Austin Marshack Fenimore

The day the doctor confirmed I was carrying twins, I drove to Marcus's office to surprise him. Through the glass wall of the conference room, I saw my husband of three years feeding a strawberry to a woman sitting on his lap. She was pregnant. Much further along than me. His mother, Helen, sat across from them, smiling warmly—the same woman who'd told me for three years that I was "the only daughter-in-law she'd ever want." Helen raised her champagne glass. "Once Rosalie's twins are born and the DNA matches, we'll take the babies. The surrogacy contract is airtight. She signed the prenup. She gets nothing." My blood turned to ice. Surrogacy contract? Marcus kissed the woman's forehead—tender, adoring, everything he'd been with me. "Lena, I'm sorry you had to wait. Mother needed Rosalie's eggs because your bloodline wasn't 'pure' enough for the family trust. But our baby will inherit too. I'll make sure of it." Lena pouted. "Three years, Marcus. Three years I've shared you with that clueless little orphan." "It's almost over, love." Helen pulled out a document. "After delivery, we'll declare her mentally unfit. Emergency custody. She won't even get a hearing." My hands went to my stomach, shaking so hard I could barely stand. Three years. Three years of love, of him cradling me at night, whispering that I was his world. Three years of his mother teaching me family recipes and calling me "dear." They were farming me. Like livestock. I stumbled back from the glass. My heel caught the carpet and I grabbed the wall, biting through my lip to keep from screaming. Marcus's voice carried through the crack in the door. "Has Dr. Voss adjusted her prenatal vitamins? I need these twins born healthy. The trust requires genetic verification within 48 hours of birth." "All handled," Helen said. "She takes whatever we give her. She trusts us completely." She trusts us completely. The words hit like a blade to the chest. Because I did. God help me, I did. When I was nineteen, alone, grieving my grandmother, working double shifts at the hospital—Marcus Aldric showed up like sunlight. He didn't throw money at me like the others. He sat with me in the hospital cafeteria at 2 AM, eating cold pasta, listening to me talk about my grandmother's Parkinson's. He drove four hours to find a specialist for her. When she died in my arms, he held me for six hours straight without speaking. And I married him believing I was the luckiest woman alive. Now I understood. Every kindness had been calculated. Every touch had been a transaction. I was never his wife. I was an incubator with a heartbeat. My phone buzzed. A text from Marcus: "Working late tonight, baby. Don't wait up. Love you. ❤️" I stared at the red heart emoji until my vision blurred. Then I did something I'd never done before. I didn't cry. I screenshot the prenup on my phone and sent it to the only lawyer I knew—my grandmother's old neighbor, now a senior partner at a top firm. Then I walked to my car, sat down, and placed both hands on my stomach. "I will get us out of this," I whispered. "Whatever it takes." I started the engine. In the rearview mirror, the Aldric Corp building glittered like a glass cathedral. I was going to burn it to the ground. But first, I needed to find out exactly what they'd put in my vitamins.

My husband, the most feared Don in the city, told me he loved another woman. On the night of our anniversary. Over the wine I'd poured for him with my own hands. He didn't want me dead. He wanted something colder. "Elena, I'm not asking you to leave. I'm asking you to share. To let her have a place beside me. At the table. In the family." I didn't scream. I didn't reach for the blade strapped to my thigh, the one he'd taught me to use. I gave him a choice: "If she stays, I go. If I stay, she goes." He drank until the bottle was dry that night. By morning, he gave in. "Book the flight," he rasped. "I'll drive her to the airport myself." He never asked whose name was on the ticket. Rain lashed the windows of our compound, the fortress on the hill we'd bled to build, and Dante Marchetti stood by the glass and delivered his verdict in the same flat voice he used to order a man's execution. "Her name is Sofia. She handles the books now. It isn't physical, Elena. I haven't touched her. I won't. That would be an insult to you." He paused, weighing each word like he'd rehearsed them somewhere that smelled of her perfume. "I only need you to allow her a place. That's all I'm asking." That's all. I looked at this man—the boy I'd found bleeding in an alley fourteen years ago, with two enemies dead at his feet and nothing in his pockets but ambition. The boy my father, the old Don, said would either rule the city or get me buried in it. I gave him my father's army. The Vasquez name, the only name in this city that could open the doors his fists couldn't. My loyalty. My silence. My twenties. Everything. And now the Marchetti empire controlled three ports, half the docks, and every man who mattered for two hundred miles. And his heart had room for a twenty-three-year-old who called him "Don Marchetti" in front of the men and texted him at 2 a.m. "You'll always be my wife," he said, taking my hand. His palm was warm. It made my skin crawl. "My partner. She's just... softer." Partner. Fourteen years, and I'd been demoted to a business arrangement, while Sofia Russo got to be his heart. "If she stays, I go," I said. "If I stay, she goes. Choose." He chose. It took him a bottle of the Sicilian wine my father gave us at the wedding, and one long night of shattering glass in his study. But he chose. "Fine," he said at dawn, reeking of grief that wasn't for me. "She goes to Italy. But Elena—give me this month. Let me say goodbye properly. Nothing will happen. I just want to look at her a little longer." A month. That month held my birthday. Our anniversary. The day my mother was buried. He missed all three. So I went to the safe behind my closet—the one Dante didn't know existed—and I took out two things. A folder of papers he'd signed fourteen years ago without reading. Back when my father's lawyers were the only lawyers we could trust. And a phone I hadn't used in a decade. My father answered on the fifth ring. He didn't say hello. He just breathed, the way old Dons do. "Papa," I said. "I need a way out. A real one." A long pause. "Finally." "As Elena Vasquez," I said, watching the rain swallow the city my blood built. "Not Mrs. Marchetti." "Done," he said. "One week." Downstairs, Dante was telling his men to clear his schedule. He was taking Sofia to the coast. A proper goodbye. Go ahead, Dante. Say your goodbyes. Because the ticket I booked this morning—the one you think carries her away and saves our marriage— it was never for her. It was for me.

My husband's assistant has "accidentally" deleted my name from the company's annual gala guest list for the 23rd time. I finally lose all patience and walk into Ethan Blackwell's office, holding up my phone screen. My voice is shaking, but I refuse to let it break. "Your assistant has removed me from the gala list again. Twenty-three times, Ethan. Is she illiterate, or does she just enjoy humiliating your wife?" Ethan doesn't even look up from his laptop. "Sienna is a Harvard MBA graduate, Aria. She doesn't make mistakes. You probably registered with the wrong email again." "I used the same email I've had for six years. The one you proposed to me with—'forever yours at this address.' Remember that?" He sighs like I'm a child throwing a tantrum. "I don't have time for this. The gala is tomorrow. Just ask Sienna to fix it." Ask Sienna. The woman who has been erasing me from my husband's life, one deletion at a time, for eight months straight. But he doesn't know that this morning, I sat in a doctor's office and heard a heartbeat that wasn't mine. Six weeks pregnant. High-risk. The doctor told me to avoid stress. I look at the man I gave up everything for—my family's billion-dollar empire, my inheritance, my name—and I feel the last thread holding me to him snap. I don't slam the door on my way out. I close it softly. That's how he should know it's over. Slamming means I still care. Silence means I'm already gone. ... I still remember the first time Sienna Cole "made a mistake." She had forwarded Ethan's personal schedule to the entire executive team—except me. When I brought it up, she pressed her hand to her chest, eyes glistening with tears. "Oh my God, Mrs. Blackwell, I'm SO sorry. I just—I get so nervous around you. You're so accomplished and intimidating, and I panicked and skipped your name. Please don't tell Ethan. He'll fire me, and I just—I really need this job." I watched a single tear roll down her perfect cheekbone and land precisely on the silk collar of her blouse. Ethan appeared behind me, took one look at Sienna's tearful face, and his jaw tightened—at me. "Aria. She's new. She made one mistake. You don't need to make her cry over a calendar invite." "I didn't—" "Just let it go. You're my wife. Act like it. Be gracious." Be gracious. That became his favorite phrase. His weapon. His leash around my neck. The second time, Sienna booked a couples' dinner reservation under Ethan's name—with herself listed as his plus-one instead of me. She called it "an autofill error." The fifth time, she rearranged his office and "accidentally" put our wedding photo in a drawer, replacing it with a framed company award. The tenth time, she scheduled a "crucial meeting" at the exact time of our wedding anniversary dinner, and Ethan chose the meeting. By the fifteenth time, I stopped counting the incidents and started counting the excuses. By the twentieth, I stopped hearing his words entirely. They were all the same. "She didn't mean it." "You're overreacting." "Be gracious, Aria." Now it was the twenty-third deletion. I stood in the bathroom of our penthouse, staring at the pregnancy test I'd hidden in my makeup bag. Two pink lines. A baby. Our baby. And a husband who didn't notice I'd been throwing up every morning for two weeks, because he left for the office at 5 AM—ever since Sienna started scheduling "early strategy sessions." I pressed my palm flat against my stomach, and something shifted inside me. Not the baby. Something deeper. A decision. I pulled out my phone and dialed a number I hadn't used in three years. It rang once. "Aria." My mother's voice was sharp, controlled, and unmistakably powerful. The voice of the CEO of the largest media conglomerate in North America. "I was wondering when you'd call." I leaned against the cold tile wall and closed my eyes. "Mom. I'm coming home." The silence on the other end lasted exactly two seconds. "I'll send the jet."

My sister handed me a serving tray at her wedding rehearsal and smiled. "Be a doll and pour the champagne, Ivy. The catering girl called in sick, and honestly—you blend in better with the staff anyway." Two hundred guests laughed. The man standing beside her in the tuxedo was Daniel. My ex-fiancé. The man who'd proposed to me eight months ago, then dumped me by text three days later to be with my younger sister, Brooke. And now I was holding a tray of his wedding champagne. "Ivy, don't just stand there," Brooke said sweetly, adjusting her diamond engagement ring—my old engagement ring, resized to fit her finger. "The glasses won't fill themselves." I gripped the tray so hard my knuckles went white. I should have walked out. Every cell in my body screamed at me to drop the tray and leave. But our mother was watching me from the front row with that cold, warning stare. The one that said: Don't you dare embarrass this family. So I poured. I moved through the rows of gold chairs, filling crystal flutes, keeping my chin level while strangers whispered behind manicured hands. "Isn't that the older sister? The one he left?" "God, how humiliating. She actually showed up to serve them." "She must be desperate. Or pathetic." When I reached Daniel's table, he didn't even look at me. He just held up his empty glass, two fingers, like I was furniture. "Top me off," he said. My hand trembled as I tilted the bottle. And that's when Brooke stood up, clinked her spoon against her glass, and the entire ballroom went silent. "Before the rehearsal dinner," she announced, beaming, "I have a tiny little announcement." She pressed a hand to her flat stomach. "Daniel and I are pregnant." The room exploded with applause. I felt the champagne bottle slip in my fingers. Brooke turned to me, her eyes glittering with something far sharper than joy. "Isn't it wonderful, big sister? You always said you wanted to be an aunt." She tilted her head. "Oh, but wait—weren't you supposed to marry him first? And you couldn't even keep him for three months." The laughter started again. Louder this time. Cruel. A guest pulled out her phone and started filming. Then another. And another. "Pour the bride a glass too, Ivy," Daniel said, finally meeting my eyes with a smug little smirk. "Sparkling cider for the mother of my child." I stared at the man I'd once loved. The man who had told me, on bended knee, that I was the only woman he'd ever wanted. And in that exact second, something inside my chest—the last fragile thread still holding me to these people—snapped clean in half. I set the bottle down on the table with a soft, deliberate click. I reached into the pocket of my borrowed black serving apron and pulled out a slim, matte-black phone. Not the cheap one everyone knew I had. A different one. A private one. I pressed a single contact and lifted it to my ear. Brooke laughed. "Who are you calling, the catering company? Tell them they sent us a terrible waitress." I didn't answer her. I just looked her dead in the eyes and spoke into the phone, my voice steady for the first time all night. "It's me," I said. "Bring the car. And bring the lawyers." The smile finally cracked on my sister's face. Because she had no idea who was about to answer that call.

The night my husband flew to Chicago "for work," a woman called my phone and said six words that should have warned me. "The nursery delivery is downstairs, Mrs. Vale." I almost said thank you. I'm thirty-one weeks pregnant; we'd been ordering baby furniture for weeks. My hand was already on the doorknob. Then my brain caught up. We hadn't ordered anything that day. And the crib—the only crib—was already assembled in the spare room. I'd cried assembling it alone three nights ago while Daniel "worked late." "I think you have the wrong apartment," I said. A pause. Too long. "Mrs. Camille Vale, unit 12B? The label has your name and your due date printed on it." My due date. No delivery label lists a due date. "Just leave it at the lobby desk," I said, keeping my voice light, one hand drifting to my belly. "I'll grab it tomorrow." "It's a temperature-sensitive item, ma'am. I really need you to come down now. If you wait, it'll spoil." Spoil. A crib doesn't spoil. My mouth went dry. "What did you say the item was again?" The line clicked dead. I stood frozen in my own hallway, heart slamming against the baby like it was trying to warn him too. I told myself I was being hormonal. Paranoid. Daniel always said pregnancy made me "anxious"—he said it gently, the way you'd correct a child. So I did the reasonable thing. I called the front desk. "Lobby." A man's voice. Not Marcus, the night doorman who'd worked our building for nine years and always saved me the decaf. "Hi—this is 12B. Is there a delivery for me?" "Yes, ma'am." Smooth. Too smooth. "A large box. Shall I bring it up?" "No." Fast. Too fast. I forced a smile into my voice. "Where's Marcus tonight?" "Marcus called out. I'm covering." A beat. "Are you home alone, Mrs. Vale?" I will never forget the way my skin went cold. I had not told him my name. "My husband's right here," I lied, loud enough to carry. "He'll come down." "Of course," the man said. "Take your time." I hung up and texted Daniel with shaking fingers: Did you order baby furniture today?? Three seconds. Three seconds for his reply to glow up at me from the dark screen: No babe. Just landed at the hotel. Why? Is everything okay? Stay calm, think of the baby. 🤍 Stay calm. He always said that. Stay calm, Camille. I crept to the peephole and pressed my eye to the glass. The hallway lights stay on all night in our building. The peephole was black. Something was pressed against it from the other side. Then the darkness shifted back half an inch—and the hallway light caught a single bloodshot eye, staring straight into my apartment. The doorknob began to turn.

In my last life, I loved Alexander Ashford for twelve years. He repaid me by letting his mistress push me off a rooftop. As I fell, I saw him watching from the window. He didn't even flinch. Now I was back. Sitting in a hospital bed, wearing a paper gown, staring at a divorce agreement. The date on the document read March 15th. Three years before my death. My hands trembled—not from fear, but from rage. The door opened. Alexander walked in, tall, immaculate, his Brioni suit worth more than most people's cars. His face was beautiful and utterly cold. "You're awake," he said, setting a pen on the bedside table. "Sign it." In my last life, I had begged him not to divorce me. I had cried until I couldn't breathe. I had gotten on my knees in this very room while he looked down at me like I was nothing. He'd walked out. I'd chased him. And I'd spent three more years being his ghost of a wife—invisible, humiliated, destroyed—until Vanessa finally killed me. Not this time. I picked up the pen. Alexander's eyes flickered. He hadn't expected compliance. "Before I sign," I said, "I want what I'm owed." "Owed?" A cold smirk. "Eliana, you came into this marriage with nothing. You leave with nothing." "I came into this marriage with the patent for the NovaCure formula," I said calmly. "The one your company built its pharmaceutical empire on. The one registered under my father's name." His smirk vanished. "Check with your lawyers if you'd like," I continued. "The licensing agreement your father signed expires upon divorce. No marriage, no patent. No patent, no Ashford Pharma." Silence. Alexander's jaw tightened. I had never seen that expression before—because in my last life, I never fought back. "What do you want?" His voice was ice. "The penthouse on 5th Avenue. Thirty million in liquid assets. And shares—fifteen percent of Ashford Group." "You're out of your mind." "Then don't divorce me." I set the pen down. "Your choice." We stared at each other. The heart monitor beeped steadily beside me. In my last life, my heart would have been racing. Now it was perfectly calm. Alexander snatched the agreement off the table. "You'll regret this." "I already have my regrets," I said. "You're not one of them. Not anymore." He stormed out, slamming the door so hard the walls shook. I exhaled and leaned back against the pillows. Then I picked up my phone and dialed a number I had memorized from a lifetime ago—a number I never should have ignored. It rang twice. "Hello?" The voice on the other end was low, rough, like someone who hadn't spoken in days. "Ethan," I said. "It's Eliana. I need to see you." A long pause. Ethan Ashford. Alexander's younger brother. The one the family called "the cripple." The one they said was dying. The one who, in my last life, was the only person who tried to save me. "When?" he asked. "Tonight."

For three years, I sang on stage while my sister lip-synced to my voice and collected the awards. I signed away my name. I hid in a soundproof booth behind a curtain. On the night she accepted a Grammy for "her" album, she thanked everyone in the world except the woman who'd actually sung it. Then she leaned into the microphone, looked straight at the wings where I stood, and called me "the little helper who handles my errands." By midnight, I was alone in a parking garage with a torn contract in my hands. By morning, I was finished being anyone's ghost. But let me start at the end of the lie. The Staples Center was a wall of light that night. Gold dresses, flashing cameras, a banner that read PIPER LANE — VOICE OF A GENERATION. The voice was mine. The face was hers. My sister Piper swept past me backstage in white sequins, untouched by the vocal nodules that had nearly cost me my throat, untouched by the eighteen-hour studio days that had broken me. She squeezed my shoulder like a boss thanking the catering staff. "Wish me luck, Mira," she said. She didn't wait for it. When they called her name, two hundred million people watched her cry. She clutched the statue for the song I'd written at 3 a.m. about the father who left us. She thanked her producer. Her stylist. Her "incredible team." Then she found me in the dark. "And to the little helper who handles my errands," she said, smiling that famous smile. "What would I do without my assistant?" Assistant. Three years. My voice on every track. My lyrics in her mouth. The crowd laughed warmly. Someone clapped. I stood in the shadows in a black staff polo while my sister introduced me to the world as the girl who fetched her coffee. Her manager, Damon — the man I'd once trusted — pressed a hand to his heart and mouthed be a professional at me. He'd practiced that look. I know now that he'd practiced everything. Backstage, Piper found me before the cameras could. "Don't make a face," she hissed, all the warmth gone. "You signed the deal. Nobody knows you exist, and that's the whole point. You're shy, remember? You hate stages. I'm doing you a favor." A favor. My ruined throat. My buried name. Every dream of my own music swallowed so hers could shine. "Just one song," I whispered. "On the next album. With my name on it. You promised—" "God, you're exhausting." She turned to Damon. "Get her out of my sightline. She's bringing the mood down." Damon took my arm and steered me toward the exit like a security incident. In the parking garage, with my ears still ringing from the applause that should've been mine, my phone lit up. A number I'd been too scared to call for two years. A lawyer's number. My late mother's old friend, who'd told me again and again: When you're ready to stop being their instrument, call me. He answered on the first ring. "Ms. Lane?" "For now," I said, my voice steadying with every word. "Mr. Reyes. Call him. Tell Sebastian Cross my answer is yes." A pause. Then, quietly: "He's been waiting two years to hear that, Mira." So had I. I just hadn't let myself know it.

"Harder, Dominic… right there…" The voice coming through the baby monitor wasn't mine. I stood in the nursery, holding our six-month-old daughter, frozen solid. The monitor on the shelf—the one connected to the master bedroom—was picking up every sound. Skin against skin. Breathless moans. The rhythmic creak of our bed. Our bed. The bed where I'd given birth to complications. The bed I hadn't been able to share with him for months because my body was still healing. "You're so much better than her…" the woman's voice purred. I recognized it instantly. Sloane. The nanny. The nanny my husband hired to "help me recover." My daughter stirred in my arms, making a soft sound. I pressed her closer, covering her tiny ear against my chest, as if I could protect her from what I was hearing. "Dominic, when are you going to tell her?" "Shh. Not now." That was my husband's voice. Low. Intimate. The same voice that had whispered vows to me at the altar fourteen months ago. The same voice that told me last week: "Viv, I hired Sloane so you can rest. You've been through so much. Let someone help." Help. I almost laughed. The monitor crackled, then went silent. I stood in the dark nursery, my daughter's heartbeat against mine, and felt something inside me snap cleanly in two. Not crack. Not bend. Snap. Six months ago, I nearly died bringing Lily into this world. Forty-one hours of labor, an emergency C-section, a hemorrhage that required two transfusions. Dominic held my hand through all of it. He cried when they placed Lily on my chest. "You're my whole world," he said. "Both of you." That was six months ago. Sloane arrived eight weeks later. She came with impeccable references, a warm smile, and legs that went on forever. "You need rest, Mrs. Ashford," she told me on her first day, her hand lingering on Dominic's arm. "I'll take care of everything." And she did. She took care of the baby's night feedings so I could sleep. She took care of the grocery shopping, the meal prep, the laundry. She took care of my husband. I should have seen it sooner. The way she always changed into something tighter after I went to bed. The way Dominic started "working late in his study" every night. The way he stopped touching me. Stopped looking at me. Stopped asking how I was healing. But I was so tired. So broken. So desperate to believe the man I loved wouldn't betray me while I was still bleeding from bringing his child into the world. I looked down at Lily, her tiny fist curled around my finger. "It's just us now, baby girl," I whispered. I carried her to the guest room—my room now, the room I'd been sleeping in for weeks because the stairs to the master bedroom were too painful for my still-healing body. I laid Lily in her bassinet, then pulled out my phone. One text. To the only person who never let me down. My older brother, Rhys. "I need to come home. Don't tell Mom and Dad yet. I'll explain everything." His reply came in eleven seconds. "Car's on the way. ETA two hours. Pack light. I'm handling the rest." I set the phone down and opened the closet. I didn't take the designer dresses Dominic bought me. I didn't take the jewelry. I didn't take the cashmere, the silk, any of it. I took Lily's things. Diapers, formula, her favorite blanket, the stuffed rabbit my mother made. And one thing of my own. The custody document I'd had drawn up three weeks ago. Because here's the thing about Vivienne Laurent. I may have been a fool in love. But I was never stupid. The sounds from that monitor? Tonight wasn't the first time. It was just the first time I had the strength to stop pretending. I zipped the bag, picked up my daughter, and walked toward the front door. As I passed the staircase, I heard it again—muffled laughter from upstairs. Sloane's giggle. The low rumble of Dominic's voice. I didn't look up. I opened the door, stepped into the cold night air, and pulled it shut behind me. No slam. No scene. No satisfaction for anyone who might be listening. Just a soft click. The sound of a woman leaving. And a man who wouldn't notice until it was far too late.