Chapter 3

"I don't want it," I said.

Rhys didn't lower the envelope. "You should."

"I just lost my daughter. My husband threw me out for his pregnant mistress. Whatever you're selling, I can't afford it."

Something flickered in those gray eyes. Anger—but not at me.

"I'm not selling anything." He gently took my arm. "But you're bleeding through your coat, and I'm not letting you stand on a sidewalk like this."

He drove me to a hospital—a real one, private, where a doctor re-stitched me without asking a single question about my insurance. When I came out, Rhys was waiting with tea and that envelope sitting on the chair beside him.

"Open it when you're ready," he said. "I'll be here."

I wasn't ready.

There was one thing I had to do first.

Lily's funeral was on a Thursday.

I paid for it with the last two thousand dollars in my personal account. A tiny white casket. A spray of lilies. A cemetery on the edge of town under a weeping willow.

I texted Grant the time and the address.

He replied an hour before the service:

Can't make it. Sienna has her 12-week scan. She's scared to go alone. You understand.

I read it four times.

Then I stood at the grave with Rosa, a hired priest, and a man in a black coat who stood quietly at the back and never said a word.

When they lowered my daughter into the ground, I didn't scream. I'd done all my screaming in that car.

That afternoon, I went back to the Whitmore estate to sign the divorce papers. I wanted it done. I wanted Grant to look me in the eye when he took everything.

The driveway was full of cars. Pink and gold balloons were tied to the gates.

A baby shower.

They were throwing Sienna a baby shower on the day I buried Lily.

Inside, the ballroom glittered. Champagne, a three-tier cake, a banner that read WELCOME LITTLE WHITMORE. Diane was laughing with her friends. Sienna sat on a white throne of a chair, glowing, one hand on a belly that still didn't show.

The room went silent when they saw me.

I was still in my funeral black. Dirt from Lily's grave on my shoes.

"Ivy." Grant stood up, his face going red. "What are you doing here?"

"Signing," I said, and held out my hand for a pen.

Diane snapped her fingers, and a lawyer produced the papers. I signed every page without reading. My signature wobbled only once—on the line that said Marital Status: Dissolved.

"There," I said. "She's all yours."

I turned to leave.

"Ivy, wait!" Sienna rose from her throne and hurried after me, all concern. "Please, let's not end like this. I want us to be friends—"

She grabbed my wrist at the top of the marble staircase.

And then she threw herself backward.

It was beautiful, actually. Graceful. She tumbled down six steps and landed in a heap of white chiffon, clutching her stomach.

"My baby!" she wailed. "Ivy pushed me! She pushed me! Grant, my baby!"

Forty guests stared at me.

"I didn't touch her," I said.

Grant was already at the bottom of the stairs, gathering her in his arms. He looked up at me with an expression I'd never seen before.

Hatred.

"You murdering bitch," he said. "Your baby died, so you want mine dead too?"

Diane slapped me across the face. Hard enough that I tasted blood.

"Get out of my house," she spat, "before I call the police."

I walked out. Down the long driveway. Into the rain that had just started to fall.

I didn't cry. I was too empty to cry.

At the gates, the black Rolls-Royce was waiting.

Rhys stepped out with an umbrella and held it over me.

"I'm ready now," I whispered. "Tell me who I am."

He opened the envelope and handed me the first page.

"Your name isn't Ivy Nobody," he said. "It's Ivy Ashford. And your grandfather is the man who owns half of this city—including the bank Grant Whitmore owes three hundred million dollars."