Chapter 2

I spent three nights sleeping on a bench outside the apartment building. I had nowhere to go. No money—Carter managed all our finances. No family—my parents died when I was seventeen. No friends—Carter said we didn't need anyone but each other, and I believed him.

On the fourth morning, a man in a tailored suit sat down next to me. He handed me a coffee without a word.

"You look like hell," he said.

"Go away."

"I would, but you're sitting outside my building and my tenants are complaining." He took a sip of his own coffee. "I'm Dominic Weir. I own this property. Want to tell me why you've been crying outside unit 4B for three days?"

I didn't want to tell him anything. But hunger, exhaustion and desperation have a way of breaking down walls. I told him everything—Carter, the marriage, the baby, the woman who claimed to be his real wife.

Dominic listened without interrupting. When I finished, he pulled out his phone, typed something and showed me the screen. "Carter Ashford. CEO of Ashford Fertility Group. Married to Victoria Ashford née Langston, daughter of Supreme Court Justice Langston. One of the most powerful families on the East Coast."

My blood ran cold.

He swiped to another page. "Ashford Fertility Group runs a private surrogacy program. Very exclusive, very expensive, very... discreet. They recruit women through what they call 'relationship placement.' The target is emotionally isolated, financially vulnerable and has no immediate family."

"Relationship placement?" I whispered.

"They don't hire surrogates, Elara. They create them. A handler—usually a male operative—builds a romantic relationship with the target over months or years. The target believes she's in a real marriage. She gets pregnant naturally, carries the baby to term and at delivery, the handler's real spouse claims the child through pre-filed surrogacy documents."

"The target is sedated, discredited and discarded. By the time she realizes what happened, the legal paperwork is ironclad. She signed the surrogacy consent during what she thought was a marriage license appointment."

The coffee cup slipped from my hand.

"You're not the first," Dominic said quietly. "My sister was."

I looked at him. His jaw was tight, his knuckles white around his cup.

"Was?"

"She killed herself eight months after they took her son. She couldn't prove anything. No one believed her. The Ashfords made sure of that." His voice didn't waver, but his eyes were burning. "I've spent four years building a case against them. I have evidence, financial records, testimony from former employees—but I'm missing one thing."

"What?"

"A victim willing to fight. Every woman they've done this to has either disappeared, been institutionalized or is dead. You're the first one who's still here. Still breathing. Still angry."

He turned to face me fully. "I won't lie to you. Going after the Ashfords will be the hardest thing you've ever done. They'll try to destroy you. They'll call you crazy, a stalker, a con artist. Victoria's father can make legal problems vanish overnight."

"But if you help me, I can help you get your daughter back."

I stared at him for a long time. The wind was biting and my hands were shaking—not from the cold.

"What's your sister's name?"

"Lily," he said. "Her son's name is Noah. He's four now. He calls Victoria 'Mom.'"

Something inside me cracked open—not broken, but unleashed. "When do we start?"