surrogate designation was fraudulent. You are the biological and legal mother. Those divorce papers he just had you sign under duress, twelve hours postpartum, in a hospital bed? Any judge in this state will void them."

Elise closed her eyes. The steel band around her chest loosened, just a fraction.

"How long?" she whispered.

"Before we move? I need seventy-two hours. I need the forged clinic documents entered into evidence, and I need a family court judge to issue an emergency custody order." Nora's voice softened. "Can you hold on for seventy-two hours?"

Seventy-two hours without her son. Three days.

"Yes," Elise said, though the word cost her everything.

"One more thing," Nora said. "The inheritance. Your mother's estate has cleared probate. As of midnight tonight, you are the sole owner of Wren Industries."

Wren Industries. A name Elise hadn't spoken aloud in years. Her mother, Vivienne Wren, had built the company from nothing—a scrappy logistics firm that grew into a global empire. Forty billion dollars in assets. Shipping lanes, tech subsidiaries, commercial real estate across three continents.

Vivienne had died when Elise was nineteen. The company had been held in a blind trust, managed by a board of executors, with a single condition: Elise would inherit on her thirtieth birthday, or upon the birth of her first child, whichever came first.

Roman didn't know. No one knew. Vivienne had kept Elise's identity shielded—different last name, no public records, no photographs. A mother's final act of protection.

"He married me for my face and my compliance," Elise said, her voice hollow. "He has no idea what he married into."

"No," Nora agreed. "He doesn't."

Elise ended the call and stared at the ceiling.

Seventy-two hours.

In three days, she would reclaim her son. In three days, she would step out of the shadows and into the boardroom of a company that could crush Roman Steele's entire empire with a single phone call.

But tonight, she was just a woman in a hospital bed, her arms empty, her body broken, counting the seconds until she could hold her child again.

She pressed her hand against her deflated stomach, where he had been just hours ago. She could still feel the ghost of his weight.

"I'm coming for you," she whispered into the dark. "Mama's coming."