Chapter 2

I woke to the sound of machines.

Beeping. Rhythmic. Relentless. My body felt hollowed out, scraped clean from the inside. A catheter. An IV drip. Surgical tape pulling at my skin.

And silence where my baby should have been.

"My daughter—" I tried to sit up. Pain ripped through my abdomen. A nurse pressed me back down.

"Your baby is in the NICU, Mrs. Ashford," she said, her voice professionally gentle. "She's stable, but premature. Thirty-four weeks. She's on respiratory support."

Respiratory support. My baby couldn't breathe on her own.

"I need to see her—"

"You've just had an emergency C-section. You need to rest."

"I need to see my daughter."

The nurse hesitated, then nodded. She helped me into a wheelchair, every movement sending white-hot agony through my incision. I didn't care.

The NICU was a glass-walled room of tiny, fragile bodies and enormous machines. My daughter lay in an incubator, impossibly small. Wires and tubes connected her to monitors. Her fists were curled, her face scrunched. She looked like she was fighting.

Good, I thought. Fight.

"She's four pounds, two ounces," the NICU nurse told me. "Strong heartbeat. Lungs are developing well. She's a fighter."

I pressed my hand to the glass. I couldn't hold her. Couldn't even touch her.

"Has anyone else been here?" I asked, dreading the answer. "Anyone asking about her?"

The nurse's expression shifted. Uncomfortable. "A legal representative came by earlier. Left some documents at the nurses' station."

My blood ran cold.

I wheeled myself to the station. A manila envelope with the Ashford Industries logo sat there, crisp and official. Inside: custody transfer papers. Dominic's name listed as sole legal guardian. My name listed as "gestational surrogate, per contractual agreement."

Gestational surrogate.

I was her mother. I had carried her. I had sung to her every night, felt her kick during morning lectures, eaten the foods the doctor recommended, given up caffeine and sushi and sleeping on my back. She was mine.

But on paper—on the contract I'd signed in Dominic's sunlit study, the one he'd said was "just formalities, sweetheart"—I had apparently signed away my parental rights upon delivery.

My hands shook so violently the papers rattled. I hadn't read the fine print. I'd trusted him. He'd handed me a pen with a smile, and I'd signed my daughter away before she even existed.

A shadow fell over me.

"Celia."

I looked up. Helena Ashford stood in the corridor, impeccable in a cream cashmere coat, not a hair displaced. Behind her, a man in a charcoal suit. Ashford family attorney.

"I see you've received the paperwork," Helena said, her tone suggesting we were discussing a routine real estate transaction. "We'd like this resolved quickly. The child will be transferred to our pediatric facility upstate once she's stable enough to travel."

"Her name is not 'the child,'" I said, my voice raw.

"She doesn't have a name yet," Helena corrected smoothly. "That will be determined by her father."

"I am her mother."

Helena's smile was thin, patient, devastating. "You are a vessel, Celia. A role you were compensated for generously. The penthouse. The wardrobe. The credit cards. Did you think all of that was because my son loved you?"

Each word was a blade, precise and unhurried.

The attorney stepped forward. "Mrs. Ashford—Ms. Price, rather—if you refuse to sign voluntarily, we will obtain a court order. Given the prenuptial and surrogacy clauses, the outcome is inevitable. We're offering you a settlement: five hundred thousand dollars, a nondisclosure agreement, and a clean break."

Half a million dollars. For my daughter.

"No," I said.

Helena's eyes narrowed. "Excuse me?"

"No." I gripped the wheelchair's armrests. "I'm not signing anything. I'm not selling my daughter. And I'm not leaving this hospital without her."

"You don't have a choice, dear. You don't have money for a lawyer. You don't have family. You don't have—"

"I have a law degree," said a voice behind them.

We all turned.

A woman stood in the corridor entrance. Tall, dark-skinned, wearing a rumpled blazer and carrying a coffee-stained tote bag. She looked like she hadn't slept in forty-eight hours.

"Priya Kapoor," she said, extending a hand to no one in particular. "Public interest attorney. Legal Aid Society. I was in the building handling another case when a nurse—a very brave nurse—flagged your situation."

She looked at the custody papers in my lap, then at Helena, then at the attorney.

"Those surrogacy clauses are unenforceable in New York if the gestational carrier was not independently represented at signing," Priya said, her voice conversational, almost bored. "Was she? I'm guessing no."

The attorney's jaw tightened.

"Furthermore," Priya continued, "New York doesn't recognize pre-birth surrogacy contracts that waive maternal rights without court approval. Which, again, I'm guessing you never obtained."

Helena's composure cracked, just a fraction. "This is a private family matter—"

"It became a public matter when you tried to separate a mother from her newborn using a contract she signed under duress and without counsel." Priya smiled. It was not a friendly smile. "I'd suggest you leave before I call the hospital's patient advocate and a reporter I know at the Times."

Silence.

Helena stared at Priya as if a cockroach had learned to speak. Then she turned, her heels clicking sharply on the linoleum. The attorney followed.

At the corridor's end, Helena paused without turning. "This isn't over, Celia. Dominic always gets what he wants."

Then she was gone.

Priya pulled up a chair beside me. "Okay. Tell me everything. From the beginning. Don't leave anything out."

I looked at this stranger who had just stared down the most powerful woman I'd ever met, and for the first time in twenty-four hours, I felt something besides terror.

I felt a single, fragile thread of hope.

"Her name," I said, my voice breaking, "is Lily. I'm naming her Lily."

Priya smiled—a real one this time. "That's a beautiful name. Now let's make sure Lily goes home with her mother."