Chapter 4

Diana Ware POV:

I dragged the heavy box down the street, each step an effort. The city lights, usually a comforting twinkle, now seemed to mock me, illuminating a world I no longer belonged to. Every happy couple walking hand-in-hand, every family laughing in a restaurant window, was a fresh stab of pain. I was adrift, a ghost haunting the streets of a life that was no longer mine.

My first thought was a hotel. A clean, anonymous room where I could lock the door and just... break. I walked into the lobby of a modest chain hotel, the kind I never would have allowed myself to afford before, and placed my debit card on the counter.

"I' m sorry, ma' am," the clerk said, sliding the card back to me. "It' s been declined."

A cold dread seeped into my bones. "That' s not possible. Try it again."

He did. "Declined."

I handed him my credit card. "Try this one."

"Also declined."

I tried every card in my wallet. The result was the same. A message flashed on his screen: ACCOUNT FROZEN.

Of course. Of course, he would be that thorough. That cruel. Jordan Fernandez didn't just evict people from his life; he salted the earth behind them. He had left me with nothing. I checked my wallet. I had forty-three dollars in cash. Not even enough for one night.

A wave of nausea and pure, helpless rage washed over me. I stumbled back out into the cold night air, the indifferent city swallowing me whole.

"Ms. Ware."

The voice was cold and familiar. I turned to see one of Isabell' s lawyers, the one who had tried to take my box of evidence, standing on the sidewalk. He had followed me.

"What do you want?" I spat.

"A message from Mr. Fernandez and Ms. Winters," he said, his face a mask of professional indifference. "Due to your... uncooperative departure and the theft of proprietary financial documents, the severance offer of fifty thousand dollars has been rescinded."

Theft. They were calling my life' s records "theft." I think I made a sound, a choked gasp of disbelief.

"Furthermore," he continued, pulling a folded document from his briefcase. "I believe you need a reminder of the full terms of the agreement you signed five years ago."

He unfolded the paper. It was a copy of the contract I had signed in a whirlwind of paperwork when Jordan had first told me about his "debt." I had been so in love, so eager to help, I barely skimmed the pages. I trusted him.

The lawyer' s finger pointed to a paragraph in fine print, a section labeled "Addendum B: Socialization Caregiver Agreement."

He began to read aloud, his voice a monotone drone of destruction. " 'The party designated as Socialization Caregiver (Diana Ware) acknowledges that the child, Leo, is the biological offspring of Jordan Fernandez and a designated third party via surrogacy. The Caregiver holds no biological or legal parental rights and is performing a service in exchange for consideration.' "

Consideration. My role as a mother, reduced to a contractual service.

" 'This consideration,' " he continued, moving his finger down the page, " 'shall be delivered in the form of a beneficiary interest in a trust fund, contingent upon the successful and satisfactory completion of the five-year project term, as judged by the project overseers.' "

My world, which had already been shattered, was now being ground into dust.

My body started to shake, a violent, uncontrollable tremor. My legs gave out, and I collapsed onto the cold, gritty pavement, the hard plastic corner of the box digging into my hip.

The lawyer looked down at me, his expression unmoved. " 'Unsatisfactory performance, including but not limited to the development of a prohibitive scarcity mindset or an inability to assimilate into the projected future lifestyle, will result in the forfeiture of all claims to said trust.' "

He folded the paper with a crisp snap.

"You failed the test, Ms. Ware," he said, echoing Leo' s cruel words. "Your performance was deemed unsatisfactory. Therefore, you forfeit the trust. You were never his mother. You were never his partner. You were a failed employee in a five-year temp job. You are entitled to nothing."

He paused, letting the words sink in, twisting the knife.

"You are nothing."

He turned and walked away, his polished shoes clicking on the pavement, leaving me kneeling on the sidewalk like a piece of trash.

The sounds of the city faded away. All I could hear was a high-pitched ringing in my ears and the frantic, broken rhythm of my own heart. The betrayal was so complete, so absolute, it was almost elegant in its cruelty. They hadn' t just taken my future; they had rewritten my past, turning five years of love and sacrifice into a line item on a corporate expense report.

I don' t know how long I knelt there. Time had lost all meaning. I was a hollowed-out shell. The despair was a physical weight, a suffocating tide pulling me under. I thought, this is it. This is how it ends. I will die here on this sidewalk, with nothing but forty-three dollars and a box of lies.

I dragged myself and the box into the shadows of an alleyway, huddling against the cold brick for some semblance of shelter. My mind was a maelstrom of pain and humiliation. They had won. They had every angle covered, every loophole sealed. They had stripped me of my dignity, my identity, and my solvency.

I was about to let the darkness consume me completely when a single, unexpected image flashed in my mind.

It was my father, sitting at his old, clunky computer in his cluttered study. He was smiling at me, his eyes bright with a passion I hadn't thought about in years. He was explaining something to me, something about a personal project, a piece of software he was building.

"It' s about integrity, Diana," he had said, tapping the screen. "It' s about creating a record that can' t be changed, can' t be cheated. An honest ledger for an honest life."

A jolt, small but electric, shot through the numbness.

The laptop. The one he' d left me. It was in the box.

And on it was his software. His honest ledger.