Chapter 3

The fall was sudden, brutal.

Sarah had been hiking, trying to clear her head, trying to escape the suffocating weight of Ethan's latest betrayal.

A loose rock, a misstep.

Pain, sharp and terrifying, shot through her.

Then, darkness.

She woke up in a hospital. The first thing she felt was emptiness.

A nurse with a kind face told her.

"You lost the baby, dear. I'm so sorry."

The words didn't register at first. Then they crashed down, a wave of unbearable grief.

Ethan arrived hours later.

His face was a mask of... what? Annoyance?

He looked at her, lying small and broken in the hospital bed.

"You shouldn't have gotten pregnant," he said.

His words were cold, devoid of any comfort, any shared sorrow.

Just blame.

Later, as she drifted in and out of a pained haze, she heard the nurses talking outside her door.

"That's her, the Vanderbilt one."

"Poor thing. Or maybe not so poor. Heard she's a gold-digger."

"Did you hear? Old Man Vanderbilt called. No anesthesia for her D&C. Said she didn't need it."

No anesthesia.

The procedure that followed was a brutal, agonizing confirmation of their cruelty.

Sarah bit her lip until it bled, refusing to scream, refusing to give them the satisfaction.

She focused on her mother's face, her mother who loved the mountains, who would have understood her pain.

Ethan took her back to his grand, empty house. Or rather, his family's house where he lived with Brittany.

Sarah was weak, heartbroken, a shell of her former self.

As she walked through the door, leaning heavily on Ethan, sounds of celebration drifted from the main living room.

Laughter. Champagne glasses clinking.

Brittany stood there, radiant, a slight curve to her belly, holding a glass of sparkling cider.

Ethan's grandparents were beaming.

"To the new heir!" Vanderbilt Sr. toasted. "And to Brittany, for giving us another strong branch on the family tree!"

Ethan quickly steered Sarah towards a side room.

"Family business," he mumbled. "Important clients. You understand."

Sarah didn't understand. She didn't understand anything anymore.

A few weeks later, Brittany's third child, a girl named Lily, was born.

Brittany was barely out of her postpartum recovery when Mrs. Peterson, the stern housekeeper, appeared at Sarah's door.

"Mr. Vanderbilt says you are to care for the infant Lily," Mrs. Peterson announced, her voice crisp and devoid of sympathy. "Mrs. Hayes needs her rest."

Sarah stared at her, horrified.

Ethan appeared behind the housekeeper.

"Sarah, please," he said, his eyes avoiding hers. "Brittany is... delicate. And you're good with children. EJ adores you."

EJ did not adore her. He tolerated her.

But Sarah was too broken to fight.

She was forced to care for Lily, the baby who represented everything she had lost, everything that had been stolen from her.

Holding Lily, Sarah felt a fresh wave of despair. This was her life now. Nanny to the children of the woman who had the life Ethan had promised her.