1 I was carrying a steaming bowl of gingerscented hangover soup when Derrick Hayes announced his engagement to the only woman who had ever truly owned him.

The ballroom of the Hayes estate was a sea of tailored tuxedos and champagne silk.

Through the crowd, I saw them: Derrick, his arm wound possessively around the waist of a girl dressed in pristine white. Serena Cross.

The industry’s newest darling, the pristine screen siren, and the ghost that had haunted every single corner of my four years with Derrick.

They whispered something to each other, and then Derrick pulled her in for a long, bruising kiss beneath the glare of chandelier light and smartphone cameras.

The room erupted into polite applause and breathless congratulations.

I stood frozen in the peripheral shadows, the porcelain bowl searing through the linen cloth into the flesh of my palms. It was so hot my fingers trembled.

Serena pulled back with practiced modesty, pressing a manicured hand against Derrick’s chest. "Stop it, Derrick.

Everyone’s looking." Derrick let out a low, arrogant laugh, his grip tightening on her waist to assert absolute possession. "Let them look.

I want the whole damn world to know you’re mine." Something inside my chest snapped, clean and hollow. My hands lost their grip.

The heavy ceramic bowl crashed onto the hardwood floor with a deafening shatter.

Boiling broth and shredded ginger splattered across my bare ankles and the back of my hand, instantly raising angry, blistering welts. Derrick turned at the sound.

When his eyes caught mine, a flicker of irritation crossed his features. He hadn't expected me to be in the main hall.

Biting down on my inner lip until I tasted copper, I dropped to my knees to gather the jagged porcelain shards. "Derrick?" Serena tilted her head, her voice dripping with wideeyed innocence. "Who is she?" Derrick’s mouth tightened.

A dismissive smirk curled his lips. "Just the housekeeper." "Oh," Serena cooed, gliding closer on Derrick’s arm.

She stood right above me, looking down like a tourist observing an exotic insect. "The help really should be more careful." "Clumsy, useless thing," Derrick snapped, his voice cutting through the hum of the party like a whip. "Go make another one." I looked up at him through the blur of steam and humiliation.

The coldness in his eyes made my stomach hollow out.

Just last night, that same man had locked the bedroom door, pinning me against the headboard until dawn, whispering desperate, breathless demands into the crook of my neck.

Now, he looked at me as if I were dirt tracked across his Persian rug. "Did any splash on you, baby?" Derrick murmured to Serena, his tone softening into a tenderness I had spent four years starving for. "I’ll have her make you some shaved ice." "I'm fine," Serena said, but then gasped, pointing a finger downward. "Derrick, look at her wrist..." I panicked, instinctively pulling my cardigan sleeve down to hide the dark, ringshaped bruise encircling my skin—the violent purple mark his fingers had left only ten hours ago.

Derrick’s brow furrowed. "What the hell are you doing?" Before I could move, his hand clamped onto my upper arm and yanked me violently to my feet.

Leaning in, his voice was a venomous whisper in my ear: "Don't you dare act like a cheap whore in front of Serena." He shoved me away with casual disgust.

My heels caught on the slick broth. I stumbled backward, crashing fullforce into the fivetier champagne tower behind me.

The crystal pyramid collapsed in an avalanche of shattering glass and golden foam. Sharp fragments tore through my stockings, slicing into my calves, my palms, my waist.

Thin rivers of crimson began pooling against the pale marble. Scattered chuckles rippled through the gallery of guests.

Serena let out a theatrical, handovermouth squeal. "Oh my god! Derrick, she’s bleeding! Shouldn't you... shouldn't you help her?" Derrick didn't even look at the blood.

His voice was bonedry, devoid of an ounce of humanity. "Help a maid? She doesn't deserve it." I drew in a sharp, ragged breath.

The sudden, crushing realization hit me: it was over. The game, the devotion, the quiet endurance—it had all amounted to nothing.

I pulled a napkin from a nearby tray, pressed it haphazardly against my bleeding forearm, and knelt back down into the mess. One by one, I picked up the shards of glass.

Across the room, Derrick was already clinking crystal flutes with an oil magnate, laughing as if nothing had happened. I was invisible.

A piece of discarded trash in his gilded house. "Derrick," Serena’s gentle voice drifted over again, sweet and lethal. "She looks really hurt." Derrick didn't bother turning around. "Leave her.

She won't die." My knees were shredded, kneeling directly on sharp crystal, but strangely, I couldn't feel the sting.

All at once, a wave of violent nausea surged from my gut to my throat.

I clamped a hand over my mouth, scrambled up from the puddle of champagne, and bolted toward the corridor restroom.

Behind me, Serena’s puzzled voice carried over the chatter. "What's wrong with her?" "Faking it," Derrick replied with a cold sneer. 2 I collapsed over the porcelain toilet, dryheaving until my throat felt raw and burned with acid.

Three years ago, the night of my college graduation, Derrick had offered to drive me home. Serena had been in the car, along with his older halfbrother, Dominic Hayes.

The memory was a nightmare of twisted metal, screaming tires, and black ice.

When the car rolled, it was Derrick who had been trapped beneath the crushed frame, bleeding out into the dirt.

I had crawled back into the smoking wreckage, tearing my hands to ribbons to drag him clear.

At the hospital, when the trauma team ran out of his rare blood type, I offered my own veins without a second thought. I had given him my youth, my blood, my silence.

And in return, his promises had burned to ash.

A sharp, disgusted click of a tongue came from the restroom doorway. "Ugh, disgusting." Serena stood there, delicately pinching her nose with a linen handkerchief. "Derrick, do you think your little maid is pregnant?" Derrick stepped up behind her, leaning lazily against the doorframe as he lit a cigarette.

He exhaled a stream of grey smoke, his eyes flat and uninterested. "A stray like her?

She isn't worthy of carrying my blood." He flicked an ash toward the sink. "If you're going to puke, Paige, get the hell out of the main house.

You're offending Serena." I gripped the edge of the marble basin, my knuckles white.

A sudden, sharp cramp tore through my lower abdomen—a tearing, violent spasm that made my vision swim. I looked down.

Warm, dark blood was trickling down the inside of my thigh, dripping past my torn hem and staining the ivory tiles.

Serena gasped, a theatrical flutter in her chest as she pretended to offer me a tissue. "Oh!

She’s bleeding down there too!" Derrick didn't even drop his cigarette. "What a pathetic nuisance." I reached out a trembling hand for the tissue.

Just as my fingers brushed it, Serena released it with a cruel little smile. The paper drifted into the toilet bowl, sinking into the foul water. Discarded. Just like me.

Serena poked out her tongue playfully. "Oops.

Butterfingers." Derrick chuckled, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. "You're too cute, Serena." He turned her away from the door, his parting words slicing through the hallway air: "Make sure you have the seafood bisque ready for us by seven tomorrow morning." The heavy door slammed shut.

Through the solid wood, their laughter still filtered in. "Derrick, you're so mean to her.

What if she runs away?" "Let her," Derrick’s voice rang out, confident and brutal. "She was a charity case I picked up off a scholarship list. She has nowhere to go.

Even if she walks, she’ll be on her knees begging to come back within three days." A charity case. A caged bird. No, less than that. Just a convenient, obedient fixture.

A wet, broken laugh escaped my throat as hot tears tracked through the grime on my cheeks. Derrick would never know.

Inside the zippered pocket of my coat hanging in the hallway was a pristine ultrasound report from this morning. Seven weeks.

Conceived the night he came home drunk, pinning me down on the leather sofa, burying his face in my hair and groaning, “Paige... give me a baby.” I had planned to tell him tonight.

Now, there was no need. I struggled to stand, my legs shaking so violently I nearly fell back onto the bloody floor. My phone vibrated in my pocket.

A text from Derrick: [Pack your shit and clear out of your room tonight.

Serena’s bringing her dog over; it needs the guest suite.] I stared at the screen as heavy tears hit the glass, blurring the harsh pixels.

Suddenly, the deep, mechanical rumble of an engine vibrated through the foundation of the estate, followed by the crunch of heavy gravel outside.

Guests began rushing toward the foyer. Serena’s voice echoed through the house: "Look at that RollsRoyce...

Who is that?" Even through the walls, I could hear the sudden drop in Derrick’s voice—tense, guarded, stripped of his easy arrogance.

Then, every light in the entire mansion abruptly died. Total darkness. Ping. My phone screen illuminated in the black room. A video message had been forwarded to my device.

It was security footage from the library, timestamped thirty minutes ago.

Serena had been casually leafing through a stack of mail, holding up a medical envelope. "Derrick, what if she really is pregnant?" Derrick had smirked into his scotch. "Then we get rid of it.

Nothing gets in your way." My breath seized. My hand flew to my stomach, cold horror wrapping around my spine. He was truly a monster.

Immediately following the video, a voice memo autoplayed in a low, resonant baritone that sent a shiver down my neck: "Miss Evans.

You have thirty seconds to decide: are you getting into my car, or are you waiting for them to find your bloodsoaked ultrasound report on the floor?" 3 I stared at the glowing screen, my pulse hammering in my throat.

The voice belonged to Dominic Hayes. Derrick’s older halfbrother.

The reclusive, ruthless heir who controlled the Hayes conglomerate from the top floor of a glass tower in Manhattan. The black RollsRoyce idling at the curb belonged to him.

I had barely spoken ten words to Dominic in the three years I had lived with Derrick. I locked my phone, my fingernails digging into my palms. I couldn't trust him.

Men with the Hayes surname were all cut from the same rotten cloth.

I slipped out through the service door, keeping to the shadows, and retreated to my room in the west wing to dress my wounds before I vanished into the night.

The moment I pushed the door open, the suffocating stench of wet red paint hit my lungs, sending me into a coughing fit. The room had been utterly desecrated.

Streaks of bloodred industrial paint covered the walls and the mattress. The wardrobe stood wide open, every piece of my clothing shredded into ribbons on the floor.

My favorite lipsticks were snapped in half; my pressed powder compacts were stomped to dust, mixed with the wet crimson paint like pools of dried gore. "Do you like it?" A foul, rawmeat odor preceded the voice.

Serena stepped through the doorway, holding a thick leather leash. "My little beast ran out of chew toys, so I let him use your things. You don't mind, do you?

Besides, this is his bedroom now." Behind her lumbered a massive, blackandtan Tibetan Mastiff.

The beast was colossal, its eyes bloodshot and predatory, thick strings of saliva dripping from its bared fangs.

It was the kind of aggressive breed banned by city ordinances, a walking weapon. The dog paced the perimeter like an apex predator claiming territory.

As it passed me, it deliberately slammed its heavy shoulder into my injured calf. The impact knocked me off balance.

I crashed hard onto the hardwood floor, barely catching myself with my shredded palms. A sharp, searing agony lanced through my pelvic bone.

The beast stepped forward, resting its massive, heavy forepaws directly on my shoulders.

Its hot, rotten breath blew directly into my face, making my head spin with nausea. "Oh dear, are you okay?" Serena said, her voice mockingly sweet as she reached down to ruffle the beast’s thick mane. "He just likes making new friends.

You're so fragile, falling over like that." She leaned in, smiling down at me. "Smell her good, boy.

A cheap scent like that doesn't come around often." The mastiff let out a low, guttural growl, its muscles tensing. Suddenly, the overhead emergency lights clicked on.

Derrick stood in the doorway, one hand in his pocket, watching the scene with cold, detached amusement. His gaze swept over my trembling, bloodstained legs as if assessing roadkill.

I looked at him, one last, pathetic spark of hope flickering in my chest. Please.

Just once, remember what we were. "Stop being dramatic," Derrick said flatly. "Get up." The mastiff lunged forward, shoving its snout hard into my lower abdomen.

A wave of blinding, bonedeep pain tore through me. Fresh, hot blood soaked through my trousers, pooling on the floor beneath my knees.

Serena let out a theatrical shriek. "Derrick, look!

She... she wet herself!" The scent of blood drove the dog into a frenzy; its teeth snapped inches from my ear, held back only by the taut tension of the leash in Serena’s grip.

Derrick’s eyes darkened slightly. Serena’s foot nudged my overturned canvas bag. Her eyes caught the corner of the folded white paper that had spilled out.

She picked it up, unfolding it with malicious glee. "A pregnancy confirmation? Well, well... our little maid really did get knocked up." Derrick’s expression warped into pure fury.

He crossed the room in three strides, his fingers locking around my throat like an iron vise, lifting me until my toes barely grazed the floor. "Paige Evans," he snarled, his spit hitting my cheek. "You fucking dared?" I couldn't breathe.

Black spots danced across my vision. And in that suffocating darkness, the last remnant of my love for him withered and died. I didn't struggle.

Instead, a bloody, ragged laugh tore from my throat.

I raised a bloodsmeared hand and laid it gently over his forearm. "Don't worry, Derrick." I met his murderous gaze, enunciating every single syllable through my bruised windpipe: "Nobody wants your seed." Derrick’s pupils contracted.

His grip tightened, the cartilage in my neck clicking under the pressure. "What did you say?!" The pain was incandescent, but my smile only widened. "I said... what makes you think the baby is yours?" Derrick dropped me as if burned.

I hit the floor like a broken ragdoll, the crimson stain spreading outward around my hips.

As my consciousness began to slip away into the dark, I heard Serena’s panicked, manufactured cry: "Call an ambulance!

I think she's dying!" Derrick’s response was ice: "Let her die. Saves me the trouble of getting my hands dirty." Let her die. Four years. My entire youth.

Offered up on an altar to a man who thought of me as disposable trash.

In the final second before the world went black, the screen of my phone lit up on the floor beside my face: [Look out the window.] With the last ounce of strength in my body, I shifted my eyes toward the rainlashed floortoceiling glass.

Through the storm, the black RollsRoyce sat motionless in the driveway. Standing outside under a black umbrella was a tall, imposing silhouette.

Dominic Hayes held a folder against the glass, letting the headlights catch the bold print. It was an exact duplicate of my prenatal report.

Before the dark swallowed me whole, Dominic’s deep voice resonated through my earpiece: "Paige Evans... guess what Derrick's face will look like when he finds out you're carrying my child?"