Chapter 1

The impact sent a sharp, shattering pain through my body. I tumbled down the marble staircase, a marionette with its strings cut. It was the eighth time. The eighth baby.

My husband, Ethan Hayes, the brilliant CEO of a tech giant, was by my side in an instant. His face was a mask of anguish. He got the best doctors, the best care. They saved my life. They couldn't save our child.

In the sterile white room of the hospital, the grief was a physical weight, pressing down on my chest, making it hard to breathe. Ethan held my hand, his thumb stroking my knuckles. His eyes were red-rimmed. He looked like the perfect, devastated husband.

Later, drifting in and out of a medicated haze, I heard voices from the hallway. The door was slightly ajar. It was Ethan and my doctor.

"Mr. Hayes, there are other ways. Why insist on... eliminating the one in your wife's belly? It's your own child!" The doctor's voice was strained, heavy with a conflict I couldn't understand.

Then Ethan's voice, my husband's voice, calm and chillingly rational.

"Scarlett is particular, and she has needs. This is the safest method. I worry about the health of others' children."

The words didn't make sense at first. They floated in the air, nonsensical and bizarre. Scarlett. Scarlett Reed, his proclaimed "childhood friend," a woman I'd always found strangely fragile and demanding.

Then the meaning crashed down on me, colder and more brutal than the fall itself.

My miscarriages. All eight of them. They weren't accidents. They were harvests.

Ethan, my loving husband, had been orchestrating the death of our children. He was feeding them, piece by piece, to his mistress for her "mysterious medical condition."

The love I had for him curdled into something black and foul in my veins. The grief for my lost children burned into a white-hot rage. I was a successful architect. I designed buildings to withstand earthquakes and hurricanes. I would not crumble.

I closed my eyes, letting the tears that came now be mistaken for sorrow. They were not. They were the drawing of a new blueprint. A blueprint for revenge.

The doctor's voice came again, lower this time. "And the hysterectomy? Paralysis? Ethan, that's going too far. She's your wife."

"She's too strong-willed," Ethan replied, his voice devoid of any emotion. "This will keep her safe. And quiet. It's for the best."

They were going to gut me. They were going to cripple me. They thought they were taking everything.

They had no idea what they had just created.