Chapter 2

The hallway of the Carter estate stretched before me like a tunnel with no end.

I had lived here for nine months, yet I had never felt more like an intruder than I did now, barefoot on the cold marble, one hand bracing the wall, the other cradling the child they wanted to steal.

Nine months ago, I had been a fourth-year medical student, top of my class, three weeks away from matching into one of the best obstetrics programs on the East Coast.

Then Naomi called.

She hadn't spoken to me in two years—not since she'd drained our mother's savings account and vanished to Europe with a man twice her age. But that night, her voice was small and desperate.

"Viv, I'm in trouble. Real trouble. I owe people money—dangerous people. If I don't pay them back by Friday, they'll—" She broke off, sobbing.

The amount was $200,000.

I didn't have it. Our mother, bankrupted by Naomi's last scheme, didn't have it. No bank would lend it.

But the next morning, a sleek black car appeared outside my apartment, and a man in a tailored suit handed me a folder.

The Carter Surrogacy Contract.

Liam Carter needed a wife who could carry a high-risk pregnancy—his bloodline carried a rare clotting disorder, and the surrogate needed a compatible blood type. Mine matched. Naomi's, despite our identical appearance, did not.

Five million dollars. Twelve months. Carry the child, deliver it, sign over custody, walk away.

I would have refused. I should have refused.

But Naomi's deadline was forty-eight hours away, and the men she owed didn't negotiate.

So I signed. Liam wired $200,000 immediately as an advance, and I sent every cent to Naomi without hesitation.

She never said thank you.

Three months into the pregnancy, she showed up at the Carter estate with two suitcases and a story that made Liam's eyes soften in a way they never did for me.

"I'm Vivian's sister," she told him, her voice fragile as glass. "She asked me to come. She said the pregnancy was getting difficult and she needed family."

I had said no such thing.

But Liam, who had barely spoken ten sentences to me since our wedding, suddenly became animated, attentive—charming—in Naomi's presence.

Within a week, she had a bedroom down the hall. Within two weeks, she was joining him for dinner while I ate alone in the kitchen. Within a month, she was wearing the necklace he'd bought for the "mother of his child"—a three-carat diamond pendant I had never been offered.

I told myself it didn't matter. This was a contract, not a love story. I didn't need his affection; I needed his signature on the custody agreement and my five million dollars.

But now, standing in the dim corridor with his words ringing in my ears— There is no custody clause —I realized I had been catastrophically naive.

I made my way to the study, knowing it would be locked. It was.

But I also knew something Liam didn't: the estate's original architect had designed a secondary access through the library, a connecting door hidden behind a bookshelf. I'd discovered it during my second trimester, when insomnia drove me to wander the house at odd hours.

The library was dark and silent. I pulled the third book on the lower shelf—a heavy, leather-bound atlas—and the panel behind it clicked open.

The study smelled like Liam: cedar, whiskey, cold authority.

I moved quickly, my fingers searching through the filing cabinet near his desk. Financial documents, property records, corporate files—but no marriage contract. No surrogacy agreement.

My pulse quickened as I opened the bottom drawer.

Empty.

Not just empty—cleaned out. Recently. The dust pattern showed rectangular outlines where folders had sat for months, now gone.

He hadn't just changed the contract. He had removed every trace of it.

I sank into the leather chair, my hands shaking, my mind racing.

Without that contract, I had no proof of the custody clause. No proof of the surrogacy terms. No proof that the five million was owed to me.

Legally, I was simply Liam Carter's wife—a wife who, on paper, had no claim to the child I was carrying, because the birth certificate would list Naomi as the mother.

My phone buzzed. A message from an unknown number.

I opened it and found a photo: Naomi, beaming, holding up a forged DNA report with her name on it—a preemptive document designed to "prove" her biological connection to the baby.

Beneath the photo, a single line of text:

You were always just the oven, Viv. The baby was never yours to keep.