Chapter 1

During my first year married into a family of unimaginable wealth, I finally get pregnant.

Margaret Blackwood, my husband's mother, is so ecstatic that she treats me like a fragile deity.

That is until the day of my ultrasound. The doctor points at the monitor, his voice trembling as he stammers, "You're having four grandsons."

I watch Margaret freeze like a statue. Pulling out my phone, I post an update to my social media. It reads that I am expecting quadruplets. My goal is overdelivered. Time to enjoy the good life.

Lucian Blackwood, my husband, comments a second later with a single question mark.

*****

My name was Harper Bennett, and I was aggressively average.

If there was anything extraordinary about me, it was the fact that I married Lucian Blackwood.

For those unaware, Lucian was the billionaire CEO of Blackwood Group, the kind of man whose side profile on a business magazine cover made women weak in the knees. He was disgustingly wealthy and unfairly handsome.

Our marriage, however, started with a legally binding contract.

The Blackwood family had a single heir for nine generations straight.

By the time Lucian reached his late twenties, he did not even have a girlfriend, let alone a son.

His mother, Margaret Blackwood, was so anxious about the bloodline that she was practically breaking out in hives.

That led to a meticulously orchestrated casting call for a bride.

The requirements were simple. The candidate needed a clean background, perfect health, and compatible birth charts. The most crucial requirement was supreme fertility.

Somehow, that lucky winner was me. I grew up in the foster system, I had zero family ties, and I possessed a medical report proving I was perfectly healthy.

The contract was brutally clear.

Getting pregnant within a year came with a ten-million-dollar bonus.

Delivering a boy meant an extra hundred million, a penthouse in the city center, and a lifetime of luxury.

If I failed, I would walk away after twelve months with five million dollars.

This sudden windfall fell from the sky and smacked me right in the face. I signed the paperwork right then and there. It was just having a baby, which I chose to view as the highest-paying job on the planet.

Married life was a bizarre mix of absolute boredom and high-stakes tension.

The boring part was that Lucian and I were essentially highly paid roommates.

He took the master suite, and I took the guest wing. Apart from fulfilling our scheduled reproductive duties each month, we barely spoke. He looked at me the way one might look at an expensive, walking incubator.

The stressful part was Margaret's relentless care.

Every morning at eight sharp, she appeared at my bedside, holding a glass of some murky, foul-smelling fertility smoothie. She would coax me to drink it fast, claiming it was a rare concoction of imported super-greens designed to optimize my reproductive system.

I would pinch my nose and gulp it down, convinced I was one sip away from spontaneous combustion.

By noon, the dining table was covered in foods rumored to guarantee a male heir. We had raw oysters, maca root powder, and pounds of organic spinach.

I ate with a blank expression, wondering why she was feeding me this stuff when Lucian was the one who needed the performance boost.

In the evenings, Margaret would send her staff up with weird essential oils and hot stones for my pelvic floor.

She insisted my core temperature needed to be perfectly balanced for conception.

I just nodded and sat on the heated cushions, feeling like a side of beef being prepped for the roasting oven.

Lucian completely ignored all of this. He probably figured his mother had finally found a new hobby besides nagging him about his life, and he was more than happy to let her have at it.

And so, after three months of Margaret's suffocating, round-the-clock fertility campaign, my period was late.

My hands were shaking as I stared at the two bright pink lines on the pregnancy test. It wasn't excitement. It was sheer terror.

This was way too fast. I haven't even finished enjoying my new life as a lazy, rich trophy wife.

I shoved the test into my pocket, deciding to keep it under wraps for a few days. I just wanted a little more peace and quiet.

But I couldn't hide anything from Margaret. She had a sixth sense for these things.

The next morning, the mere scent of the "wellness tonic" she insisted I drink made my stomach churn. I barely made it to the bathroom before throwing up.

When I finally stumbled out, Margaret was standing by the door. Her eyes were wide, scanning me with a terrifying intensity. She was staring at my belly so hard that I thought she might burn a hole through my silk robe.

Her voice was actually trembling. "Harper... are you..."

There was no way I could hide it now.

I sighed, fished the evidence out of my pocket, and held the pregnancy test up.

Margaret snatched it from my hand, holding it up to the light as if it were a rare diamond rather than a piece of plastic I had just peed on.

Three seconds later, a literal shriek ripped through the air, loud enough to make the windows of the entire mansion rattle.

Margaret clutched her chest, swaying on her feet. The butler and two maids rushed over to catch her.

"Madam Blackwood, what's wrong?" they cried out.

Margaret ignored them. She held one hand to her forehead and pointed at me with the other. Her face was clouded by a chaotic mix of tears and laughter.

"Quick. Call the pastor. Tell him we need a special blessing service immediately," she barked. "And find the best nutritionist in the country. I want them on call twenty-four-seven.

"Go to the vault and get that vintage emerald necklace I bought and give it to Harper right now. And someone get Lucian back here. Right now. This second."