Jubb Julie Gregory

The contraction hit me in the back of a locked bedroom, and nobody came. I screamed. I pounded the door until my fists bled. I was eight months pregnant with Alexander Blackwell's baby, and I was locked in the servants' quarters of his Manhattan estate like a dog. His fiancée, Vivienne, had the only key. Let me go back twelve hours so you understand how I ended up here. My name is Maren Cole. I'm twenty-four. I was a nursing student with $200,000 in debt from my mother's cancer treatments when I signed a surrogacy contract with Blackwell Fertility Partners. The deal was clean: carry the embryo, deliver a healthy baby, receive $150,000. No contact with the biological father. No complications. They lied. The biological father was Alexander Blackwell himself — thirty-two, billionaire, CEO of Blackwell Industries, and the coldest man I have ever met. He looked at me the way you look at a piece of medical equipment. Functional. Temporary. Disposable. "You will live in the east wing," he told me on my first day at the estate, not even looking up from his phone. "You will follow the nutritional plan. You will not enter the main house without permission. And you will not speak to me unless spoken to." I should have walked out. But my mother was dying, and the hospital bills were drowning us. So I swallowed my pride and said, "Yes, Mr. Blackwell." For three months, it was bearable. The east wing was comfortable. The doctors were professional. I followed every rule. I grew his baby inside my body and asked for nothing. Then Vivienne Laurent moved in. She was his fiancée — a French socialite with porcelain skin, razor-sharp cheekbones, and eyes like a snake. She hated me on sight. Not because I'd done anything wrong. But because I was carrying the one thing she couldn't give him. She was infertile. That's why they'd hired a surrogate. And every time she looked at my growing belly, I saw murder in her eyes. It started small. My meals would arrive cold, or not at all. My prenatal vitamins disappeared from my bathroom. The thermostat in my room was turned down to fifty degrees in the middle of winter. I reported it to the house manager. He smiled politely and did nothing. I tried to tell Alexander. He didn't even let me finish. "Vivienne is the lady of this house," he said, his voice like a blade. "If you have a problem with her, the problem is you. Don't waste my time again." So I stopped complaining. I wrapped myself in extra blankets. I bought my own vitamins with the little money I had. I ate whatever scraps I could find in the kitchen at 2 a.m. I told myself: Just survive until the baby comes. Take the money. Save your mother. Get out. But Vivienne wasn't done. Last night, at a dinner party with thirty of Alexander's business associates, she made her move. She stood up, flicked her champagne glass toward me, and screamed. "She tried to POISON me! I saw her put something in my drink!" Every head turned. Alexander's face went white, then red. He didn't ask me what happened. He didn't check the glass. He didn't even look at me. He grabbed my arm so hard I heard something pop in my shoulder, dragged me out of the dining room in front of everyone, and threw me into the servants' quarters. "You stay here until I decide what to do with you," he snarled. The door locked from the outside. That was twelve hours ago. Now I'm on the floor, contractions ripping through me, eight months pregnant, alone, and I can hear Vivienne laughing on the other side of the wall. And the worst part? The baby I'm about to deliver early, in this cold room, on this concrete floor — she isn't just a surrogacy contract. She's mine. Alexander doesn't know. Nobody knows. The clinic made an error. They implanted MY egg. This is my biological daughter. And her father just locked me in a room to die.

The pregnancy test showed two lines. I stared at it for a long time, sitting on the cold bathroom floor of the hotel suite my husband had booked for my thirtieth birthday. Two lines. A baby. I wanted to cry from happiness. Alexander and I had been trying for three years. Three years of hormone injections, failed IVF cycles, and quiet grief that we never spoke about in daylight. I pressed the test against my chest and whispered, "Finally." I couldn't wait to tell him. The birthday dinner downstairs could wait. This was the only gift that mattered. I fixed my makeup, tucked the test into my clutch, and took the elevator down to the hotel's rooftop garden, where two hundred guests were waiting to celebrate my birthday. Alexander had planned everything himself. That's what his assistant told me. Every flower, every song on the playlist, every name on the guest list — he had personally approved. The elevator opened. The rooftop was stunning. Fairy lights hung like stars. A string quartet played Debussy. Roses everywhere — white ones, my favorite. But I didn't see Alexander. I scanned the crowd. His business partners, our mutual friends, my college roommates — everyone was here. Everyone except my husband. And my sister. I texted him: Where are you? I have something amazing to tell you. No reply. I found his assistant, Luke, by the bar. He was sweating even though the night air was cool. "Where's Alexander?" Luke wouldn't meet my eyes. "He — he stepped away for a moment. Business call." "On my birthday?" "You know how he is, Mrs. Sinclair. He'll be back before the toast." Something cold settled in my stomach. Not suspicion — not yet. Just the instinct that comes from loving someone for twelve years and knowing when the air around them changes. I smiled at Luke. "Which room is he in? I'll surprise him." Luke's face went white. "I — I don't think—" "Luke." He swallowed. "Suite 1207." I walked toward the elevator, clutching the pregnancy test in my purse like a grenade. Suite 1207 was on the floor directly below the rooftop. I could still hear the music above me as I walked down the corridor. The door was ajar. Not open. Not closed. Just slightly ajar, as if someone had been in too much of a hurry to shut it properly. I pushed it open. The first thing I saw was the dress. It was red. Valentino. I recognized it because I had bought it. I had bought it for my younger sister, Clara, for her twenty-fifth birthday last month. It was on the floor. The second thing I saw was Alexander's watch on the nightstand. The Patek Philippe I had given him on our tenth anniversary, engraved on the back: A & Vivienne, until every star burns out. The third thing I saw was them. My husband and my sister, tangled together on the white hotel sheets, so consumed by each other that they didn't even hear me open the door. Clara's head was thrown back. Alexander's mouth was on her throat. Her fingers were in his hair — the same hair I had stroked this morning when I kissed him goodbye. I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I stood there and felt something inside me simply — switch off. Like a light in a room no one was using anymore. Clara saw me first. Her eyes went wide. She shoved Alexander's shoulder and whispered, "Alex — Alex, stop—" He looked up. For exactly one second, my husband looked at me with the expression of a man who had been caught, and in that second, I searched his face for guilt, for horror, for the devastation I was feeling. What I saw instead was annoyance. He was annoyed that I had interrupted them. I closed the door quietly, the way you close a door when someone is sleeping and you don't want to wake them. Then I walked back to my own birthday party, sat down at the head table, and placed the pregnancy test face-down beside my wine glass. Two hundred guests were waiting for the toast. So I raised my glass and smiled. "Thank you all for coming tonight. This has been the most unforgettable birthday of my life." And I meant every word.

The morning I found the phone, I was looking for a charger. That's it. Nothing dramatic. No suspicion, no gut feeling. Just a dead battery and a junk drawer. But tucked beneath old cables and takeout menus in my husband Ryan's desk was a second phone. A cheap prepaid one, the kind you buy at a gas station. We'd been married for two years. Together for four. I thought I knew every single thing about this man. I turned it on. No passcode. The home screen had one folder. It was labeled "W1." Wife One. My breath stopped. Inside were hundreds of photos of a woman I'd never seen before. Blonde, green eyes, mid-twenties. Smiling in a kitchen that wasn't ours. Holding a baby that looked exactly like Ryan. There were videos too. The last one was dated three weeks ago. In it, the woman sat on a bed in a dim room, looking directly into the camera with hollow, empty eyes. Her lip was split. Her wrist had bruises in the shape of fingerprints. She whispered: "If someone finds this, my name is Megan Porter. He told everyone I moved to London. I never left. I'm in the—" The video cut off. My hands shook so violently the phone slipped and hit the floor. I picked it up and scrolled further. There was a notes app with a single entry, written not by Ryan but by someone else: "He will do to the next one what he did to me. If you're reading this, you ARE the next one. Run." The front door opened downstairs. "Babe? I brought breakfast!" Ryan's cheerful voice floated up the stairs like it did every Saturday morning. Warm. Loving. The voice that read me poetry on our first date. The voice that calmed me during panic attacks. The voice my mother said was "the most trustworthy sound she'd ever heard from a man." I shoved the phone back into the drawer. Closed it. Stood up. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else. "Coming!" I called, and my voice sounded normal. How did my voice sound normal? I walked downstairs and there he was—my Ryan, tall, dark-haired, green-eyed, setting out croissants and fresh orange juice on our kitchen island. He smiled when he saw me. That perfect smile. The one that made me say yes on our third date when he asked me to be his girlfriend. The one that made me cry at our wedding because I thought I'd won the lottery of life. "You okay?" he asked, tilting his head. "You look pale." "Just didn't sleep well." He walked over and pressed his lips to my forehead. Gentle. Warm. "I was thinking," he said, "we should visit my mom this weekend. She's been asking about grandkids again." Grandkids. The baby in the photo on that phone looked about one year old. "Sure," I said. "Sounds great." He grinned and handed me a croissant. I bit into it, tasting nothing. Who was Megan Porter? Where was she right now? And the baby—where was the baby? And the most terrifying question of all, the one that made the croissant turn to cement in my throat: If Ryan had a Wife One, then what was I?

The penthouse smelled like another woman's perfume. I stood in the doorway of what used to be my bedroom — mine and Damien's — suitcase still in my hand, jet lag clawing at my bones after fourteen hours on a plane from Geneva. Three years. Three years I'd spent overseas rebuilding Damien's collapsing European division, sleeping four hours a night, skipping meals, missing holidays — all so his family's company wouldn't go bankrupt. And someone had redecorated my bedroom in pink. My clothes were gone. My photos were gone. The Cartier watch my late mother left me — gone from the vanity. In their place: cheap acrylic nails scattered on the nightstand, a Victoria's Secret robe draped over my reading chair, and a half-empty bottle of Marc Jacobs Daisy that made my stomach turn. "Oh my God." A woman stepped out of my bathroom — MY bathroom — wearing nothing but a towel. She was young. Twenty-two, maybe twenty-three. Wet hair dripping on my hardwood floors. "You must be the ex." The ex. "I'm his wife," I said. My voice didn't shake. I wouldn't let it. She tilted her head and smiled — the kind of smile women give each other when one of them has already won. "Sweetheart. He didn't tell you?" Footsteps behind me. Heavy. Familiar. The cologne I'd bought him for our anniversary three years ago — he was still wearing it. "Serena." Damien's voice was flat. Not surprised. Not guilty. Flat. Like I was a delivery that had arrived on the wrong day. "You're early." I turned to face my husband. He looked good — better than I remembered. New suit. Fresh haircut. The jaw I used to trace with my fingers while he slept. He didn't reach for me. Didn't even put down his phone. "Who is she?" I asked. Calm. Controlled. The way I'd learned to be in boardrooms full of men who wanted me to fail. "This is Bianca." He said it like he was introducing a new hire. "She's been living here for the past year." A year. "Living here," I repeated. "In our bedroom," Bianca added helpfully, adjusting her towel. My fingers found the inside of my wrist — an old habit, pressing hard against the pulse point to keep myself from screaming. "And where exactly am I supposed to go?" Damien had the audacity to look inconvenienced. "There's a guest room on the third floor. Bianca needs the master suite. She's pregnant." The word detonated in my chest like a grenade. "Pregnant," I whispered. "Eight weeks." Bianca's hand floated to her stomach with practiced grace. "The doctor says I need to avoid stress. So if you could keep your voice down—" "I haven't raised my voice." "—that would be great." She smiled again. That smile. I looked at Damien — really looked at him. Searching for the man who'd held my face in his hands on our wedding night and said, You're everything I'll ever need. He wasn't there. Maybe he never had been. "You want me in the guest room," I said slowly, "while your pregnant girlfriend sleeps in my bed." "It's not a discussion, Serena." His voice hardened. "And there's something else. I need you to sign over your shares in the company. Bianca's father is investing, and he wants a clean cap table." My shares. The ones my mother had left me. The ones that, unbeknownst to Damien, made me the single largest individual shareholder in the entire Laurent Group. The ones that made me his boss. I almost laughed. "I'll take the guest room," I said, picking up my suitcase. "For now." Damien looked relieved. He thought he'd won. He had no idea what he'd just started.

The first time I held Lily, she was nine days old and screaming. Lucas had just brought her home from the hospital. Alone. No car seat, no diaper bag, no instructions. Just a tiny, red-faced baby wrapped in a hospital blanket, howling like the world had already failed her. It had. Her mother, Vanessa, had walked out of the maternity ward six hours after delivery. No note. No explanation. She simply got dressed, signed the discharge papers, and disappeared. Lucas was destroyed. He stood in our living room, holding this fragile, shrieking infant, and looked at me with eyes so broken I thought he might shatter. "I don't know what to do," he whispered. I took the baby from his arms. She stopped crying almost immediately. She looked up at me with those dark, unfocused newborn eyes, and something inside me shifted permanently. "I've got her," I said. And I did. For three years, I had her. I was the one who woke up for the 2 a.m. feedings. I was the one who rushed her to the ER when her fever spiked at four months. I was the one who held her through every tantrum, every nightmare, every scraped knee. I gave up my career as a corporate attorney. I had been on the partner track at one of the top firms in the city, billing two hundred hours a month, winning cases that made headlines. I walked away from all of it. For her. For them. Lucas said he was grateful. He said I was the best thing that ever happened to him and Lily. He said we were a family. And I believed him, because why wouldn't I? I was living the proof every single day. Then, on a rainy Tuesday in October, the doorbell rang. I opened it, and there she was. Vanessa. She was thinner than her photos, with sharp cheekbones and hollow eyes that somehow still managed to look stunning. Her hair was long and dark, falling perfectly around her shoulders. She wore a white dress that made her look like a ghost. Or an angel. Depending on who was looking. "Hi," she said, her voice small and trembling. "Is Lucas home?" I stared at her. I knew exactly who she was. I had seen her face in the single photograph Lucas kept buried in his desk drawer — the one he thought I didn't know about. "Who are you?" I asked, even though my stomach was already sinking. Her eyes filled with tears. Practiced, perfect tears. "I'm Lily's mother." Before I could respond, Lucas appeared behind me. I expected anger. I expected him to tell her to leave, to scream, to protect the family we had built. Instead, he said five words that began the end of my life. "Vanessa. Come in. Please."

At my own funeral, I watched my husband slip the wedding ring off my "corpse" and slide it onto my sister's finger. I wasn't dead. I was standing in the back of the church, alive, breathing, and staring at the man who'd told everyone I drowned three weeks ago. The casket up front was empty. And my sister—my baby sister, Vivian—was crying the prettiest tears I'd ever seen, dabbing her eyes with my monogrammed handkerchief. "She would've wanted us to be happy," my husband, Marcus, said into the microphone, his voice cracking on cue. "Elena loved her sister more than anything." The crowd sniffled. Someone whispered, "So tragic, but so sweet." I almost laughed. Because three weeks ago, Marcus had pushed me off our yacht into the freezing Atlantic, watched me sink, and sailed away. He didn't know a fishing boat pulled me out. He didn't know I'd spent twenty-one days recovering in a stranger's house, planning every single second of this. I stepped out from the shadows just as the priest opened his Bible. "Actually," I said, my heels clicking against the marble, "I think the bride should hear something first." Every head in the church turned. Vivian's bouquet hit the floor. Marcus's face went the color of the corpse he thought I was. "Hi, husband," I smiled. "Miss me?" The screaming started before I even reached the altar. Vivian fainted—or pretended to, dropping into a perfectly choreographed swoon that Marcus instinctively caught. Interesting. A grieving widower marrying his dead wife's sister shouldn't have such fast reflexes for catching her. I climbed the three steps to the altar slowly, savoring every gasp. "How—" Marcus's voice failed him. He clutched Vivian like a shield. "Elena, you—you drowned." "Did I?" I tilted my head. "Funny. I remember a hand on my back. I remember the water. And I definitely remember the look on your face when you didn't dive in after me." The church was dead silent now. Three hundred guests. My parents in the front row, my mother's hand pressed over her mouth. Marcus's business partners. The mayor. All of them watching. "You hit your head," Marcus recovered fast, the lie sliding out smooth as oil. "You were confused, you fell, I tried to save you—I searched for days—" "You searched for a new bride," I said. "And you found one. In my own family." Vivian's eyes fluttered open. She had the audacity to look at me and whisper, "Elena, please. Let me explain." "Oh, I'd love to hear you explain why you're wearing the dress I was buried in." Because that's what it was. My dress. The one I'd had custom-made for a vow renewal Marcus and I were supposed to have next month. She'd taken it off my "memory." The priest backed away from all three of us. I turned to the crowd, raising my voice so every single phone—and at least a dozen were already recording—could catch it. "I came back from the dead today," I announced. "And before this is over, I'm going to bury both of them." Marcus lunged toward me. "Elena, stop—" I held up one finger. "Touch me," I said quietly, "and I show everyone what's on this." I lifted my phone. "Including the part where you told Vivian I was handled." His hand froze in midair. And that's when I knew—I had him.

The first thing I heard when I woke up in the hospital was my husband telling the doctor to pull the plug. "She has no family. No one will ask questions." Adrian's voice was calm. Bored, even. The same voice he used to order wine. "Make it look like the heart gave out." I couldn't move. The drugs they'd pumped into me locked my body in place, but my mind screamed inside its cage. I'm awake. I'm right here. I can hear you. "And the prenup?" A second voice. Female. Sweet as poisoned sugar. Celeste. My sister. My maid of honor. The woman who'd cried at my wedding three years ago and toasted to "forever." "Voided the second she flatlines," Adrian said. "Everything transfers to me. Then to you, darling. Patience." Darling. Three years. Three years I'd given that man everything—my trust fund, my father's company, my whole stupid heart. Three years I'd ignored the bruises on my wrists, the "accidents," the way he flinched away from my touch like I disgusted him. I'd told myself love was hard. That marriage was work. I hadn't told myself the truth: that I was being murdered slowly, one quiet poison at a time. A tear slid down my cheek and pooled in my ear. I couldn't even wipe it. "She's crying," Celeste whispered, and for one insane moment I thought she'd save me. My little sister. The girl I'd raised after Mom died, whose tuition I'd paid, whose heartbreaks I'd nursed at 3 a.m. She leaned close. I felt her breath on my face. "Don't worry, Lena," she cooed. "I'll take such good care of him. And the money. You always did share so well." Then she laughed. That laugh broke something in me that the bruises never could. The doctor adjusted my IV. I felt the cold creep up my arm, a different cold than the others, a final cold, and I understood with perfect clarity that I was about to die in a room full of the people I loved most, and not one of them would mourn me. No. The word rose from somewhere deeper than fear, deeper than the drugs, deeper than three years of swallowed screams. Not like this. My finger twitched. No one noticed. They were already talking about the funeral flowers. But I noticed. And in that single twitch—that one rebellious inch of movement they thought they'd stolen—I made a promise to the woman dying on that table. I am going to live. And then I am going to make every single one of them wish they'd finished the job. The cold reached my heart. And the monitor went flat.

"Mrs. Cole, your husband said to move your things to the guest room. Miss Brinley will be staying in the master bedroom from now on." The housekeeper couldn't meet my eyes as she spoke. I stood in the hallway of the house I'd paid for, holding grocery bags filled with ingredients for the anniversary dinner I'd spent all morning planning. Three years. Today was our third wedding anniversary. "Excuse me?" My voice came out quieter than I intended. Before the housekeeper could repeat herself, I heard laughter drifting down from upstairs—a high, girlish giggle I recognized immediately. Sophie Brinley. My husband's "charity case." Ethan had brought her into our home two months ago with a speech that still made my blood boil. "She grew up in foster care, Vivian. She has nothing. She just needs somewhere to stay until she gets back on her feet. Have a little compassion." Compassion. He loved that word when it came to Sophie. I set the groceries on the counter and walked upstairs. The master bedroom door was open. Sophie was sitting on my side of the bed, wearing my silk robe, spraying my perfume on her wrists. When she saw me, she didn't flinch. She smiled. "Oh, Vivian! Ethan said you wouldn't mind. He told me you're so generous." She tilted her head, eyes wide and innocent. "This perfume is so lovely. It must've been really expensive." My jaw tightened. "Where is my husband?" "He went to buy me medicine. I've been feeling dizzy all day." She placed a delicate hand on her forehead. "He's so kind. Not many men would drop everything like that." Drop everything. On our anniversary. I heard the front door open downstairs. Ethan's footsteps were quick, urgent—the way they used to sound when he rushed home to me. "Sophie? I got your medicine. Are you feeling any better?" He took the stairs two at a time, brushing past me in the doorway without a glance. He sat on the edge of the bed beside her, pressing the back of his hand to her forehead. "You're still warm. Did you eat anything today?" "I tried," Sophie whispered, "but Vivian was using the kitchen all morning, and I didn't want to bother her..." He finally turned to look at me. Not with love. Not with guilt. With irritation. "Vivian, couldn't you have made her something? She's been sick." "It's our anniversary, Ethan." The words hung in the air. He blinked. For a moment—just a flicker—something crossed his face. Then it was gone. "We can celebrate another time. Sophie needs rest." Behind him, Sophie's lips curved into the smallest smile. She caught me looking and immediately dropped it, replacing it with a pained expression. "I'm so sorry, Vivian. I didn't mean to ruin your plans. Maybe you two should go out. I'll be fine alone. I'm used to being alone." Her voice cracked on the last word. Ethan's expression softened instantly. "Don't be silly. You're not alone anymore. I'm right here." He reached for her hand. In our bedroom. On our anniversary. While wearing the watch I'd given him last Christmas. I stared at his hand holding hers, and something inside me shifted. It wasn't a break. It was more like a lock clicking open—one I hadn't even known was there. "Ethan," I said calmly. "We need to talk." "Not now, Vivian. Can't you see she's not well?" "Now." Something in my tone made him look up. For the first time in weeks, he actually saw me. But what he didn't see—what he'd never bothered to find out—was who I really was. And that was about to become his biggest regret.