Chapter 1

Mia was stopped at the school entrance.

Silas Sterling squatted in front of her, his expensive watch peeking out from under his tailored suit sleeve. His tone was as clinical as someone performing a DNA test.

Mia looked up at me. “Mom, this man is saying he’s my father again.”

She took a step back after saying that.

It wasn’t fear.

It was pure distaste.

Silas stood up and looked at me, his lips twitching. “Eloise, Serena can’t conceive. I need this child.”

I gripped Mia’s hand tightly.

“Six years ago, you told me this child had nothing to do with you.”

“Now you say you need her?”

“You’re too late.”

1

Mia is seven years old this year.

She didn’t call me mom until she was two. It wasn’t that she couldn’t, but that she didn’t want to. She would stare at my mouth for a long time before turning away, as if she didn’t see the point in addressing me at all.

I taught her later: “You only have a mother, no father.”

She asked me why.

“Because that person isn’t worthy,” I told her.

She tilted her head, pondered it for a moment, and gave a serious nod.

Later, when her kindergarten teacher asked where her father was, she replied calmly, “I don’t have a father.” Her tone was as casual as mentioning she didn’t bring an umbrella. The teacher paused, then wrote a note in her file: “Single-parent household, pay close attention.”

I didn’t say anything when I saw that note. I picked Mia up from school, bought two ice cream cones, and we sat on a garden wall to eat them. Mia ate slowly. The cream dripped down the cone, and she caught it with her hands.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“What is a father?”

“It’s not ‘what’ at all.”

“Then why does everyone else have one?”

I looked at her. She wasn’t being needy; she genuinely wanted to know.

I said, “It’s something you don’t need.” She nodded and kept eating her ice cream.

Silas was a classmate of mine in college. Architecture major, same year, different classes. We met in the library during our junior year. He was sitting across from me, drawing a perspective of a villa, when his pencil lead snapped. He looked everywhere for a sharpener, so I handed him mine. That’s how it started.

The year Mia was born, Silas had been at Summit Development for two years. Summit was a top-three firm in the state. When he started, he was just drawing basic construction blueprints for a measly salary. I don’t know how he ended up catching the eye of the Brooks family.

To be precise, he caught the eye of Serena Brooks.

She was the only daughter of the CEO, two years older than Silas, and had just returned from abroad with a fake title of Design Director. Within six months of meeting her, Silas was the actual head of the design department at Summit.

I only found out about all this later. When Silas was with me, he only ever said his firm was busy and he had to travel. I believed him. Not because I was naive, but because I was buried in my work. I was working on an interior design project for a hotel, and the client was demanding. I worked until 2 AM every day; I didn’t have time to think about anything else.

The day Mia was born, I called him from the delivery room. His phone was off. The next day, he sent a text: “I was with a client last night, my phone died.” I didn’t reply.

Later, I learned from someone else that the night of the Summit Development annual gala, Silas was Serena’s date. They walked the entire red carpet arm in arm.