Chapter 2

Ivy didn't breathe for a full ten seconds. Then she dropped the test on the counter and shoved up the sleeves of her sweater. Her forearms were smooth. No cigarette burns. No white, puckered circles from the nights Dominic had pressed his Marlboro into her skin to see if she would scream. She grabbed the phone off the sink with shaking hands and typed in her old passcode. It worked. November 13th. Six years ago. She pinched the inside of her wrist until it hurt. It hurt. She was here. She was alive. She had come back to the exact day she found out she was pregnant with Noel. "Oh God," she whispered, and slid down the cabinet to the floor, both hands over her flat stomach. "Oh God. Baby. You're here. You're still here." She cried until she couldn't see. She cried for the little boy who used to hide at the top of the stairs whenever his father's car pulled in, just to catch a glimpse of him. Who never once dared to say the word Daddy out loud. Who asked her every Christmas if he'd been bad, because why else wouldn't Daddy and Grandma love him? She had been so weak last time. She had told herself that if she just took it quietly, if she paid for her mother's sins and kept her head down, her son would be safe. He died anyway. And they took his eyes before he was cold. Not this time. Ivy wiped her face with the heel of her hand and stood up. In the mirror, her amber eyes looked back at her, red-rimmed and dead calm. This time she would climb. She would lie, steal, smile, beg, whatever it took. Her son would not be born a dirty secret locked in a back bedroom. And every single person who had hurt him was going to pay. All of them. "Miss Hart! I'm getting the spare key!" Ivy opened the door. Doris Pratt, the head housekeeper, froze with the key halfway to the lock. Doris ran Dominic's lake house the way a warden runs a prison, and last time she had made Ivy's life hell in a thousand small ways. Cold food. Lost letters. Running to Dominic every time Ivy cried. "You scared me half to death," Doris snapped. "I thought you'd climbed out the window again." "The bathroom window has bars on it now, Doris. Remember? Dominic had them put in after the last time." Doris narrowed her eyes. "Don't get smart with me. Because of your little escape attempt, Tara got fired. I'm not losing my job over you." Ivy walked past her. "Murderer's daughter," Doris spat at her back. "Don't you dare act like the lady of the house. Mr. Pierce keeps you here as a punishment, not a girlfriend." Murderer's daughter. Ivy had been hearing those words since she was twelve years old. Everyone in Seattle knew the story. Twenty years ago, Harold Pierce, Dominic's father, drove off the coast road above Puget Sound and died. The woman in the car with him was Evelyn Hart, Ivy's mother. Evelyn's body was never found. The police said she ran. The Pierce family said she killed him. What Seattle didn't know was that Evelyn had also been Richard Shaw's mistress, and that Ivy was the baby she left behind. The Shaws had kept that part buried for twenty years. Inside the Pierce and Shaw households, though, everyone knew exactly whose daughter she was. Grandma June raised her on a farm in Montana until she was twelve. Then her father moved her into the attic of the Shaw mansion, where she lived like a ghost while her stepsister Celeste lived like a princess. And three months ago, when the Shaw Group needed a favor from Pierce Holdings, Richard had put something in Ivy's drink at a party and delivered her, unconscious, to Dominic's penthouse. A gift. A peace offering. A payment on an old debt. Dominic had kept her. Not as a lover. As a prisoner. Every day she spent at this lake house was another installment on the life her mother owed his family. Ivy let Doris talk. Doris was on her list. She just wasn't at the top. Because Ivy remembered exactly what happened next last time. Last time, she had been twenty years old and terrified. She hadn't wanted to give that monster a child. So she threw herself down the main staircase, hoping to lose the baby. She woke up with nine stitches in her forehead and a concussion. The baby was fine. Noel had always been tougher than both of them. But Dominic found out what she'd done. And to punish her, he made one phone call and had her grandmother's cancer treatment stopped. Grandma June went into the ICU that week. She died the day Noel was born. Alone. Ivy stopped at the top of the staircase and looked down at the marble steps. This time she wasn't going to fall by accident. And she wasn't going to fall alone. Ten minutes earlier, while she was still crying on the bathroom floor, she had sent a text. A photo of the pregnancy test and four words. To Celeste. I'm pregnant. It's his. Tires crunched in the gravel driveway. Right on schedule. The front door banged open, and the staff downstairs chirped, "Good morning, Miss Shaw." Celeste didn't answer them. Her heels cracked up the marble stairs like gunshots. Ivy's stepsister was beautiful. Blond, delicate, the kind of face photographers fell in love with. The Shaw family's golden girl. The famous young painter. Dominic Pierce's fiancée. Right now that face was twisted into something ugly. "You little slut," Celeste hissed when she reached the landing. Ivy tilted her head and smiled. "You don't look so good, sis." Doris, hovering at the bottom of the stairs, nearly rolled her eyes out of her skull. Ivy could practically hear what she was thinking. Sis? A bastard like Ivy had no right to call Celeste anything. Celeste whirled on her. "Did I ask you to stand there? Get out!" Doris scurried off. "Why yell at the help?" Ivy said. "She's not the one carrying Dominic's baby." Celeste swung her hand at Ivy's face. Ivy caught her wrist in midair. Celeste gasped. She tried to yank free and couldn't. Six years of scrubbing floors and carrying a child on her hip had made Ivy strong. Six years of Celeste had made her patient. "You're just like your whore mother," Celeste spat. "A murderer's daughter crawling into another woman's bed." "Another woman's bed?" Ivy leaned in until her lips nearly touched Celeste's ear, and dropped her voice to a whisper meant only for her. "He hasn't married you, Celeste. Legally, he isn't yours. So listen carefully. Starting today, I'm going to take it all. The Pierce name. Your place in the Shaw family. Your career. Everything you have, everything you think you are, I'm going to peel it off you piece by piece." Celeste stared at her. And for the first time in her life, Celeste Shaw looked afraid of Ivy Hart. Then fear turned to rage. "You'll never—" Both of Celeste's hands slammed into Ivy's chest. Ivy had her arms wrapped around her stomach before she hit the first step. The world flipped. Marble cracked against her shoulder, her hip, her head. Someone was screaming. Maybe her. The last thing she saw was Celeste at the top of the staircase, hands still stretched out in front of her, and every member of the household staff standing at the bottom. Watching. Witnessing. Good, Ivy thought, and everything went dark. When she opened her eyes again, every inch of her body hurt. She kept them closed. She knew that smell. Antiseptic and money. Pierce Memorial, the private hospital Dominic's family owned. Noel had been born on the fourth floor. A warm, familiar voice was speaking near the window. Dr. Evan Cole, chief of surgery, Dominic's best friend since boarding school and the only man alive Dominic actually trusted. "Stitches are fine. Mild concussion. But there's a complication." Paper rustled. "Here. Her blood work." "Just say it." Dominic's voice. Low. Bored. Lethal. It went through Ivy like ice water. Her fingers curled into the sheets. Evan sighed. "She's pregnant, Dom. About eight weeks." The silence that followed was so heavy she could hear the IV pump clicking. Then Dominic laughed softly. It was not a nice sound. "Then she keeps it," he said. "A woman with a child is so much easier to control."