Chapter 1

On the nineteenth day after my divorce, I stood in a hospital hallway with my pregnancy test results in my hand, unable to move.

The report put it in three words. [Six weeks pregnant.]

The hallway was busy. Pregnant women walked past with their round bellies, families hurried by pushing wheelchairs, and nurses called out bed numbers to keep people moving.

The whole place was full of life, but none of it felt like it had anything to do with me.

I looked down and read it again. The name at the top said Charlotte Lane, and it was me, no mistake.

There was no need to guess who the father was. It could only be Andrew Mason, my ex-husband.

Andrew and I had been divorced less than two months. The last time we slept together was a week before we signed the papers. We had both been drinking, neither of us spoke, and it felt like a dignified funeral.

When I woke up the next morning, he was already dressed and standing by the window, as cool and controlled as ever. All he asked was, "Is there anything else you want in the settlement?"

That was when I knew this marriage was dead. I didn't ask for anything.

The Masons had more money than anyone could spend. Their company, Mason Holdings, was publicly traded and had nearly three billion dollars in assets on the books alone, so much that everyone wondered what I had really married Andrew for.

When we married, people said I was marrying up. When we divorced, more of them waited to see how much I would walk away with.

But I didn't take a cent. I signed away the riverfront penthouse we had lived in too, and I moved out with nothing but the money I had saved on my own.

It was a clean break, and I wanted every one of them to shut up about it.

And now, of all things, life had handed me a baby.

A nurse came over with a chart. "Ms. Lane? The doctor will see you now."

I tightened my grip on the test results and pushed open the door to the exam room.

A doctor in her forties with glasses sat behind the desk. Her name tag read Michelle Brown, and she was going through my results, frowning harder with every page. "Have you had any surgery on your uterus before?"

I nodded. "Three years ago. I had a fibroid removed."

Michelle looked up at me. "Then this is going to be complicated."

My heart sank. "What do you mean?"

She pushed the report toward me. "Your uterine wall is already thin, and the embryo didn't implant in a good spot. Terminating now would be very risky. Best case, heavy bleeding. Worst case, damage to your uterus. As for getting pregnant again later."

She paused. "That would be almost impossible."

I sat there, slowly bunching the hem of my skirt in my fist. "Almost impossible?"

"Yes." Michelle didn't soften it. She laid the hard truth right out in front of me. "You're not old, but your body isn't in great shape. Frankly, if you don't keep this baby, you may never get another chance to be a mother."

Before I came to the hospital, I had already made up my mind. We were divorced, so I shouldn't keep the baby.

Andrew and I had ended things so badly that having this baby would only make everything more complicated.

And the Masons were the Masons. The moment they found out I was pregnant, they would never let it go.

And one sentence from a doctor had blocked the road I meant to take.

If I didn't keep this baby, I might never have another. If I kept it, my life would go completely off course, starting that day.

Michelle eased up a little. "I'd suggest you don't rush this. Go home, think it over for a few days, and come back for another checkup when you're feeling steadier."

I didn't say anything for a while. "If I keep it, how risky is it?"

"You'll have to be more careful than most. The first three months are especially dangerous, and you'll need regular monitoring after that. But if you take good care of yourself, there's a real chance of a safe delivery."

She paused. "You need to be ready to carry this on your own, though. A pregnancy is no small thing, and a delivery even less so."

She was right that I would have to carry it alone. My fingers curled into my palms, because there was nobody else.

On the day of the divorce, Andrew hadn't even looked up. He pushed the signed agreement across to me. "Charlotte, if you think there's no point going on, then let's end it here."

He didn't ask me to stay, and he didn't seem sorry. It was like closing out an ordinary contract.

The real irony was that I was the one who asked for the divorce.

I had finally seen that Andrew never truly trusted me, not from the start.

In five years of marriage, he gave me his bank cards, luxury cars, a mansion, and the respectable title of Mrs. Mason. The one thing he never gave me was trust.

He always believed I was after his money.

I had stood by him through his hardest years and kept my head up while every socialite in town sneered that I had married above myself. Again and again, I told him I had never wanted a cent of the Mason fortune.

And he still thought I was no different from any other woman.

Later, at a family dinner, his cousin Jessica Mason took a jab at me in front of a dozen people. "Five years in this family and not a single child. You think she's holding out on purpose, waiting for a bigger payout?"

Before I could say anything, Andrew said evenly, "Don't say that."

He wasn't defending me, and he wasn't denying it either.

He said those three words as lightly as if they cost him nothing.

In that moment, I understood why. Deep down, he thought the same thing.

So I left clean, with nothing owed on either side.

And now fate had cornered me with a baby.