Chapter 2Not Worth a Single Hair

A long, heavy silence stretched through the line. I could hear the slight hitch in his breathing.

I swallowed my pride, my voice dropping to a near-beg. “Liam, I’m asking you, please. Save him. He’s your son.”

A cold, humorless laugh. “Clara, what new trick is this? Using our son to chain me to you?”

The blood in my veins turned to ice. “This isn’t a trick. The lab report is right here. I can send you a picture.”

“Don’t bother,” he snapped, his voice dangerously low. “I don’t have time for this.”

“Liam!” I cried out, my voice sharp enough to draw stares from the nurses down the hall.

I lowered my voice, the tears I’d been holding back finally breaking free. “If you save Leo, I’ll give you anything you want. We can get a divorce immediately. I’ll walk away with nothing, I swear. You’ll never have to see me again.”

“A divorce?” He scoffed. “You think I give a damn about that piece of paper? Have you forgotten how you crawled into my bed in the first place, Clara? How you used a pregnancy to force my hand?”

That rainy night five years ago. He’d been blackout drunk. I was just his personal assistant, assigned to make sure he didn’t choke on his own vomit.

Then came the positive test.

The powerful Ashford family needed an heir. He needed a quiet, compliant wife to appease them. It was a transaction. We signed the papers, a secret agreement that benefited us both.

I was naive enough to believe that five years could warm even the coldest stone.

But I forgot. Liam Ashford’s heart wasn’t stone. It was an iceberg.

“What’s wrong, Liam?” Ava’s voice drifted through the phone again, laced with the perfect amount of concern. “Is that Clara?”

“It’s nothing,” Liam’s voice instantly softened, a gentle murmur reserved only for her. “Just an irrelevant person.”

He hung up.

I stood there, frozen, the dead phone clutched in my hand. In my arms, Leo stirred. “Mommy,” he whimpered. “I’m cold.”

I snapped back to reality, pulling him tighter against my chest, trying to warm his small, trembling body with my own.