Chapter 3

Present Day. Forty-eight hours after the cathedral.

Seraphina's apartment was a one-bedroom box above a laundromat in Ridgemont — the part of the city that Ashford money had never touched. The walls were thin enough to hear the spin cycle downstairs. The radiator worked when it wanted to. The window in the kitchen had been broken since October and was sealed with packing tape and faith.

But it was hers. Hers and Lily's.

Lily was asleep in the only bedroom, curled around a stuffed rabbit with one sock on and one sock off. Two years old with a riot of dark curls and the same devastating gray eyes as her father — eyes she'd never seen in person.

Seraphina sat at the kitchen table, her hands wrapped around a mug of cold coffee, staring at the burner phone she'd bought with her last forty dollars.

It had rung six times since the cathedral. Unknown number. She hadn't answered.

She didn't need to. She knew who it was.

Dominic.

The phone buzzed again — the seventh call. She watched it vibrate across the table like a trapped insect and let it go to voicemail.

Her hands were still shaking. They hadn't stopped since the cathedral. Since she'd looked into those slate-gray eyes and felt every wall she'd built over three years crack down the center.

She'd spent thirty-six months teaching herself not to feel anything for Dominic Ashford. Thirty-six months of minimum-wage jobs and sleepless nights and hospital bills and telling herself that the man she loved had let her die.

And then she'd seen him.

One look. That's all it took to undo everything.

Damn him.

A knock came at the door — sharp, deliberate, nothing like the landlord's lazy thumping.

Seraphina's blood went cold.

She crossed the apartment in four strides and pressed her eye to the peephole.

Not Dominic.

Worse.

A man in a charcoal suit stood in the hallway. Mid-forties, military posture, the kind of face that was built for intimidation. She recognized him instantly: Victor Hale, Ashford Group's head of security. Eleanor's personal attack dog.

He knocked again. "Mrs. Ashford. I know you're in there."

Her stomach dropped. Mrs. Ashford. Nobody had called her that in three years.

She didn't open the door.

"I'm here on behalf of Mr. Ashford," Victor continued, his voice flat and professional. "He wants to meet. Tonight. Privately."

"Tell him no," she said through the door.

A pause. Then: "He also wants to know about the child."

Seraphina's hand flew to her mouth. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her forehead against the door. Of course. Of course he'd send someone. Of course he wouldn't come himself. That was Dominic — always delegating the hard parts.

"The child is none of his business," she said, her voice harder than she felt.

"With respect, Mrs. Ashford, Mr. Ashford's legal team disagrees. He has parental rights that—"

"He has nothing." She yanked the door open. Victor blinked, surprised by the fury in her eyes. "He buried me, Mr. Hale. He held a funeral. He moved on. He doesn't get to show up now and claim rights to a daughter he never knew existed because it's convenient for his conscience."

Victor regarded her with the careful neutrality of a man who'd been yelled at by powerful people his entire career.

"He's not going away, Mrs. Ashford."

"Neither am I. Not this time."

She shut the door in his face.

For thirty seconds, silence. Then his footsteps retreated down the hall.

Seraphina leaned against the door and slid to the floor. Her breath came in shallow bursts. She covered her face with both hands and forced herself to think — not feel, think.

Dominic knew about Lily now. That meant Eleanor knew. That meant the Ashford machine — the lawyers, the publicists, the hired wolves — was already in motion.

She had no money. No lawyer. No leverage.

Except one thing.

Ask your mother why.

She'd written those words on the back of Lily's photo on impulse, a grenade tossed over her shoulder as she fled. She hadn't known if Dominic would understand. She hadn't known if he'd even care.

But the four words contained the only weapon she had — the truth about the night she "died." The truth about Eleanor's role in it. The truth about the woman in the photograph, Elena, and the secret that connected all of them.

A truth that could destroy the Ashford empire if it ever saw daylight.

Her phone buzzed again. This time, it wasn't a call.

A text. From the unknown number.

"Sera. I need to see her. Please. I'll come alone. Name the place."

She stared at the message until the screen went dark.

Then she typed back three words:

"The diner. Midnight."

The same diner on 4th Street where he'd found her refilling his coffee six years ago. Where he'd looked at her like she was the only real thing in his gilded world. Where everything between them had started.

It seemed fitting that it would be where everything ended too.

She hit send before she could change her mind, then walked to the bedroom and watched Lily sleep.

"Whatever happens, baby girl," she whispered, brushing a dark curl from her daughter's forehead, "I won't let them take you. I promise."

But promises, Seraphina knew, were fragile things.

And the Ashfords were very, very good at breaking them.