Chapter 1

Three days after the miscarriage, I dragged my body to one of Manhattan's most exclusive private clubs.

Not to live it up — to buy my boyfriend Bradley a birthday present.

I'd met Bradley three years ago when he was just a mechanic.

Faded coveralls, hands that never quite lost the smell of engine grease, a half-basement apartment in Brooklyn where the windows sat level with strangers' ankles.

He said he was broke, so we kept it simple — no nice restaurants, no expensive gifts.

But tomorrow was his birthday, and I'd found a watch online.

Nothing fancy. Two hundred and thirty-seven dollars.

To most people, nothing. To me, right now, a small fortune.

Because three days ago, I lost our baby.

Twelve, maybe thirteen hours on my feet at the restaurant, and then my body just gave out.

By the time I woke up, it was already over.

Three thousand eight hundred dollars. Nearly everything I had.

When Bradley found out, he held me in that hospital bed and cried, voice breaking:

"I'm sorry, Molly. I'll work twice as hard. I'll fix cars day and night until I can give you a real life."

I believed him.

So here I was — six hours into a temp shift, lower abdomen still aching, body still not right — all for this. I wanted to surprise him.

Just after ten o'clock, I picked up a bottle of expensive red from the service station and made my way up to the top-floor suite.

The door wasn't fully latched. Through the gap came the sound of men laughing — loud, careless, the kind that belongs to people who've never had to count anything.

I raised my hand to knock.

Then I heard a name.

"Bradley, how much longer are you planning to keep this up?"

My hand froze.

The voice was lazy, amused: "I still can't believe it — the sole heir to the Astor family, grinding it out in Brooklyn for three years. What were you trying to prove? That some girl from the borough could handle the smell of motor oil?"

The air left my lungs.

Bradley. Astor family.

I pressed myself against the wall and peered through the crack.

The man who'd agonized with me over every grocery bill was now draped across a leather sofa, completely at ease.

Black bespoke suit. A Patek Philippe on his wrist. Two bottles of Ace of Spades on the floor beside him that I wouldn't have dared touch.

Around him sat young men and women in clothes that cost more than my rent.

His face wore an expression I'd never seen before — bored and elevated.

The man who'd scraped together rent money with me didn't exist. Maybe he never had.

"Relax," Bradley said, swirling his glass.

"My father made me a deal. Prove I can read people regardless of circumstance, and he hands me the keys to Astor's core operations."

"So you spent three years playing broke mechanic just to run a social experiment on some girl?" Someone slapped the table. "That's insane."

"It was a game," Bradley said simply, and took a sip.

Something cracked inside my skull — clean and quiet, like a hairline fracture spreading through glass.

A game.

I stared at his face through the gap.

The face I knew. The one I'd sat beside in a fluorescent-lit ER hallway at two in the morning while he slept in a plastic chair because he'd refused to leave. Or so I'd thought.

Three years. I'd covered his rent. Nursed him through a fever in a hospital that smelled like bleach and old coffee. Held his hand and told him we'd be okay.

And three days ago, I lost our child.

"Speaking of which," said a man with a cigar, his tone the casual cruelty of someone discussing the weather, "didn't your little Brooklyn girlfriend have a miscarriage a few days ago?"

My hand flew to my stomach before I could stop it.

Bradley raised an eyebrow.

No red eyes. No grief. He exhaled slowly, like a man setting down a bag he'd been carrying too long.

"Yeah. Honestly? Probably for the best." Something curved at the corner of his mouth that wasn't quite a smile. "If it had actually been born, I don't know what I would've done with that particular... complication."

My blood went cold.

The pain detonated outward from my abdomen — through my hips, my spine, the backs of my knees.

My legs buckled. I grabbed the carved molding on the wall and held on, knuckles white, until the floor stopped tilting.

"Fair point," someone agreed, still laughing. "A kid with no name showing up at Astor family events? Evelyn would've lost her mind. The engagement's next month — you can't exactly walk in with baggage."

Evelyn.

So the tabloid stories were real. Every single one of them.

All this time, I'd been the only one performing sincerity in a script he'd already written. The lead actress in a story where I was never meant to survive the third act.

I pressed my hand against my apron pocket. Felt the small box through the fabric.

Two hundred and thirty-seven dollars. Every cent earned on a body that should've been resting.

Inside the suite, crystal clinked.

"So when are you cutting her loose?" someone asked.

Bradley settled back into the sofa. "When I get bored."

I didn't wait for more. Didn't push open the door, didn't scream, didn't cry, didn't give him the satisfaction of a scene.

I turned around.

I handed the wine bottle to a server passing in the hallway, reached into my pocket, and without breaking stride, dropped the watch box into the trash can at the end of the corridor.

It landed with a soft, final sound. Like something small and breakable hitting the bottom of an empty container.

I stepped into the elevator and pressed the lobby button.

The doors slid shut, and the whole floor — the laughter, the crystal, the smell of money — disappeared behind polished steel.

For three years, I'd told myself love was enough. That two people who chose each other every day could outrun anything.

Standing in that elevator, watching the numbers count down, I finally understood.

Some people aren't too poor to give you a good life.

They just never intended to.