I received a text from Caleb, the boy who grew up with me. [If you’re willing, you and Lily will be my only family. Forever.] I looked up at the TV. On the screen, Dominic Vance—tech mogul and head of the Vance dynasty—was holding an emergency press conference to address the rumors about his secret life. [Let me be clear. I am single. I am not married, and I certainly do not have a daughter.] I looked down at the text on my phone. Then, I looked at my daughter, sitting beside me, tears welling in her confused eyes. Finally, I made up my mind. With blurry vision, I typed my reply: [Come get me. I miss you.] 1 I stared at Dominic’s handsome, indifferent face on the screen. For a moment, I felt a strange sense of dissociation. To the public, he was a cold, calculating machine. A man of deep reserve who never let his emotions show. They called him a stoic workaholic. They were wrong. Dominic had an insatiable hunger. Before his last business trip, he ignored my tears and my pleas for rest. He used his silk tie to bind my wrists, pinning me beneath him, taking me four times in one night. In a moment of exhaustion, I had bitten his neck. The mark was probably still there, hidden beneath his collar. That navy blue tie with the subtle pattern? I picked that out for our anniversary. It has been four years since we started this life together. We have a lovely daughter. She just turned three. But now. My "husband" in everything but legal paper, Dominic Vance, was standing in front of flashing cameras, using his coldest voice to erase us. "No marriage. No child." "It is public knowledge that I have been single for years." He pushed his gold-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his high nose. His dark eyes held a chilling light that seemed to pierce through the camera lens and freeze the blood in my veins. "I advise those harboring delusional fantasies to stop embarrassing themselves." 2 After dropping that bombshell, Dominic stood up abruptly. His security team and personal assistants immediately swarmed him, clearing a path through the reporters to his waiting car. I turned off the TV with stiff fingers. The living room plunged into darkness, save for the dim, lonely light of a floor lamp in the corner. That’s when I heard a low, stifled sob. I turned around and saw my little girl. Her face was streaked with tears, her expression a heartbreaking mix of grievance and confusion. She stood there, frozen. "Lily?" I got up quickly and rushed over to hug her. "Why aren't you asleep, baby? Why did you sneak downstairs?" Lily buried her wet face in my chest. Her lip trembled as she choked out a question. "Mommy, why did Daddy say he doesn't have a daughter?" "If he doesn't have a daughter... what am I?" My heart shattered into a million pieces. Dominic was strict and quiet. Though he provided for Lily, he was rarely home and rarely smiled. Lily admired him, but she was also afraid of him. She was sensitive. She understood rejection. As my own tears began to fall, the obsession I had held onto for so many years suddenly dissolved. It turned to dust. I wiped the tears from her cheeks. "Lily, do you want to leave this place with Mommy?" "Where are we going?" "Are we coming back?" I looked down and smiled, though it was sad. "No. We aren't." "This isn't our home." I looked at her, deadly serious. "This is your Uncle Dominic's house." "We've stayed here a long time, and we've bothered him enough." "So, it's time to go to our real home." Lily nodded, half-understanding. "I listen to Mommy. Where Mommy goes, Lily goes." "Good girl." I carried her back to her room and kissed her soft forehead. "Sleep now. Mommy is right here." Once Lily was asleep, my gaze fell on the picture frame on her nightstand. It was a photo of the three of us. The only one we had. In the photo, Dominic sat upright, looking regal and detached. I was holding a one-year-old Lily, smiling shyly, my body leaning slightly toward him. He was not leaning toward me. I picked up the frame and left the room. I took the scissors from the drawer. As I cut the photo, I realized something. The gap between our bodies in the picture—the space where we didn't touch—was there for a reason. It was there so that today, I could easily cut him out of our lives. 3 A week later, Dominic returned from his trip. It was ten o'clock at night. In the past, no matter how late it was, Lily and I would wait for him. But tonight, Lily was asleep. And I wasn't in the master bedroom. I was in the guest room on the second floor. When I heard the familiar roar of his engine, I was sitting on the balcony, staring at a document on my phone I had received six days ago. A vasectomy report. "Elena, if you say yes," the text from Caleb read. "I will treat Lily as my own." "She will be my only daughter. My only child." I stared at those words until the screen went black. Until I heard Dominic’s footsteps on the stairs. Until he came down from the third floor, stood outside the guest room, and knocked. "Elena. Open the door." I wiped my face and shoved the phone under my pillow. "I'm sleeping. We can talk tomorrow..." The door opened before I finished. It was Dominic’s house. He had the master key to everything. "Why are you in the guest room?" He sounded displeased, his voice colder than usual. I sat up and looked at him. He looked tired from the long flight, rubbing his temples. His voice was raspy. I ignored the last shred of heartache I felt for him. I looked away. "I haven't been feeling well. I didn't want to get you sick." "I don't care about that. Move back upstairs." When I didn't move, he frowned slightly. "Elena?" "I want to sleep, Dominic. You should rest too." He didn't answer. He walked to the bed, bent down, and scooped me up into his arms. "It's been a week. Don't tell me you don't want this." He lowered his head to kiss me. I turned my face away. He paused, surprised, and then his expression darkened. "Elena." "What kind of tantrum is this?" 4 In four years, I had never rejected him. His drive was high. Unless he was traveling or I was sick, he wanted me every night. Before, if he had been gone a week, I wouldn't have slept at all that night. And I would have been happy. Because only in bed did I feel like he might actually love me. I used to be afraid of his anger, but secretly, I craved it during intimacy. Once, we argued, and I ran off to a friend’s house for a week. He came to pick me up personally. In the penthouse suite, he loosened his belt with one hand, his face like thunder. He pressed me against the floor-to-ceiling window. I cried until my voice was gone, but he wouldn't stop. "Elena," he had gritted out, "if you ever try to run away again, I will break you in this bed. Crying won't help." Maybe I was broken. I used to like seeing him lose control because of me. But now? My body was closed off. Dead water. Just like my heart. I struggled out of his arms. "Dominic, let's separate." I looked at him calmly, then laughed at myself. We had a child, yet I could only say "separate." Because we didn't even have a marriage license. Just a contract. He looked stunned, then his voice dropped. "Is this because of the press conference?" I wanted to scream. It wasn't just the denial of our relationship. It was the denial of his daughter. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Lily’s confused face. I couldn't forgive that. "Yes." "You know that was just PR. A necessary statement for the stock market." He looked at me with that stern, CEO expression. "I am very busy, Elena. I don't have time to soothe your emotions over something so trivial." I tried to keep my hands from shaking. "I don't need you to soothe me." "I'm serious." "We can tear up the agreement. I just want Lily." Dominic’s eyes flashed with mockery. "You're using Lily to threaten me? You want me to go public?" "No..." "I told you, that is impossible right now." He interrupted me sharply. "Elena, I indulge you in many things." "But on this, there is no negotiation." He looked down at me like I was a stranger. The room was climate-controlled, but I was freezing. The cold seeped into my bones. "Think about it tonight. When you come to your senses, move back upstairs." He turned and left the guest room. The door slammed shut. I pulled the covers up. In a few days, Dominic’s grandfather, Arthur Vance, would return from his health retreat. Arthur was the one who had set us up. If he nodded, I could take Lily and leave. The Vance family was old-fashioned. Dominic’s mother hated me and ignored Lily because she wanted a high-society daughter-in-law. Me leaving would make everyone happy.
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