Chapter 1

The air in the Social Security office was stale, thick with the smell of old paper and quiet desperation. I clutched my daughter, Lily, a little tighter, her tiny body warm against my chest. The government' s new "Family Unity Act" hung over us all, a constant, low-grade hum of anxiety in a country already strained by resource shortages. One child per married couple. One Social Security Number. One future.

I' d been waiting for two hours, my maternity leave feeling less like a peaceful break and more like a countdown timer. Finally, my number blinked on the screen.

I walked to the counter, a tired smile on my face. "Hi, I' m here to register my daughter, Jennifer Smith and Matthew Hughes' s child."

The clerk, a woman with weary eyes and a practiced, impersonal tone, typed my name into her terminal. Her fingers paused. She looked up from her screen, her expression unreadable.

"Ma' am, the SSN for the Hughes family has already been issued."

My smile faltered. "I' m sorry, there must be a mistake. We just had our baby three weeks ago."

She shook her head slowly, a gesture of finality I was already learning to dread. "No mistake. The registration was processed last week."

"For who?" The question came out as a whisper.

She swiveled her monitor slightly. "The slot was assigned to a male child, Ryan Todd. Registered by your husband, Matthew Hughes."

The name hit me. Ryan Todd. That was the name of Sabrina' s son. Sabrina, Matthew' s childhood friend, the one whose husband died in a construction accident last year. The one Matthew always said he had to look out for.

The clerk' s voice softened with a hint of pity, seeing the color drain from my face. "Ma' am, you have until the child' s first birthday. If she' s not registered by then... she becomes an unregistered dependent. State custody. No further contact."

I stared at her, the words not quite making sense. State custody. No contact. For my Lily? Because Matthew had given her future away?

I stumbled out of the office, the city noise a dull roar in my ears. I didn' t remember the drive home. My mind was a blank, a repeating loop of two names: Lily and Ryan. My daughter, and the boy who had taken her place.

When I got home, Matthew was in the living room, bouncing a fussy Lily in his arms. He was the perfect picture of a doting father, a picture he had so carefully painted for everyone.

"Hey, you' re back. What took so long?" he asked, his voice light.

I looked at him, at the man I married, the man I loved. The man who had just condemned our child.

"Matthew," I said, my voice shaking. "I went to the Social Security office."

He froze. His smile vanished.

"They told me our family' s SSN has been used." I took a breath. "For a boy named Ryan Todd."

He placed Lily carefully in her bassinet before turning to face me. His expression wasn' t guilty. It was defensive.

"So?"

"So?" My voice cracked. "What do you mean, 'so' ? That was for our daughter, Matthew! That was for Lily!"

"Don' t be so selfish, Jennifer!" he snapped, his voice rising. "What was I supposed to do? Sabrina' s husband died covering a shift for me! It was my fault. Am I supposed to just let his son, an innocent child, get thrown into a group home?"

"He is not your son! Lily is your daughter!" I was screaming now, the raw, primal fear for my child overriding everything else.

"Sabrina needed me! She has no one!"

"And what about me? What about Lily? We have no one but you!"

His face twisted with rage. He took a step forward, his hand lashing out before I could even process it. The slap was sharp, a crack in the quiet room that echoed the crack in my world. My cheek stung, but the pain in my heart was a thousand times worse.

He stood over me, breathing heavily. "You' re being hysterical. You don' t understand sacrifice. I did what I had to do."

I stared at him, the man I thought I knew, now a stranger with a cruel face. In that moment, I saw it all with a horrifying clarity. My marriage was a lie. And my daughter' s future was hanging by a thread he had already cut.