Chapter 1

I was Dominic Ashford's contract wife for 732 days. I cooked his meals, warmed his bed, and carried his child in secret — all while he whispered another woman's name in his sleep.

The day I finally worked up the courage to tell him about the baby, his "dead" first love walked through our front door. Alive. Smiling. Reaching for him.

He didn't even look at me when he said, "Pack your things, Maren. The contract is over."

I was four months pregnant with his son. And he had just erased me from his life like I was a typo.

Maren POV:

I should have known it would end like this.

The morning had started like any other. I made his coffee — black, no sugar, exactly 180 degrees — and set it on the marble island beside his newspaper. Two years of marriage and he had never once said thank you.

But today, I had a plan. Today, I would tell him about the baby.

I pressed my hand against my stomach, the tiny flutter beneath my fingers the only proof that something in this cold, glass tower was alive. I had rehearsed the words a hundred times. Dominic, I'm pregnant. It's yours. I know this marriage is a contract, but maybe — maybe this changes things.

Maybe he would look at me. Really look at me. Not through me, the way he always did, his steel-gray eyes scanning past my face like I was furniture.

I heard the elevator chime. His footsteps, sharp and precise, crossed the foyer. I smoothed my dress, took a breath, and stepped into the living room.

He wasn't alone.

A woman stood beside him. Tall, ethereal, with ice-blonde hair cascading over a white cashmere coat. She looked like she had stepped out of a painting — fragile, luminous, heartbreaking.

She was holding his hand.

"Maren," Dominic said, his voice clipped. No warmth. No warning. "This is Seraphina."

Seraphina. The name I had found carved into the back of his desk drawer. The name his mother whispered when she thought I couldn't hear. The woman whose ghost had haunted every room of this penthouse for two years.

His dead fiancée. Except she wasn't dead.

"There was a mix-up," Dominic continued, as if explaining a schedule change. "The accident in Geneva — she survived. She's been in recovery. She's home now."

Home. He said it like this was her home. Like I was the guest.

Seraphina looked at me with cool, appraising eyes. Then she smiled — a thin, porcelain smile that didn't reach her pupils. "You must be the placeholder," she said softly. "Thank you for keeping things warm."

The words landed like a slap.

I looked at Dominic, searching his face for something — shock, guilt, conflict. Anything.

There was nothing. His eyes were locked on her, and in them I saw what I had never once seen directed at me: devotion. Raw, desperate, all-consuming devotion.

"Pack your things," he said, still not looking at me. "The contract is over. My lawyer will handle the settlement."

My hand drifted to my stomach. Tell him. Tell him now.

But the words died in my throat. Because I realized, with a clarity that split me open, that it wouldn't matter. A baby wouldn't make him love me. It would just give him another thing to take away.

I walked to the bedroom we had shared for two years. I packed one bag. I left behind every dress, every diamond, every hollow gift he had ever given me.

The last thing I saw as the elevator doors closed was Seraphina settling into my chair at the kitchen island, sipping the coffee I had made, while Dominic stood behind her, his hand resting on her shoulder like she was the only solid thing in his world.

The elevator descended forty-two floors. I counted every one.

When I stepped onto the street, the cold November air hit me like a wall. I had no family. No savings — the contract forbade outside employment. No friends — Dominic's world didn't allow for them.

I had nothing except a suitcase, a secret, and the tiny heartbeat pulsing beneath my ribs.

I hailed a taxi and gave the driver the only address I knew by heart — a free clinic in Brooklyn where I'd been getting prenatal care under a fake name.

As Manhattan shrank in the rearview mirror, I made myself a promise. My child would never know what it felt like to be invisible. My child would never be someone's placeholder.

Even if it killed me.