Chapter 1

The maternity ward smelled like bleach and betrayal.

"Sign it," Nathan said.

He didn't look at me. He was looking at his phone, scrolling through something, his jaw tight with impatience.

The document in front of me was thirty-two pages long. I'd read every word through a haze of morphine and the searing pain of a cesarean wound that hadn't yet closed.

Voluntary Relinquishment of Parental Rights.

"Claire can't produce milk," I whispered, my voice cracked, my throat raw from the breathing tube they'd removed six hours ago. "The babies need me. Just for a few more weeks—"

"Claire has formula. The best money can buy." Nathan's voice was clipped. Final. "You agreed to this, Sarah. Before the pregnancy. Before any of it. This was the deal."

The deal.

I remembered the deal.

Claire Blackwood, Nathan's younger sister, had been diagnosed with premature ovarian failure at twenty-six. She wept in our living room, mascara streaking her porcelain face, while Nathan held her hand and looked at me with those ocean-blue eyes that used to make my knees buckle.

"She's my only family, Sarah. You know what that means to me."

I knew. Nathan had grown up in foster care until the Blackwoods adopted him at fourteen. Claire was the golden child, the miracle daughter born to elderly parents. Nathan worshipped her with a devotion I once found beautiful.

"Would you consider it?" he'd asked, his thumb stroking my wrist. "Carrying a baby for her? Your egg, my sperm — so the child would be ours, biologically. But raised by Claire. Given the life she deserves to give."

I should have said no.

But I loved him. God, I loved him with the blind, stupid, all-consuming love of a woman who had never been loved back properly and couldn't recognize the difference.

So I said yes.

The pregnancy nearly killed me. Twins — a boy and a girl — discovered at the eight-week scan. Claire squealed with delight. Nathan kissed my forehead. I vomited for four months straight.

At seven months, my spine began to compress. A rare complication. The doctors said I might not walk normally again.

Nathan brought me flowers once. Claire visited twice, both times to measure my belly and discuss nursery colors.

I delivered via emergency C-section at thirty-six weeks, hemorrhaging on the table, my blood pressure crashing, the anesthesiologist shouting numbers I couldn't understand.

I heard them cry. Both of them. Two tiny, furious screams that split the sterile air and stitched themselves into my DNA.

I reached for them.

They were already gone.

"Claire took them to the nursery," the nurse said gently. "She's doing skin-to-skin."

Skin-to-skin. With my babies.

Now Nathan stood over my hospital bed, pen in hand, the document waiting.

"I need more time," I said. "Please. I just want to hold them once—"

"You held them," he said. "In the delivery room. That was the agreement."

"For three seconds, Nathan. Three seconds before they were taken."

His jaw clenched. He set the pen on my bedside table.

"I'll come back tomorrow. Have it signed."

He turned to leave.

"Nathan," I called, my voice breaking. "Do you even care that I almost died?"

He paused at the door, his back to me, his shoulders rigid.

"You didn't die, Sarah. You're being dramatic. As usual."

The door clicked shut.

I lay there, my cesarean wound burning, my breasts aching with milk no one wanted, and I stared at the ceiling until the fluorescent lights branded themselves into my retinas.

Then I heard it.

Through the thin hospital wall, Claire's voice, low and intimate, followed by a sound that made my blood freeze.

Nathan's laugh. The private one. The one he only made in bed.

And then Claire's voice again, breathy, unmistakable:

"Come back to bed, baby. They're finally asleep."