Chapter 1

Seven hours of labor. A dead phone. A husband who never came. And a nurse asking, "Should we call someone else?"

That was how my marriage ended — not with screaming, not with a fight, but with silence in a delivery room where I held my newborn daughter alone.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let me start from this morning. Our second wedding anniversary. The morning I still believed Dominic Ashford would show up.

I'd set my alarm for 5 AM to make his favorite — eggs Benedict with truffle oil, fresh-squeezed blood orange juice, the works. Two years ago, he'd mentioned once, exactly once, that his mother used to make it for him before she died. I remembered. I always remembered.

By 7 AM, the breakfast was cold.

By 8 AM, I'd wrapped it in cling film and placed it in the fridge, telling myself he had an early meeting.

By 9 AM, I saw the photos.

Not from Dominic. Never from Dominic. From Vanessa Leclair's Instagram story — because of course she posted it. She always posted it.

There was my husband, sitting in a private booth at Lumière, the most exclusive restaurant in the city. The one with the six-month waitlist. The one I'd begged him to take me to for our anniversary.

He was laughing.

Dominic Ashford — the man who hadn't smiled at me in eleven months — was laughing so hard his head was thrown back, his hand resting dangerously close to Vanessa's bare thigh.

The caption: Some people are just worth canceling everything for 💋

I stared at the screen until my vision blurred.

The comments were already flooding in.

@StyleQueenNY: Power couple energy. Sorry not sorry.

@LeclaireStan: She's literally what he deserves. Not that boring little contract wife lol

@BlueBloodTea: Can someone tell Elena Ashford it's over? This is embarrassing.

Contract wife.

That's what they called me. Because that's what I was.

Two years ago, Dominic's grandfather — Victor Ashford, the patriarch of the Ashford empire — issued an ultimatum: marry before thirty, or lose the CEO seat. Dominic needed a wife who wouldn't interfere, wouldn't demand, wouldn't matter.

I fit the description perfectly.

I was Elena Ruiz. Daughter of a bankrupt florist. No connections. No family name. No leverage. Just a girl who owed the Ashford Foundation $200,000 for her mother's medical bills and was desperate enough to sign a three-year contract.

The terms were clear:

Play the dutiful wife in public. Stay invisible in private. No romantic expectations. No emotional attachment. And when the contract expires — walk away with the debt cleared and $500,000 in my account.

Simple. Clinical. Humane, even, or so I told myself.

What the contract didn't account for was this: I fell in love with him.

Stupid, reckless, inexcusable love — the kind that made me wake up early to cook meals he never ate, iron shirts he never noticed, and wait up past midnight for a man who walked past me like I was furniture.

And now here I was, staring at a photo of him giving another woman the evening I'd spent weeks planning for us.

My phone buzzed.

Dominic: Don't wait up tonight. Business dinner running late.

Business dinner. At a Michelin-star restaurant. With the woman whose lipstick was the same shade as the stain I'd found on his collar last week.

I typed back: Okay.

Then I deleted it.

I typed: I saw the photos.

Deleted that too.

Finally, I sent: Happy anniversary, Dominic.

Read. No reply.

I set the phone down, pressing both palms flat against the cold marble counter until my knuckles turned white. I would not cry. I would not break. Not today.

Then the first contraction hit.