Chapter 2

Diana Ware POV:

The silence in the apartment was deafening, broken only by the faint beeping of Leo' s new robot. My life, the one I had poured my blood, sweat, and tears into for five years, had been revealed as a meticulously crafted stage play. And I was the unwitting, and now discarded, lead actress.

A cold, hard knot formed in the pit of my stomach. Leave quietly? Take the severance check and disappear? No. They had taken everything from me-my time, my money, my love, my very identity as a mother. I would not let them erase me so easily.

I was still standing there, frozen in the hallway, when the doorbell rang. An hour, Jordan had said. They were early. Of course they were. They couldn' t wait to sweep away the garbage.

I opened the door to find her. Isabell Winters. In person, she was even more striking than on television. Her beauty was sharp and polished, like a diamond. She wore a simple cream-colored dress that probably cost more than my monthly income from all three jobs combined. Two men in dark suits, lawyers by the looks of them, stood silently behind her.

"Diana," she said, her voice smooth as silk but with an undercurrent of something sharp. "I' m Isabell. I' m so sorry you had to find out this way. It was all supposed to be handled more... delicately."

Her eyes, a cool shade of blue, raked over me, taking in my worn jeans and faded t-shirt. It wasn' t a look of sympathy. It was a look of clinical assessment, like a scientist observing a lab rat.

"You played your part beautifully, though," she added, a faint, condescending smile playing on her lips. "Truly. The board was very impressed with your resilience."

Without waiting for an invitation, she swept past me into the living room, her expensive perfume filling the small space and choking me. She was the picture of effortless ownership.

"Leo, darling!" she called out, her voice changing, becoming warm and melodic.

Leo' s head snapped up. A huge, genuine smile spread across his face, a smile I hadn' t seen directed at me all day. He scrambled to his feet and ran, not to me, but to her. He threw his arms around her legs.

"Isabell!" he cried. "Daddy said you were coming!"

She laughed, a light, tinkling sound, and bent down to his level. She cupped his face in her perfectly manicured hands. "Of course, my sweet boy. Did you like the present?"

He nodded enthusiastically.

"Well, there' s plenty more where that came from," she said, pulling a small, brightly colored lollipop from her purse. "How would you like to go to Paris this weekend? We can see the real Eiffel Tower, not just the pictures in your books."

Leo' s eyes went wide. "Really?"

"Really," she confirmed, stroking his hair. It was a gesture of such practiced intimacy it made my stomach churn.

I stood in the doorway, a ghost in my own home. I was watching a scene from a life that had been running parallel to mine, a life I never knew existed. I wasn't his mother being replaced. I was a temporary stand-in, my contract now terminated.

Isabell' s gaze swept across the living room, her nose wrinkling slightly as she took in our modest, second-hand furniture. The sofa I' d found on the curb and reupholstered myself. The coffee table I' d painstakingly sanded and re-stained. Each piece was a testament to my effort, my love, my struggle.

To her, it was just junk.

"God, Jordan wasn' t exaggerating," she murmured, more to herself than to me. "This is all so... bleak. It' s hard to believe the heir to the Fernandez empire lived like this." She turned to one of the lawyers. "Make a note. Have all of this cleared out and disposed of before we move in the new furniture."

Disposed of. My life' s work. My home.

The lawyer nodded and then turned to me, his expression impassive. He held out a sleek, expensive-looking fountain pen. "Ms. Ware. If you would just sign the agreement. The fifty thousand dollars will be wired to your account as soon as you vacate the premises."

"Fifty thousand dollars," I repeated, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. "For five years of my life."

"It' s the highest compensation package ever offered for a Social Role-Player in a project of this duration," the lawyer stated flatly, as if quoting a price list. "The industry standard is considerably lower."

Industry standard. They had an industry for this. For ruining people' s lives.

"You should take it, Diana," Isabell said, her voice dripping with false sympathy. "It' s a generous offer. Don' t make this ugly. You' re a smart woman. You know you can' t fight us. It would be a waste of everyone' s time and your... limited resources."

She then turned to Leo. "Darling, say goodbye to Diana."

The final, brutal command. The severing of the tie.

Leo turned to look at me. His face was a confusing mixture of curiosity and impatience. The warm, loving boy I knew was gone, replaced by this cold little stranger.

"Goodbye, Diana," he said, his voice flat. He looked me up and down one last time, his nose wrinkling in a perfect imitation of Isabell.

"You smell like the diner," he said. "Greasy."

And then I did something that surprised them all. It surprised even me.

I laughed.

It wasn't a happy sound. It was a raw, broken, terrible sound that clawed its way out of my shattered soul. It was the laugh of a woman who had absolutely nothing left to lose.

Isabell and the lawyers stared at me, their masks of cool composure finally cracking. They looked at me as if I had gone completely insane.

Maybe I had.