Chapter 1

The invitation to the Caldwell Properties charity gala felt like a lead weight in my hand, even though it was printed on the finest card stock. Five years married to Ethan Caldwell, five years of his fifty-two documented affairs, and now, nine months pregnant, he needed me. His secretary, a nervous young woman named Chloe, had apparently insulted a major donor, Mr. Abernathy, and Ethan insisted my presence was crucial to smooth things over. "Just smile, Sarah, look maternal, Abernathy loves that family image stuff," he'd said, not even looking up from his phone.

The ballroom pulsed with fake laughter and the clinking of champagne flutes. I was huge, uncomfortable, and every smile felt like a crack in a dam ready to burst. Ethan, of course, was in his element, schmoozing, his hand lingering a little too long on the arm of a woman whose dress cost more than my entire pre-marriage wardrobe. He paraded me past Abernathy, a stout man with a lecherous gaze, and I mumbled the practiced apology. Then Ethan was off, drawn to a younger, blonder version of the woman from earlier. I watched him, a familiar ache tightening my chest. I felt a wave of dizziness, a sharp pain in my lower back. "Ethan," I whispered, tugging his sleeve when he briefly passed. "I don't feel well."

He glanced at me, annoyed. "Don't be dramatic, Sarah. We' re almost done." He turned back to his new companion, his laughter echoing. Later that night, back in our cold, silent penthouse, the argument started. His dismissiveness, his blatant disrespect, it all boiled over. I accused, he deflected, then attacked. "You're always sick, always complaining," he sneered. As I turned to leave the room, my foot caught on the rug, the earlier distress and the fresh wave of anger making me clumsy. I fell, hard. The pain that shot through me was immediate, terrifying. Premature labor. That' s how Leo decided to enter the world.

I woke up in a sterile New York hospital room, the beeping of machines a steady rhythm to my throbbing head. Ethan was nowhere. Chloe, his secretary, had called Eleanor, Ethan' s mother, who arrived looking pale and shaken. My son, Leo, was born prematurely, small, but the doctors said he was a fighter, healthy after a period of observation in the NICU. Ethan, they later found out, had been at a party in the Hamptons with his secretary, the one who' d made the blunder, the one he' d probably consoled all night. My life-threatening labor was an inconvenience he hadn't bothered to answer his phone for.

Eleanor sat by my bedside, her face a mask of worry and something else, something I couldn't quite name. I looked at her, my voice weak but firm. "You promised, Eleanor. Once the baby was born, you' d approve our divorce. Can I leave now?" She had been the one to orchestrate this marriage, a debt she felt she owed my deceased firefighter father. He had saved her husband' s life years ago, dying in the process. Her initial comfort had morphed into a manipulative push for a grandchild, an heir for Caldwell Properties.

As Eleanor hesitated, her eyes flicking towards the door as if expecting Ethan to miraculously appear, a breaking news segment flashed across the small TV mounted in the corner of my room. The headline: "Ethan Caldwell, Real Estate Heir, Spotted with Mystery Starlet." The footage was clear: Ethan, looking disheveled but triumphant, escorting a young actress from a trendy nightclub. She was snuggled into his suit jacket, the one he' d worn to the gala. The reporter chirped about a "hot new romance." Eleanor' s face crumpled. The public display, the sheer audacity of it, seemed to solidify her shame, her resolve. She looked at me, a new determination in her eyes. "Yes, Sarah," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "Yes, you can."

But I couldn't bring myself to see Leo. Not yet. Maybe never. I was a product of the foster care system, bounced from home to home, always an outsider. The thought of my son, my tiny, vulnerable son, enduring a life of instability with me, a mother with no resources, no family, was unbearable. "If I see him," I told Eleanor, my voice cracking, "I won' t be able to leave him. He' s better off with Caldwell money, Caldwell security. I have nothing to give him but a broken mother." Eleanor tried to argue, to tell me I was wrong, but the words were a hollow echo of the life I knew I couldn't provide. This was my sacrifice, the only way to protect him from the poison that was the Caldwell name, the poison that was his father.