Chapter 1

Now my own child calls me "the help."

I stood in the doorway of the nursery, watching three-year-old Lily press her face into my twin sister Maren's neck.

"Sing me the star song, Mommy," Lily whispered.

Maren stiffened. She didn't know the star song. She had never known it. I was the one who sang it to Lily every night when Maren and Roman were at their galas and charity dinners, when the cameras were off and no one was performing.

"Not tonight, baby," Maren said, peeling Lily's arms away. "Mommy has a headache. Let Wren put you to bed."

Wren. That was me. Not "Auntie." Not "sister." Wren — the live-in nanny, the lesser twin, the one who existed in the margins of their perfect life.

I stepped forward, my face arranged into the blank, pleasant mask I had perfected over three years. "Come on, Lily. I'll sing it."

Lily reached for me, and something in my chest cracked open the way it did every single night. Her small hands grabbed my face, and she looked at me with Roman's dark eyes.

My daughter. My blood. My heartbeat walking around in a tiny body that didn't know I existed.

Maren swept past me without a glance, her Chanel perfume leaving a trail like a territorial marking.

I carried Lily to her bed, tucked the blanket around her, and sang.

Little star, little star, you don't know how loved you are.

It was a song my mother used to sing to me before she died. I had sung it to Lily through my belly for nine months in that cold surrogacy clinic, when I didn't know who the father was, when I was just a desperate girl selling the only thing she had left.

Lily's eyes fluttered shut. I pressed my lips to her forehead and breathed her in — baby shampoo and something that was just her.

"I'm right here," I whispered. "I'll always be right here."

I walked back to my room — a narrow space at the end of the servants' corridor, smaller than Lily's walk-in closet.

My phone lit up with a message from Maren.

"Lily's piano recital is tomorrow. Wear something that doesn't embarrass me. And stay in the back. Roman's investors will be there."

Roman.

Roman Hale. Tech billionaire. The man Forbes called "the youngest self-made titan in American history." The man who looked at Maren like she had hung the moon.

The man whose child I had carried, delivered, and handed over — not knowing he was the anonymous father listed on the surrogacy contract. Not knowing my own twin sister had orchestrated the entire thing.

I found out six months after the birth, when Maren invited me to her engagement party and I saw the baby in her arms.

I knew that face. I had memorized every ultrasound. I had felt every kick.

"Isn't she beautiful?" Maren had said, her smile sharp as a blade. "Roman thinks she has my eyes."

She has YOUR eyes, I wanted to scream. Because we're twins. Because you stole her.

But I had signed the contract. Legally, Lily was not mine. The agency had listed Maren as the intended mother. My signature was on every page.

I had no money. No lawyer. No proof.

So I did the only thing I could.

I begged Maren for a job in the household. I became the nanny. I became invisible. I became the woman who raised her own child from the shadows, swallowing glass every time Lily said "Mommy" to the wrong person.

Three years. One thousand and ninety-five days of silence.

Tonight, that silence would break.

Because tonight, I found something in Maren's study that changed everything.

A medical file. Lily's blood work from her last checkup.

And a handwritten note from Maren's doctor:

"DNA confirms: Maren Ashwood is NOT a biological match to the child. Recommend immediate action to suppress this finding. —Dr. Calloway"

She had known. She had always known. And she had paid a doctor to bury the truth.

My hands shook. My vision blurred.

Then I heard footsteps behind me.

"What are you doing in my study, Wren?"

Roman's voice. Low. Dangerous. And inches from my ear.