Chapter 1The Baby I "Killed"

The day Rhys Caldwell threw me out, he did it to ruin me. And then he divorced me.

The snow in Chicago that afternoon was a thick, blinding curtain. I had his baby in my belly and a permanent limp in my left leg—a souvenir from the accident where I’d saved his life. I hobbled away from the grand stone mansion that had been my home, my prison.

He watched from the second-floor balcony, a new woman tucked into the curve of his arm. A cigarette dangled from his fingers, the smoke a lazy curl in the frigid air. He was savoring the spectacle of my destruction.

The days that followed were a special kind of hell.

To survive, I had to agree to marry a man in his forties, to become a stepmother to his eight-year-old son.

But the night before the wedding, Rhys dragged me back to his house.

His face was a mask of fury I had never seen before, his voice a blade of ice as he cornered me.

“You kill my child behind my back, just so you can go play mommy to some old man’s spawn?”

He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a venomous whisper. “Sadie… how dare you?”

* * *

On the day Rhys kicked me out, the snow fell like ash.

I was holding my six-year-old sister’s hand, about to step past the wrought-iron gates, when Arthur, the butler, stopped me.

“Miss Miller,” he said, his voice quiet but firm. “Mr. Caldwell’s instructions were that you are not to take a single thread that belongs to this house.” He gestured delicately. “The down coat you’re wearing, and the boots… Mr. Caldwell purchased those.”

I understood. I lowered my gaze, my silence a shield as I unzipped the parka and slid it off my shoulders. I pulled off the warm, fur-lined boots.

The wind hit me instantly, driving icy pellets against my bare arms. A violent shiver wracked my body. Stepping onto the thick blanket of snow, my bare feet screamed in protest. I looked back, up to the second-floor balcony.

Rhys was there, leaning against the railing with a casual indolence. His left arm was wrapped around Brooke, his right hand holding that cigarette. He was watching me, his expression one of detached, pleasant amusement. Brooke, however, was glowing with the pure, unadulterated triumph of a victor.

She unlooped a gray cashmere scarf from around her own neck and let it drop, a soft spiral falling through the air. “Why would Rhys ever want something so… cheap?” she called out, her voice laced with laughter. “Arthur, make sure that goes in the trash.”

I had knitted him that scarf two months ago.

He had wrapped it around his neck, smiling, and brought my hands to his lips. “My wife has magic in her fingers,” he’d murmured.

Now, it was all ash.

My family was bankrupt. My father was in prison.

Rhys didn’t have to pretend anymore.

The day he’d forced me to sign the divorce papers, he had looked at me with cold, dead eyes and dismantled me, piece by piece, with his words.

“Sadie, do you know why I never wanted to be on top when we were in bed? Why I never wanted to see your face?”

“Do you know why I had to take a scalding hot shower for an hour every single time after I touched you?”

“Because the sight of you makes me sick. Because the thought of you, of what you are, is disgusting.” His voice was low, clinical. “If I hadn’t needed to destroy your father, did you really think a woman who throws herself at men like you would ever have been an option for me?”

The words were poison, a slow-acting venom that constricted my chest until I couldn’t breathe. Tears burned my eyes, hot and useless. It was then that I finally, truly accepted it: he had never loved me.

And so, I didn’t tell him I was pregnant.

There was no point.

With an ocean of blood and betrayal between us, our story was always destined to be a tragedy.

This child never should have been conceived.