Chapter 2

I couldn't sleep that night. The voices from Ethan's study kept replaying in my mind like a twisted melody—*She's completely clueless... Eating out of my hand... First one to get her pregnant claims the prize.*

Dawn found me sitting at my window seat, watching the estate grounds slowly emerge from darkness. I needed proof. Something tangible that would validate what I'd heard, something I could hold onto when doubt inevitably crept in.

I waited until Ethan left for his morning swim—a ritual as predictable as his former coldness had been. With trembling hands, I slipped into his study and opened his laptop. He'd never bothered changing his password; why would he? I was just Victoria, his inconsequential wife.

The emails were right there in his inbox. An entire thread between him, Marco, and the other European investors, discussing the terms of their wager with the casual cruelty of men placing bets on racehorses. Five million dollars to whoever impregnated me first. My body, reduced to a vessel for their entertainment.

I connected my USB drive with shaking fingers and transferred the emails, along with screenshots of their calendar invitations for the Hamptons weekend. As I heard the distant splash of Ethan finishing his swim, I quickly closed everything and slipped out, the small drive clutched in my palm like a lifeline.

My piano bench—the one place in this mansion that was truly mine—became the hiding place for my evidence. I tucked the USB drive beneath the sheet music for Chopin's Nocturne in B-flat minor, a piece whose melancholy had been my only companion during three years of loneliness.

"Planning to practice today?" Ethan's voice startled me as I closed the bench. He stood in the doorway, hair still damp, a towel around his neck. The smile that once would have made my heart race now made my stomach turn.

"Perhaps," I replied, forcing my lips into a curve that felt like broken glass. "It helps me relax."

"Good." He crossed the room and placed a kiss on my forehead. "I want you relaxed for our weekend away."

The days that followed became an exercise in deception—one I learned I had a talent for. I smiled at Ethan's jokes, leaned into his touches, and pretended not to notice when he glanced at my phone while I was in the shower. My fertility tracking app was right there on the home screen, the predicted ovulation days highlighted in pink.

"What about this weekend for the Hamptons?" he suggested over dinner, his tone casual but his eyes calculating. "The weather should be perfect."

I took a sip of wine to hide my revulsion. "That sounds wonderful," I lied, noting how the date aligned perfectly with the peak fertility window on my app.

Three mornings later, I locked myself in the powder room off the kitchen—the one place without security cameras, I'd discovered—and pulled a small package from my pocket. The pregnancy test had been easy to acquire; a quiet word to Thomas, our chauffeur, was all it took. He'd returned from his errands with the test hidden in a bag of personal items.

I followed the instructions with mechanical precision, then set the plastic stick on the counter and watched as two pink lines slowly appeared. Positive. I was pregnant.

A wave of emotions crashed over me—joy, terror, rage, protectiveness. My hands moved instinctively to my abdomen. Inside me grew a child—*my* child—conceived in a web of lies and cruelty. But despite everything, I felt a fierce, primal connection to this tiny life.

I sank to the floor, my back against the cool tile wall. What now? I could leave immediately, disappear with my parents' help before anyone discovered my condition. Or I could stay, determine the paternity, and use that knowledge as the ultimate weapon in my inevitable revenge.

The child kicked—impossibly early, surely just my imagination—but in that moment, I made my decision. I would protect this baby at all costs. And to do that, I needed to know everything.

I flushed the test and its packaging, then washed my face with cold water. In the mirror, I hardly recognized the woman staring back at me—her eyes harder, her jaw set with determination. She looked like someone capable of bringing down an empire.

Perhaps she was.