Chapter 1

I signed the surrogacy contract with a dead woman's name. The clinic smelled like bleach and blood money. Three embryos died inside the last surrogate — and now the billionaire who killed my mother needed a new womb.

Mine.

"Congratulations, Miss Davis," the fertility doctor said, sliding the ultrasound across the sterile table. "All three embryos have implanted successfully. Triplets."

I pressed my hand to my stomach. Three heartbeats that weren't mine. Three lives worth $15 million to the man who had taken everything from me.

I didn't want his money. I wanted his confession.

"Mr. Blackwell will be pleased," the doctor continued, adjusting his glasses. "He's been waiting two years for a viable carrier. The last three... didn't work out."

Didn't work out. Clinical language for women who bled out, went mad, or simply vanished.

I knew. I had read every sealed file. I had hacked every encrypted server. That was what four years of hiding, starving, and planning had given me — patience and a skill set that could dismantle empires from a laptop screen.

"When do I meet him?" I asked. My voice was steady. My nails dug crescents into my palms under the table.

"Tonight. He insists on housing all surrogates at the Blackwell Estate for the duration of the pregnancy. A car will pick you up at seven."

The doctor left. I sat alone in the examination room, staring at the blurry image of three tiny sacs on the ultrasound printout.

"I'm sorry," I whispered to them. "You didn't ask for any of this."

I pulled out my phone. One photo saved in a hidden folder. My mother. Bright eyes, messy bun, flour on her cheek from baking. She was laughing. She was alive.

Damien Blackwell had destroyed that.

Ten years ago, my mother was a housekeeper at the Blackwell Estate. She stumbled onto financial records that proved the Blackwell family had been laundering money through a children's charity. She went to the police.

The police went to the Blackwells.

They called it a car accident. A single-vehicle crash on a rainy night. The brake lines had been cut so cleanly that only a forensic mechanic would have noticed. And forensic mechanics don't investigate dead housekeepers.

I was fourteen. Orphaned. Tossed into foster care. Beaten. Starved. Passed around like furniture.

But I survived. I survived because every time I wanted to die, I saw his face on a magazine cover. Damien Blackwell. Thirty-two. Six-foot-three. Billionaire CEO. "Most Eligible Bachelor." Philanthropist.

Murderer.

And now I was carrying his heirs.

The car arrived at seven sharp. A black Rolls-Royce with tinted windows. The driver didn't speak. He didn't even look at me.

The estate appeared through the trees like a monster rising from the earth. It was enormous — a Gothic mansion with stone gargoyles perched on every ledge, lit from below by golden floodlights.

The front door opened before I reached it.

A woman stood in the doorway. She was stunning. Platinum blonde hair, razor-sharp cheekbones, wearing a white silk robe that probably cost more than my entire life.

She looked me up and down. Her lip curled.

"So," she said. "You're the new incubator."

"And you are?" I asked.

She smiled. It didn't reach her eyes.

"I'm Isabelle Blackwell. Damien's wife."

My blood turned to ice.

Wife. The contract said he was unmarried. The contract said —

"Oh, sweetie," Isabelle laughed, reading my face. "Didn't they tell you? The last surrogate who asked too many questions about our marriage ended up in the river."

She leaned close. Her perfume smelled like gardenias and venom.

"Welcome to hell."