Chapter 1

The call came late, the kind that rips you from sleep and leaves a metallic taste in your mouth.

Brittany's voice was a frayed wire.

"Austin, it's Chad. He... he messed up. Bad."

I was at her side in twenty minutes, the Austin night air doing nothing to cool the dread coiling in my gut.

The scene at Chad's apartment was a mess of stale beer, frantic energy, and the unmistakable stench of fear. Chad, former college football star, now just a ghost haunting his own life, was pacing, hands raking through his already disheveled hair.

"They're going to crucify me," he kept muttering, eyes wide and unfocused. "My life's over."

Brittany rushed to him, her hand on his arm. "No, Chad, no. We'll figure something out."

She turned to me, her eyes, usually so bright, now clouded with a desperate plea. "He was drunk, Austin. Hit-and-run. Someone saw his truck."

My blood ran cold. Chad, the golden boy whose NFL dreams had shattered with his knee, was about to face a different kind of ruin.

"Brittany..." I started, but she cut me off.

"He can't handle this, Austin. You know his anxiety, his depression. Prison... it'll destroy him. Completely." Her voice cracked.

Then came the words that would cleave my life in two.

"Please, Austin. Say it was you. Say you were driving his truck."

I stared at her, the hum of the refrigerator suddenly deafening.

"What?"

"You're strong, Austin. You can handle this. He can't." Her tears started, a calculated flow that always, always undid me. "I'll make it up to you, I swear. Just... please. For him. For me."

Chad was a wreck, no doubt. Brittany had propped him up for years, convinced his downfall was somehow her fault, a penance for a high school romance that ended. And I, loving Brittany with a devotion that bordered on blindness, had always enabled her enabling of him.

My job as a market manager at her family's small organic food company, a life I'd chosen to be near her, to be "normal," suddenly felt like a flimsy stage set. My real life, the one with the Walker family name and the oil fields of West Texas, was a universe away.

"He'll die in there, Austin," Brittany whispered, her face close to mine, her breath smelling of his stale fear. "Please."

I looked at Chad, a broken man. I looked at Brittany, the woman I loved, her face a mask of terror.

My own future, my reputation, my carefully constructed ordinary life, all of it felt insignificant against the weight of her plea.

I nodded, a slow, heavy movement.

"Okay."

The relief that washed over her face was a punch to my gut.

Overnight, I, Austin Walker, heir to a Texas oil fortune, became Austin, the "cowardly drunk driver" who'd fled the scene. The local news ate it up. My face was plastered everywhere. Whispers followed me down the aisles of the grocery store.

A few weeks later, the ground shifted again. Brittany sat me down, her hand trembling as she placed it on her still-flat stomach.

"Austin... I'm pregnant."

A flicker of hope, absurd and desperate, ignited in me. Maybe this was it. Maybe this would be the thing that finally pulled us together, away from Chad's shadow.

But her next words extinguished it.

"The media... they're still hounding Chad. If they find out about the baby... with all this... they'll connect it to the hit-and-run, to you."

I didn't understand. "So? It's our baby, Brittany."

She looked away, her voice barely a whisper. "I told a few people... a few reporters who were sniffing around... that it might be Chad's."

The world tilted.

"You what?"

"It takes the pressure off him! Don't you see? They'll think I'm just standing by him, that this is some tragic love story." Her eyes pleaded for understanding. "It protects him, Austin."

My voice was hoarse. "Protects him? What about me? What about our child?"

Then, the final blow.

"I think... I think I need to get rid of it."

"No." The word was a raw tear in my throat.

"Chad can't handle this right now, Austin. The stress... his psychiatrist said any more pressure..." She trailed off, her gaze fixed on some distant point of her own twisted logic. "It's for the best. For everyone."

Everyone except me. Everyone except our unborn child.

My heart, already bruised, shattered. The love I'd felt, so vast and consuming, turned to ash.

I stood up, the room swaying. I walked to the window, looking out at the indifferent Austin skyline.

My hand fumbled for my phone. I scrolled through contacts, past "Brittany," past "Dad," until I found a name I hadn't dialed in years.

Scarlett.

The phone rang twice.

Her voice, smoky and laced with a familiar, dangerous amusement, purred into my ear. "Well, well. Austin Walker. You finally crawled back to me?"

My own voice was a stranger's, trembling. "Scarlett... I need your help."