Chapter 1

Everyone in Boston's high society knew Andrew Lester, the city's most austere philanthropist, had a "niece" named Molly.

She wasn't a real niece, of course. She was the daughter of the family's former chauffeur, a man who had died saving Andrew's life in a boating accident years ago. Andrew, consumed by a guilt that defined him, spoiled her rotten.

I was his fiancée, Jennifer Clarkson. For eight years, I had watched this dynamic, played the part of the understanding partner, and managed our perfect high-society life while he performed his penance through charity work.

The first time Molly, who was barely eighteen, tried to crawl into his bed, he sent her away to a strict boarding school in Switzerland. He called it a "wake-up call." It was anything but.

The second time was just weeks before our wedding.

I found the positive pregnancy test in the trash can of the master bathroom in our Beacon Hill brownstone, the one we were renovating. It wasn't mine.

I didn't confront him. I didn't scream. After eight years of his emotional distance, his self-imposed celibacy as a form of atonement, I was too tired for drama.

I simply made a few calls. By evening, Molly was on her way to a discreet, high-end "wellness retreat" in the quiet hills of rural Vermont. No phones, no internet, just fresh air and therapy.

That night, for the first time in our entire eight-year engagement, Andrew came to my bedroom. He broke the "no intimacy before marriage" rule he had so piously upheld. He was desperate, rough, not like a lover but like a man trying to claw something out of me.

In the dark, his hands closed around my throat, not hard enough to kill, but hard enough to terrify. His voice was a raw, broken whisper, a sound I had never heard from the man of perfect self-control.

"Where is she, Jenny?"

"Where did you send her?"

He was shaking, his body tense with a panic that had nothing to do with me.

"She's pregnant, Jennifer. With my child. I have to protect her. I have to protect my baby."

My heart didn't break. It just stopped. It turned into a block of ice in my chest. The man I had loved, the man I had waited for, was choking me while begging for the girl carrying his child.

The man who wouldn't touch me for eight years had a baby with his teenage ward.