Chapter 3

The garden was dark, lit only by the pale glow of landscape lights along the stone path. Roman stood by the fountain, his back to me, his hands in his pockets.

I approached slowly, every nerve in my body screaming to run.

"You went to see my brother," he said without turning around. His voice was terrifyingly calm.

"I took Lily to his office. She wanted to see the fish tank." The lie was thin, and we both knew it.

He turned. In the dim light, his face was carved from shadow and stone.

"Don't lie to me, Wren. My security team tracked your car. You were there for two hours. You met with a lawyer."

My mouth went dry. I said nothing.

He stepped closer. "What are you doing?"

"I can't tell you."

"You can't tell me?" A flash of something dangerous crossed his face. "You live in my house. You eat my food. You care for my daughter. And you can't tell me why you're meeting with lawyers behind my back?"

My daughter. The words hit me like a fist to the sternum.

"She's not—" I started, then caught myself.

Too late. His eyes sharpened.

"She's not what?"

My heart was hammering so loud I was sure he could hear it. Every instinct told me to stay silent, to wait for Elena to build the case, to play the long game.

But three years of silence had built a pressure inside me that was cracking the walls.

"Ask Maren," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. "Ask her about Dr. Calloway. Ask her about the surrogacy clinic."

Something shifted in his expression. Confusion, then suspicion — but directed at me, not at Maren.

"What are you talking about?"

"Ask your wife, Roman. Ask her who really carried Lily for nine months."

The words hung in the air between us like smoke.

His face went through a rapid sequence of emotions — confusion, disbelief, anger — before settling on cold dismissal.

"You're delusional," he said flatly. "Maren carried Lily. I was there for the pregnancy. I held her hand during the delivery."

"You were there for the last two months," I corrected, my voice shaking. "Maren wore a prosthetic belly for seven months before that. The delivery was a scheduled C-section at a private clinic where the staff was paid to keep quiet."

"Stop."

"I was in a room two floors below, recovering from the actual birth. They took her from me before I even—"

"I said STOP!" His voice cracked through the night air like a whip.

He grabbed my arm, his grip bruising.

"You are the nanny," he said, his face inches from mine, his voice a low, seething whisper. "You are nothing. Maren is my wife. Lily is our daughter. And if you ever say anything like this again, I will destroy you. Do you understand?"

I looked into his eyes, and I saw it — the same blind, furious loyalty that had kept me trapped for three years. He didn't want the truth. The truth would mean his entire life was built on a lie.

"Let go of me," I said quietly.

He released my arm as if it burned him.

"Pack your things," he said, turning away. "You're fired. I want you out of my house by morning."

The world tilted. Out of the house meant away from Lily.

"You can't do that," I said, my voice breaking for the first time. "Please. I need to be near her."

"Near MY daughter?" He laughed, a cold, ugly sound. "You're insane, Wren. I'm calling a psychiatrist."

He walked away. The garden swallowed him in shadow.

I stood there, shaking, the bruises on my arm already forming.

I couldn't leave. If I left this house, I would lose all access to Lily. Maren would poison her against me. By the time any court case moved forward, my daughter wouldn't even remember my face.

I had to fix this. Tonight.

I went back inside and walked straight to Maren's dressing room. She was seated at her vanity, removing her makeup with precise, practiced strokes.

"Roman just fired me," I said from the doorway.

Maren didn't even flinch. She met my eyes in the mirror, and I saw the faintest curl of a smile at the corner of her lips.

"I know," she said. "I told him to."

"You told him—"

"You think I don't have cameras everywhere?" She swiveled in her chair to face me. "I saw you photograph the file, Wren. Last night. Did you really think you were clever?"

The floor dropped away beneath me.

"So I told Roman you've been acting erratic. Paranoid. Obsessed with Lily in an unhealthy way." She tilted her head, her expression mockingly sympathetic. "Poor thing. The stress of being a nanny must have gotten to you."

"You can't keep doing this," I said, my voice cracking. "She's my daughter, Maren. Mine."

Maren stood, crossing the room until she was close enough that I could see my own reflection in her eyes — the same face, but hollowed out, diminished.

"She was never yours," Maren whispered. "You were a vessel. An incubator. I paid for that baby, and I will keep her. And you? You will leave this house, and you will never see her again."

She reached past me and opened the door wider. "Your room is already being cleared out. Security will escort you at dawn."

"Maren, please—"

"Goodnight, Wren."

The door closed in my face.

I stood in the hallway, the world dissolving around me. In twelve hours, I would be separated from my daughter. No money. No lawyer. No home.

I walked to Lily's room on numb legs. She was asleep, her small body curled around a stuffed rabbit I had given her on her first birthday.

I knelt beside her bed and pressed my forehead to hers.

"I'm going to fix this," I whispered, tears streaming down my face. "Mommy's going to fix this. I promise."

I pulled out my phone and called Colton.

"They know," I said. "Everything. Roman fired me. I'm being removed in the morning."

A long silence. Then: "Get to the front gate at 5 a.m. I'll have a car waiting. Bring whatever evidence you have."

"I can't leave Lily."

"Wren, listen to me. If you take Lily, it's kidnapping. They'll have you arrested before you cross the county line. You have to leave her. For now."

The words were a knife through my chest.

"I can't," I sobbed. "I can't leave her with them."

"You're not leaving her. You're going to fight for her. But you can't fight from inside a jail cell."

He was right. I knew he was right.

But knowing didn't make it hurt any less.

At 4:45 a.m., I kissed my sleeping daughter one last time, left the stuffed rabbit tucked under her arm, and walked out of the Hale mansion.

The car was waiting. Colton was in the back seat.

"We'll get her back," he said, his voice firm. "I swear it."

I looked out the window as the mansion disappeared behind us, the lights of Lily's nursery growing smaller and smaller until they were just a pinprick in the darkness.

Then my phone buzzed. A text from Roman.

"If you go to the press, if you contact a lawyer, if you come within 500 feet of my family, I will bury you. You are nothing, Wren. Remember that."

I stared at the message for a long time.

Then I typed back two words.

"Watch me."