Chapter 1

The little stick showed two pink lines.

Pregnant.

A wave of dizziness hit me, not from joy, but from a sudden, crushing weight.

The bathroom tiles felt cold under my feet as the world dissolved.

It wasn' t my bathroom anymore.

I was in a hospital bed, a sterile, white room. Pain, dull and throbbing, centered in my belly.

Ethan, my husband, stood by the window, his back to me. He looked smaller, somehow.

Victoria, my beautiful, golden half-sister, was beside him. Her hand rested on his arm.

"It's done, Ethan," Victoria said, her voice like chilled honey. "She's gone. And the child."

Ethan finally turned. His face was pale, his eyes empty. "Was it... necessary?"

"Of course, it was, darling," Victoria purred, stepping closer to him. "She was an obstacle. Her mother was nobody, a Monroe, barely clinging to relevance. And that child? It would have been just as common. The Hawthorne legacy deserves better. It deserves us."

She had rejected Ethan years ago, for Julian Mercer. Julian, whose family, the Mercers, crashed and burned in the Sterling Account Debacle. Now, apparently, she wanted Ethan back. And his status.

I tried to speak, to scream, but no sound came out.

Victoria walked towards my bed. She leaned down, her face close to mine.

"You should have stayed out of my way, Eliza," she whispered. "You never belonged here."

She straightened up, a small, satisfied smile on her lips. "Those wellness supplements I gave you? So good for a healthy pregnancy. Or so you thought."

A cold dread filled me. The "health tonics" she' d insisted on.

Then, darkness. A fall. Screaming. Blood.

The vision shattered.

I gasped, clutching my stomach, back in my own sunlit bathroom.

The positive pregnancy test lay on the counter.

Today. This was the day it all began in that other life, that horrific, real-feeling dream.

The day I found out I was pregnant.

The day Victoria would begin her deadly game, using her fake "wellness" expertise.

My hands trembled. It wasn't a dream. It was a warning. A second chance.

My child. They would not take my child from me.

They would not kill me.

A new resolve, hard as steel, formed in my chest.

I would protect my baby. And I would make them pay.

Every single one of them.