Chapter 3

I started digging.

Priya, my best friend and a data analyst with a hacker's moral flexibility, was my co-conspirator. "If this woman lied to you," she said, cracking her knuckles over her keyboard, "I will find it. I will find everything."

What she found made me physically ill.

Margaux Laurent-Ashford had visited Dr. Henrik Solvang, one of Manhattan's top reproductive endocrinologists, three times in the past year. Priya couldn't access the medical records directly — that would be illegal — but she could access the billing codes submitted to Margaux's insurance.

"These aren't codes for infertility treatment," Priya said, her face pale. "These are codes for elective fertility preservation. Egg freezing. She was freezing her eggs, Elara. Not because she couldn't have children. Because she didn't want to yet."

The room tilted. I gripped the edge of the table.

"There's more," Priya continued grimly. "She also had a consultation coded as 'cosmetic-adjacent reproductive counseling.' You know what that is? It's a fancy term for 'I want a baby but I don't want the pregnancy to ruin my body.' "

I thought of Margaux's bikini photo. Her perfect, unblemished stomach. Her obsessive Pilates routine, her plant-based diet, her refusal to eat anything that might cause bloating.

She didn't have a medical condition. She had a vanity condition.

She had used me — my body, my eggs, my health — because she didn't want stretch marks.

"I'm going to be sick," I whispered, and I was. Right there in Priya's kitchen, hunched over the trash can, seven months pregnant with a baby I'd agreed to give away to a woman who had lied about everything.

"What are you going to do?" Priya asked softly, handing me a glass of water.

I wiped my mouth and straightened up, my hand instinctively cradling my belly. The baby kicked, hard, as if punctuating my thoughts.

"I need a lawyer," I said. "A real one."

The real one turned out to be Nadia Okafor. Harvard Law. Former federal prosecutor. Current terror of Manhattan family court. She charged four hundred dollars an hour and was worth every cent.

She read the surrogacy contract in thirty minutes flat, her expression shifting from professional neutrality to barely contained fury.

"Paragraph 47, subsection (c)," she said, tapping the page. "Did you read this?"

"My lawyer said it was standard."

"Your lawyer was an idiot," she said bluntly. "This clause is a nuclear bomb. It states, in plain English buried under legal jargon, that if the intended mother materially misrepresented her medical condition to induce the surrogacy agreement, the contract is voidable at the surrogate's discretion, and all biological parental rights revert to the surrogate."

She looked up at me, her dark eyes sharp.

"If Margaux lied about being infertile — and based on what your friend found, she almost certainly did — this baby is legally yours. Griffin's name is on the biological father line, but you're the biological mother. In New York, biology plus a voided contract equals custody."

I sat there, my heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat.

"They'll fight," I said.

"Oh, they'll fight," Nadia agreed, a predatory smile crossing her face. "And they'll lose."

I drove home in a daze, Nadia's words ringing in my ears. The baby shifted inside me, a slow, rolling movement that felt almost like a sigh.

"It's okay," I whispered, my hand on my belly. "Mommy's got you."

My phone buzzed. A text from Griffin.

"Margaux and I need to discuss delivery logistics. She wants the baby born at Mount Sinai. She's already reserved the private suite. Also, she'd prefer if you didn't post anything on social media about the pregnancy. It's confusing for our friends."

Confusing. My pregnancy was confusing for their social circle.

I typed back a single word: "Noted."

Then I screenshot the message, forwarded it to Nadia, and blocked his number.

The trap was set. Now I just had to wait.