Chapter 1

Our anniversary dinner was supposed to be a celebration, five years of marriage, ten years of building our tech startup from nothing.

Ethan raised his glass, his smile usually warm, now just a little off.

"To us, Ava. To many more."

I smiled back, but a knot was already tightening in my stomach.

He'd been distant for weeks, a new kind of distant.

Then he said, "There's someone I want you to meet."

A young woman approached our table, all wide eyes and a nervous smile.

"Ava, this is Tiffany. She's an intern at the company, a real go-getter."

Tiffany. She looked barely out of college.

"It's so nice to finally meet you, Mrs. Hayes," Tiffany said, her voice a little too sweet. "Ethan talks about you all the time."

The waiter brought our anniversary cake, a small, elegant thing I' d picked out.

As Tiffany leaned in to "admire" it, her hand somehow knocked a full glass of red wine.

It arced through the air, a perfect red stain blooming across the white frosting.

"Oh, my gosh, I am so, so sorry!" Tiffany gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. "I'm so clumsy."

Ethan just sighed, a flicker of annoyance, but then he patted her arm.

"It's okay, Tiffany. Accidents happen."

He didn't look at me. He didn't see the ruined cake, or my ruined evening.

The rest of the dinner was a blur of forced conversation.

Later that night, back in our large, empty Seattle house, the truth came out.

Not all at once, but in pieces, like shrapnel.

"Ava," Ethan started, unable to meet my eyes. "Tiffany… she's pregnant."

The words hung in the air, cold and heavy.

"And the baby," he continued, his voice low, "it's mine."

I felt the floor drop out from under me.

My breath hitched. I couldn't speak.

"My father… Arthur Sr., he knows. He's… he thinks this is important for the Hayes legacy."

His father, always obsessed with a male heir, with continuing the family name in the business.

Our business. The one I co-founded. The one I poured my life into.

"He expects you to understand, Ava. To accept Tiffany, and the baby. Junior, they're calling him Junior."

Accept them? Into our home?

"She'll live here, with the baby," Ethan said, finally looking at me, his eyes pleading, but weak. "Just for a while. Until things settle down."

He was actually asking this of me.

My heart didn't just break; it shattered.

"This baby is crucial, Ava. For the family. For the business."

He tried to take my hand. I pulled away.

"I still love you, Ava. This doesn't change that."

Lies. Every word felt like a lie.

He said it was for his father, for the legacy. He didn't say it was for me.

I nodded slowly, a strange calm washing over the storm inside me.

"I understand," I said, my voice flat, unrecognizable even to myself.

He looked relieved, the fool.

He thought I was accommodating. He thought I would just… bend.

Later, when the house was quiet, and Ethan was asleep in the guest room he' d retreated to, I picked up my phone.

My fingers trembled as I scrolled to a number I hadn't dialed in years.

Liam Walker. A rival tech CEO. A name from a past I barely let myself remember.

The phone rang twice before he answered, his voice deep, familiar.

"Ava?" He sounded surprised.

"Liam," I said, my voice barely a whisper. "That offer you made a long time ago… the desperate one… is it still on the table?"