Chapter 1

The pregnancy test showed two lines. Nora Sinclair pressed her hand to her stomach. She was carrying Sebastian Cross's child — and tonight, she would be thrown out of his mansion like garbage.

She could already hear them downstairs. Laughter. Champagne glasses clinking. Sebastian's voice, low and warm — the voice he'd never once used with her — telling another woman, "Everything I have is yours now, Isabelle."

Three years ago, Nora had signed a contract: carry Sebastian's heir in exchange for the money to save her dying mother. No love. No status. No acknowledgment. She was a vessel — nothing more.

She'd accepted those terms. What she hadn't accepted was falling in love with a man who looked through her like she was glass.

The bedroom door slammed open. Sebastian stood in the doorway, tall, devastatingly handsome, and cold enough to freeze her blood. Beside him was Isabelle Lane — Nora's stepsister — clinging to his arm in a white silk dress.

"Pack your things," Sebastian said. "Isabelle's moving in tomorrow."

Nora's fingers curled over her stomach. "I'm pregnant, Sebastian."

The room went silent. Isabelle's smile flickered. Then Sebastian spoke, and each word landed like a blade.

"Get rid of it. The contract was for a child I'd raise with my wife." He looked at Isabelle. "Not with a surrogate."

Nora stared at him. Three years of swallowing her pride, three years of sleeping in the smallest room of his mansion, three years of cooking meals he never touched and waiting up for a man who never came home — all of it crumbled in that single sentence.

She waited for the pain to crush her. Instead, something cold and clear settled in her chest. It felt like waking up.

"No," she said.

Sebastian's eyes narrowed. In three years, she had never once refused him. "What did you say?"

Nora pulled her suitcase from beneath the bed — already packed. She'd learned long ago to expect the worst from him. "I said no. This is my child. You don't get to decide whether it lives or dies."

Isabelle's nails dug into Sebastian's arm. Her voice trembled with rehearsed fragility. "She's threatening you, Seb. She wants to use the baby to stay—"

"I don't want to stay," Nora cut her off. She zipped the suitcase shut and looked at Sebastian one final time. "I spent three years being invisible in this house. Trust me — leaving is the easiest thing I've ever done."

She walked past both of them. Sebastian caught her wrist. His grip was iron, and his jaw was tight, but it wasn't concern in his eyes. It was control.

"If you walk out that door, you'll never get a cent from me. Your mother's medical bills, your apartment, everything — gone."

Nora pulled her wrist free. The red marks his fingers left would bruise by morning.

"My mother died six months ago, Sebastian. You would've known that if you'd ever once asked me how I was."

Something shifted in his expression — barely, like a crack in stone. But Nora didn't wait to see if it deepened. She walked down the stairs, past the champagne, past the laughter, past the portrait of Sebastian that hung above the fireplace like he was a king.

The front door closed behind her.

The October wind hit her face, and for the first time in three years, she breathed.

She didn't look back.