Chapter 1

Three pink lines on a pregnancy test, a woman's red lips on my husband's neck, and a contract that said I was never supposed to fall in love.

That was my Tuesday.

I stood in the bathroom of Dominic Cross's penthouse — our penthouse, technically, though nothing in it had ever felt like mine — and stared at the test in my trembling hand.

Positive.

I'd taken four tests. All positive.

My free hand drifted to my stomach. Sixteen weeks married to the most powerful CEO on the East Coast, and this was never part of the deal.

Our marriage was a contract. Black ink on white paper. Two years of playing the perfect wife in exchange for him paying off my mother's hospital debt — three million dollars I could never earn in a lifetime.

The rules were simple:

No falling in love. No public scandals. No children.

I broke rule number one somewhere around month three, when he carried me out of a rainstorm because my heels broke and he didn't want me to cut my feet.

And now I'd broken rule number three.

I heard the front door open, and my heart slammed against my ribs. Dominic was home early. He was never home early.

I shoved the test into my pocket and stepped out of the bathroom, already rehearsing a smile.

But I stopped dead.

Dominic was standing in the foyer, and he wasn't alone.

A woman — tall, stunning, wrapped in a white coat like she'd just stepped off a runway — had her arms around his neck. Her red lipstick was smeared on his collar. She looked up and saw me, and she smiled.

"Oh," she said, her voice dripping honey. "You must be the placeholder."

I looked at Dominic. He didn't push her away. He didn't even look guilty.

"Elena," he said, his voice flat, almost bored. "This is Vivienne. My ex-wife."

Ex-wife.

The woman who supposedly died in a car accident two years ago — the reason Dominic never smiled, never laughed, never looked at me like I was anything more than furniture.

She was alive.

And she was standing in my living room with her lipstick on my husband.

"I thought she was dead," I whispered.

"So did I," Dominic replied. But the way he looked at her — the way his jaw softened, the way his eyes searched her face — told me everything.

He had never looked at me like that. Not once.

Vivienne tilted her head, studying me the way someone studies an insect. "Don't worry, sweetheart. I'm not here to take your place." She paused, letting her smile sharpen. "I'm here to take back what was always mine."

The pregnancy test burned against my thigh like a lit match.

I opened my mouth to say something — anything — but Dominic spoke first.

"Elena, we need to talk. Privately." He turned toward his office, and Vivienne followed without a backward glance.

The door closed.

I stood alone in the foyer of a penthouse that had never been mine, carrying a baby that was never supposed to exist, married to a man who was never supposed to matter.

And the woman he actually loved had just risen from the dead.