Chapter 1

I had just given birth to twins three days ago, and my husband's family was already wheeling me out of the hospital in a rusty wheelchair—not toward home, but toward the curb, where my suitcase sat in the rain.

"The surrogacy contract is fulfilled," said my mother-in-law, Margaret, tossing a brown envelope onto my lap. "Sign the relinquishment papers and disappear."

I stared at her, still bleeding through my hospital gown, my body broken from a C-section, and realized the woman I'd called "Mom" for three years had never once considered me human.

My husband, Derek, wouldn't even look at me. He stood by the hospital entrance, scrolling through his phone, one arm around a woman I'd never seen before—a redhead in designer heels.

"Derek," I whispered, my voice hoarse. "Those are my babies."

He finally glanced up. His eyes were flat. Empty. Like he was looking at a piece of furniture he'd already sold.

"They were never yours, Mia. You knew the deal. My family needed heirs. You needed money for your mother's surgery. The transaction is over."

Transaction.

Three years of marriage—cooking, cleaning, enduring Margaret's cruelty, letting Derek touch me only when his family demanded a pregnancy—and he called it a transaction.

The redhead giggled and pressed closer to him. "Babe, can we go? The smell of this hospital is giving me a headache."

Margaret snatched the envelope from my lap and shoved a pen into my trembling hand. "Sign it. Unless you want us to sue you for breach of contract and take back every cent we paid for your mother's treatment."

My fingers were so weak I could barely grip the pen.

I thought of my twins—a boy and a girl—sleeping upstairs in the nursery. I'd held them for exactly eleven minutes before a nurse took them away.

Eleven minutes. That was all I got.

"If I don't sign?" My voice cracked.

Margaret leaned close, her perfume suffocating. "Then we'll make sure every hospital in this city knows you were a paid surrogate who tried to steal her client's children. You'll never work again. You'll die in a gutter, just like your father did."

The mention of my father—who had died homeless after Margaret's family deliberately destroyed his small business—was the final blow.

I signed.

My hand shook so badly the signature was barely legible, but Margaret grabbed the papers before the ink dried and walked away without another word.

Derek followed her, his arm still around the redhead.

Not once did he look back.

I sat in that wheelchair in the rain for forty minutes before a passing nurse recognized me and called an ambulance.

They found that my C-section wound had torn open. I'd been bleeding internally.

The doctor said if I'd waited another hour, I would have died on that curb.

Lying in the ER, staring at the ceiling through a haze of pain and morphine, I heard the TV mounted on the wall.

A news anchor was saying: "...tech mogul Alexander Blackwell has announced a staggering 2 billion dollar acquisition of Harmon Medical Group, marking the largest healthcare deal this decade..."

The name hit me like electricity.

Alexander Blackwell.

Three years ago, before I married Derek, I had been a promising biotech researcher. Alexander Blackwell's company had offered me a position. I'd turned it down because Derek said he needed me at home.

The morphine pulled me under, and the last thing I heard was the heart monitor flatlining.