Chapter 1

It was my birthday.

The "nutritional smoothie" tasted slightly off, a metallic tang I couldn't quite place.

A new staff member, hired by Leo, handed it to me with a smile that didn't reach his eyes.

Hours later, cramps tore through me, sharp and vicious.

Then came the blood.

So much blood.

I lay on the bathroom floor, the expensive marble cold against my skin, the smoothie's remnants a sick green puddle nearby.

Leo found me.

He stood in the doorway, his young face, so much like Madeleine's, contorted into something ugly.

"You'll never be her," he said, his voice flat, devoid of any warmth I once thought I'd nurtured in him.

"Stop trying."

The words hit harder than the physical pain.

He didn't mean stop trying to be a mother to his child, my child.

He meant stop trying to exist where his mother once did.

The doctor Marcus summoned confirmed it. Miscarriage.

My baby, the one I hadn't even known was there, was gone.

A tiny, unformed hope, extinguished.

I felt a coldness spread through me, a terrible clarity.

This house, this life, was a beautifully constructed lie.

And I was just a prop.

Leo watched me, his eyes narrowed.

"It was an accident, right?" he asked, a faint smirk playing on his lips.

I didn't answer.

What was there to say?

He knew. I knew.

The power he held, a boy king in his father's gilded cage, was absolute over me.

I looked at him, the child I had raised for a decade.

"I'm leaving, Leo," I said, my voice raspy.

He just laughed, a short, dismissive sound.

"Leaving? Don't be stupid, Ava. Where would you even go?"

His confidence, his utter certainty of my entrapment, was a fresh stab of pain.

He thought I was too broken, too dependent.

Maybe he was right.

But something inside me had fractured, and through the cracks, a different kind of light was seeping in.

The light of an ending.