she would never enter. She was just Ava, a woman with a good heart and hands that knew how to work, a life built on independence, not inheritance. Yet, she was marry

is mother at family dinners or hear th

ve up his trust fund, his seat on the board, everything. "It's all just stuff, Ava," he'd said, his arms wrapped around her in their small, sunlit apartment. "You're all that matters." His sacrif

in the wreckage, Noah's fate was reforged. He was no longer the disowned son; he was the sole heir. The weight of the Harrison empire fell squarely on his shoulders

s brother. But behind the closed doors of the Harrison mansion, a place Ava now lived in but never felt at home, the air was thick with pressure. His mother, Mrs. Harrison, a woman with eyes like chips of ice, spoke of line

e she recognized. Olivia Harrison, her widowed sister-in-law. Ava pressed her ear to the heavy oak door. The words were not of grief or family business. They were intimate, secret. "The family needs an heir, Noah," Olivia's voice was a silke

not speak unless spoken to at the dinner table, Ava." "Your posture is unacceptable." "That dress is entirely too... common." Each correction was a small cut. Ava endured it, believing it was a test, that Noah was

Olivia and Mrs. Harrison. "A child from her would be a stain on the family line," Mrs. Harrison said, her voice dripping with venom. "We must handle it." A few days later, after drinking a cup of tea Mrs. Harrison had insisted she have,

s the only way to prevent future complications, to save her life." Ava felt a chill that had nothing to do with the hospital air. She wanted to scream, to protest, but the dru

he key was in his desk drawer, a place he thought she'd never look. Her hands trembled as she opened it. His neat, controlled script laid out the truth in cold, hard ink. The miscarriage wasn't an accident; his mother and Olivia had orchestrated it. And the surgery... it wasn't to save her life. It wa

verything. The love she felt for him curdled into something cold and sharp. Her grief turned to ice. She closed the journal and put it back, her movements precis

nce in a thriller novel, a company that specialized in new identities, in disappearances. "