### Chapter 4

He hauled me into the car and dragged me home, then threw me into the bathroom.

He picked up the showerhead, twisted it to cold, and turned the water on me.

The water was freezing, and I kept flinching and twisting away from it.

"Randolph, are you out of your mind? I'm carrying your child!"

His eyes were red with the fury of a man who couldn't stand being defied. He roared.

"If anything happens to that child, it's the sin of you, its mother!"

I curled around my belly, sprawled on the floor, and remembered the day we first learned I was pregnant, when this man cried like a child.

He'd knelt in front of me, kissing my stomach again and again. "My baby, Daddy will give you everything, the very best. I swear it."

Half a year. That was all it took for him to stop caring about me, and about the child too.

Only when I was soaked through did Randolph throw the showerhead aside.

"Fix that princess temper of yours. The Farleys don't need an arrogant, overbearing lady of the house."

I looked into his cold, merciless eyes, and dimly remembered years ago, when I'd pouted and sulked because a pair of shoes I loved had broken.

He'd dropped to one knee, let me rest my foot on his trousers that cost a fortune, and gently rubbed it for me.

I'd asked him, half-joking, "Everyone says I have a bad temper. Will you get tired of me one day?"

"Other people can't handle it. I can. That way, you're mine for life."

Randolph, your life turned out so short.

I kept my head down, and on my dripping face the expression went colder.

"Fine. I'll let you have your way. Let's divorce."

Randolph took two steps, then stopped.

"What did you say?"

My voice had been too small. He hadn't caught it.

Before I could speak again, his phone rang. Lily's coy, weepy voice came through.

"Randolph, I twisted my ankle, it hurts so much."

His gaze flickered, hesitating, and then he walked out of the bathroom anyway. "Calm yourself down."

I watched him go without a backward glance, pulled at the corner of my mouth, and struggled up off the floor.

I held my parents' portrait, my fingers tracing the cold frame, shaking so hard I couldn't stop. "I'm sorry, Mom, Dad. Today's the anniversary of your deaths, and I couldn't even keep your things safe."

After a long while I wiped my eyes dry and gently tucked the frame into my suitcase.

Then I walked to the nursery next door and said quietly to the child inside me, "You must be disappointed too, having a father like this. Mommy's taking you away."

But the moment I pushed the door open, my head went hollow with a roar.

The ultrasound photo by the crib had been torn to shreds and scattered across the floor. In its place, the walls were covered with Lily's racy pinups.

The hand-painted forest and little animals had been painted over, the room turned a glaring fluorescent pink.

The 180 letters I'd written to my baby, the ones I'd kept in the cabinet, had been dumped into a metal pail and burned to ash.

I could barely stay on my feet. My voice came out shrill and broken.

"Who did this?!"

The housekeeper hurried over, stammering. "It, it was on Mr. Farley's orders."

He wiped at his sweat.

"Miss White wasn't feeling well, and Mr. Farley had us put the ashes in a sachet for her to wear, to ward off bad luck."

I couldn't hear anything but that shrill ringing in my ears.

My phone lit up.

A photo popped up.

Lily sat in Randolph's office chair, beaming. The sachet dangled from her finger, and she had something in her mouth.

I looked closer, and the blood in my body froze.

It was the pacifier I'd had custom-made for my baby.

"I figured I should reward him with something to 'bite' on too. What do you think makes a good reward?"

Staring at her message, the pain drove into me like a knife, into every organ, and the last thread of my reason snapped.

I rushed into the Farley Tower and went straight for the top floor. Randolph's secretary scrambled to block me. "Ms. Hughes, Mr. Farley is very busy right now—"

"Get out of my way!"

I shoved him aside and kicked open the door of the CEO's office.

In that instant, my legs nearly went out from under me.

### Chapter 5

Randolph sat on the couch, clothes half off, Lily coiled around him like a snake, her face flushed nearly red enough to bleed.

The moans and ragged breathing mixed with the sound of the couch knocking against the wall, and the cold spread through me.

When she saw me, Lily screamed.

Randolph froze for a second, then yanked his shirt over to cover her.

The scene in front of me was like some warped nightmare, the sour smell of it rolling toward me. I forced down the shaking in my body and asked him,

"Why did you destroy the nursery? Why did you burn the letters I wrote to my baby? Why give her the pacifier too?"

Lily's eyes went red at once. She shrank into Randolph's arms, her voice catching on a sob.

"I—I'm sorry, I get so anxious, I keep biting my nails, so Randolph gave the pacifier to me."

"I didn't know the ashes in the sachet were the letters you wrote to your baby. If I'd known, I never would have taken it."

She wept in little hiccuping gasps, as if she were the one who'd been horribly wronged.

I clenched my fists, the nails driving deep into the cut in my palm, blood running down.

Randolph only let out a contemptuous little laugh. He kissed Lily's cheek to soothe her, his tone utterly indifferent.

"They were just worthless junk. Put to use on you, they're worth more."

Worthless junk?

That room. From the first day I knew I was pregnant, I had poured every ounce of love into it.

I'd painted the picture on the wall stroke by stroke. The pacifier had taken months of searching the world over, asking everyone I could, before I settled on it. The letters I'd written night after night, deep into the dark. I'd thought I would keep writing them until she was grown, a gift to hand her when she came of age, the most precious thing she'd ever receive.

All of it ruined by her own father, just to make his mistress smile.

My voice scraped out of my throat, hoarse.

"Randolph, those things took me searching all over the world to get. I put so much into them—"

"Enough." He cut me off, his voice thick with irritation. "Can you stop making a scene? Lily's not even holding the past against you. She's willing to be the child's godmother. You should learn from her. Be more forgiving. Be kinder."

Destroying everything I'd poured my heart into for my baby, all to win his mistress a smile.

That was forgiving? That was kind?

"My child does not need a mistress for a godmother!"

I closed my eyes and held back the tears about to spill over.

I had always believed that, at least when it came to the child, he would do right by it. Only now did I understand how foolish I'd been.

The baby wasn't even born yet, and already he could strip away everything that should have been hers without a second thought, just to please another woman.

I didn't dare imagine it. If this child were really born, would she end up like Snow White, denied her father's protection, driven step by step into a corner by someone else?

I had still held one thin sliver of hope that Randolph could be a good father. In that instant, he destroyed my last illusion without mercy.

I couldn't speak.

His dark gaze dropped to my belly. Then he set Lily down gently, pulled his pants on without hurry, and walked toward me.

"All right, don't act like I've done something terrible to you." He hooked my chin up with a fingertip, the way he handled his mistresses. He looked at my red, swollen eyes. "Poor thing. I'll make it up to you."

His face wore that charming smile he always had, the smile that had once made me feel I was everything to him.

But when I looked at him now, this face I had spent ten years beside and loved for five had become so strange to me, twisted like a devil's.

The highest point in this city had once been where we began.

We had fought side by side here, building the new map of the Farley empire under the late-night lights, sketching out our dream of an empire on blank paper.

Dawn would break across the skyline, witness to an understanding that belonged only to us. On that couch, two figures had always lain sprawled, drained to nothing.

But now there was only a filthy stain left on it.

Precious documents scattered across the floor, trampled, footprints stamped over them.

Everything before me was foul beyond words.

"No need. Save it for your mistress."

### Chapter 6

I knocked Randolph's hand away and ran down the stairs, hunching over by the car as everything came up. As if I could empty my body of him, every trace of him in my memory along with it.

I went back to the "home" I'd built so carefully over five years. Dead center in the living room hung our wedding portrait, the two of us smiling so sweetly in it.

I grabbed the vase off the floor and smashed it straight into those smiling faces.

Crash.

The huge frame toppled over and shattered across the floor.

The housekeeper came running at the noise, fright on her face.

I pointed at the floor. "Burn every photo of me and Mr. Farley."

She froze a moment, didn't dare ask, and got to work.

She piled every album and frame, big and small, out on the lawn in the yard. The flames leapt up and burned through the whole night.

That night, Randolph didn't come home.

I spent the night looking at houses for me and the baby, then called my assistant. "That estate with the best view. Pay in full and close it."

Over the next few days, I packed my luggage and shipped it out, piece by piece.

My estate was on the other side of the ocean, somewhere Randolph would never find us again.

Randolph was lost in Lily's softness, oblivious to all of it, and indifferent. He did start sending things to the house, by way of compensation.

Couture jewelry, expensive prenatal supplements, heaps of designer baby goods. I didn't give any of it a glance. I had the staff sell all of it.

I'd stopped paying him any attention, but his and Lily's affair still blew through Atlanta's upper circles like wind.

He opened a bar for her and showed up every night to lend his support.

He made her the top draw in Atlanta, drove her around himself in a luxury car, the whole show rivaling a top celebrity's.

Some people envied her, said Lily was lucky, that Randolph had never been this generous with any mistress, going everywhere as a pair with her.

Word went around that she'd soon replace me as the Farley lady of the house.

Others said I was the one Grandpa Farley had personally claimed as his grandson's wife, holding half the Farley empire in my hands, and that what Randolph was doing was foolish.

Whatever they said out there, I no longer cared.

Within half a month, I secretly moved every asset under my name.

Two days left until I was gone.

It happened to fall on Farley's centennial gala, where I would appear as the Farley lady of the house for the last time.

The night before the banquet, Randolph came home.

"The housekeeper says you haven't been eating well lately," he said, touching my slightly worn face. "I've been neglecting you. Once the gala's over, I'll take you away somewhere to clear your head."

I turned my head aside. Randolph didn't seem to mind, just took my hand instead.

"There's some gossip online, saying Lily deliberately wrecked our marriage. I'll bring her tomorrow night, get a few friendly photos of the two of you, kill the talk."

In an instant my whole body went rigid, and I understood he hadn't come back for me.

"You want me to be a human shield for your mistress? Never."

The hand around mine tightened all at once. His gaze came down on me like a king's, merciless, and his voice landed word by word.

"I expect you to explain that you invited her yourself, to lend us your support."

My chest clenched. I looked at Randolph, then at the row of bodyguards outside the door.

He'd made up his mind to make me fall in line. There was no room to negotiate.

I closed my eyes and pressed down the bitterness rising in my throat.

"As you wish."

The next evening, at Farley's centennial banquet, the hall blazed with light. The champagne tower threw a thousand streams of light through the crystal chandeliers.

Every important Farley banquet was flawless.

I controlled the details myself from behind the scenes, from the music to the lighting, from the table arrangements to the careful touches on the drapery, while Randolph, with the presence of Farley's CEO, kept command of the mood with ease.

I'd assumed tonight would be the same.

The emcee picked up the microphone and began the grand introduction of the important guests. We'd spent tens of millions to bring in one of the most prestigious, most influential stars to headline.

But at the center where the spotlights converged, it was Lily who came gliding in on Randolph's arm.

And on her head she wore the crown that symbolized the Farley lady of the house.