Chapter 1

On the night I was bleeding out from a miscarriage, my billionaire husband carried another woman into the emergency room and told the doctor to save her first.

I crawled across the hospital floor, leaving a trail of blood behind me.

No one came.

He didn't even look back.

My name is Elara Voss. For three years, I have been the contract wife of Dominic Ashford — CEO of Ashford Empire, the most powerful man on the Eastern Seaboard.

Our marriage was a transaction. His grandfather's will required him to marry before thirty or forfeit his inheritance. I was the convenient nobody — an orphan nursing student with no family, no connections, no leverage.

He made the terms clear on our wedding night.

"Don't touch my things. Don't enter the east wing. Don't ever assume you mean anything to me. And stay away from Seraphina."

Seraphina Lane. His childhood sweetheart. The woman whose portrait still hung in his study.

I followed every rule for three years. I cooked meals he never ate. I cleaned a house he barely lived in. I smiled at galas where he introduced me as "nobody important."

And when I accidentally got pregnant — the one time he came home drunk and stumbled into the wrong bedroom — I thought maybe things would change.

They didn't.

Tonight was the annual Ashford Charity Gala. I was five months pregnant and had been experiencing sharp pains all day.

I told Dominic. He barely glanced up from his phone.

"Take a Tylenol. I need you at the gala. Grandfather's old friends will be there."

So I put on the dress that barely fit over my swollen belly and stood beside him like a decorative vase.

That was when Seraphina arrived.

She wore white — always white, like an angel — and the moment she walked in, Dominic's entire demeanor shifted.

His cold eyes softened. His rigid jaw relaxed. He smiled — actually smiled — and crossed the room to greet her.

He left me standing alone at the entrance, five months pregnant, gripping the railing because my vision was going blurry.

Then I felt it.

A warm gush between my legs.

I looked down. Blood was soaking through my silver dress, pooling on the marble floor.

"Dominic—" I called out, but my voice was swallowed by the orchestra.

I collapsed against the pillar. A waiter rushed over, and someone screamed.

Dominic finally turned around.

But he didn't come to me.

Seraphina had fainted — conveniently, dramatically — right into his arms at the sound of the scream.

And my husband, the father of my dying child, scooped her up and sprinted toward the hospital wing.

"Someone call an ambulance for my wife," he shouted over his shoulder.

Someone.

Not him.

I pressed my hands against my belly and whispered to the baby I was losing, "I'm sorry. Your father doesn't want us."

By the time the ambulance arrived, I had lost so much blood that the paramedic's face went white.

At the hospital, I was rushed into surgery.

Through the haze, I heard the nurse calling Dominic's phone. She put it on speaker.

"Mr. Ashford, your wife is in critical condition. She's losing the baby. We need your consent for an emergency procedure—"

His voice came through, cold and clipped.

"Handle it. I'm with someone who needs me right now."

The nurse stared at the phone in disbelief.

I closed my eyes and felt something inside me break — something far deeper than flesh.

It wasn't just the baby I lost that night.

It was every single reason I had left to stay.