I clutched the duty roster with Jemima Finch's name on it, my fingertips trembling. Shock and rage lodged in my chest so thick I could barely breathe.

I drove back to the Winfield house in a daze. It wasn't until the car bumped against a stone bollard that I snapped back to reality. I stared at the front door and felt like I was looking at a stranger's home.

Before I could push the door open, the sound of another car pulled up behind me. Miles walked in with Stella on his arm, all smiles.

He glanced at me without a shred of concern. Only impatience. He strode inside and said flatly, "Stella's pregnant. She's moving in for a while."

Then, almost as an afterthought, with that same clipped irritation: "You two know each other. Don't be petty about it. Would it kill you to lend a hand?"

I lifted my gaze. I let just the right amount of shock and hurt surface in my eyes, let my voice tremble. "Moving in? Miles, this is our home. Mine, yours, and Chloe's for seven years. She's an outsider. How can you let her move in here?"

I deliberately stressed the word outsider and looked past him at Stella.

She stood there in a cream-colored dress, one hand resting on her barely showing belly, her face the picture of fragile innocence. But beneath those doe eyes lurked something triumphant.

The moment she heard my words, she ducked her head and twisted her fingers together, playing the wounded lamb. "Miles, this is all my fault. I shouldn't have asked for something like this. I've upset Martha. I should just go. I don't want to cause problems between you two."

She made a show of turning to leave, but Miles seized her wrist and held it tight.

He whipped around and glared at me, brow furrowed. "Martha, are you done making a scene? Stella is carrying my child. She has no one else. What's the big deal about letting her stay? It's just one more place setting at the table. Do you really have to be this difficult?"

I stood frozen. Memories detonated behind my eyes.

There was a time he would have shielded me behind his back. A time when he'd scowl if another man so much as glanced my way, swearing that his girl would never suffer a moment's hurt.

Now he shielded someone else, and all his cruelty was aimed at me.

"Your child?" I laughed, and the sound was bleak enough to cut. "Miles, I am your wife. Chloe is your daughter. This is your family. What is she? Your secretary? Your mistress? You brought her into our home. Did you even think to ask the woman of this house?"

I raised my voice on purpose, trying to rip away that righteous mask he wore.

But Miles didn't flinch. He tucked Stella behind him, his tone cold as a blade. "My mind is made up. This is settled. Either accept it, or move out yourself."

That sentence shattered the last sliver of illusion I had left.

Seven years of marriage, and to him it weighed less than nothing.

I lowered my eyes to hide the frost gathering in them and feigned surrender. "Fine. I'll agree. But I have conditions."

He scoffed, voice glacial. "You think you're in a position to negotiate?"

"Go make dinner. Now. Stella likes seafood. Cook it yourself. If a single dish is missing, don't bother coming back inside."

My whole body went rigid.

He knew full well I was allergic to shrimp and crab. There was a time he wouldn't even let me set foot in the kitchen. Now he wanted me to handle them with my own hands.

I clenched my fists until my nails bit into my palms, my voice scraped raw. "Miles, you know I—"

"So what if I know?"

He cut me off. His eyes were ice, his tone stripped of every last trace of warmth. "Someone keep an eye on her while she cooks."

He turned, took Stella's arm, and guided her upstairs. His steps were brisk. He never once looked back.

I stood rooted to the spot, my fingers tightening around the voice recorder until my nails carved crescents into my palm.

The sharp sting of it didn't amount to a fraction of the pain in my chest.

The day Stella moved in, Miles cleared his entire schedule and waited on her hand and foot. He complained the housekeepers were too slow, so he carried the elegant gift boxes himself, wearing a tenderness on his face that had never once been mine.

I sat on the living room sofa like an outsider in my own home.

From that day on, Stella crowned herself lady of the house. She wielded her pregnancy like a scepter, ordering the staff around at every turn. Imported coffee, high-end supplements, leisurely strolls through the garden. The slightest inconvenience earned everyone a cold look and a sharp tongue.

The housekeepers seethed in silence. They came to me in whispers to complain, and I only said, calm and even, "Let her be. Just do as she says."

I was waiting. Waiting for her to slip up and show more of her hand. Waiting for Miles's indulgence to reach its breaking point. Waiting for the perfect moment to bring it all crashing down.

Chloe, meanwhile, was gradually warming up to Stella under her calculated charm offensive.

Stella kept buying all the snacks and toys I'd refused to give Chloe, cooing over her in that sugary voice, a stark contrast to my discipline. One evening I came home from work and heard laughter spilling from the nursery the moment I stepped into the living room.

I pushed open the door. Chloe was curled up in Stella's arms, clutching a brand-new Barbie doll, her eyes crinkled with delight.

She saw me. She didn't run over the way she always did.

Stella looked up, a saccharine smile fixed on her lips. "Martha's home. Chloe just loves this doll."

I recognized it instantly. The exact model Chloe had begged for on her birthday, the one I'd decided was too expensive. And Stella had used it to buy her way in.

I reached out to stroke Chloe's hair. She flinched and burrowed deeper into Stella's arms, her small voice barely above a whisper. "Mommy, Aunt Stella is nicer than you. She buys me lots of toys. You never let me have snacks or anything fun."

The words sliced through me like a blade of ice.

Seven years. Seven years of sitting up through fevers until dawn, holding her hands while she learned to walk, waking early every morning to make her breakfast, teaching her to read, teaching her right from wrong. I'd believed that seven years of devotion would earn me at least a sliver of her heart. One bag of candy from Stella, and it all crumbled to nothing.

I looked at Chloe's small, innocent face, and the last trace of warmth in my chest went out like a snuffed flame.

I withdrew my hand. My voice came out flat and still. "Is that so? Then you should stay with Aunt Stella from now on."

Chloe blinked, bewildered.

Stella's lips curled with triumph. She tightened her arms around the girl.

I turned and walked out of the nursery. The instant the door clicked shut behind me, the last flicker of light in my eyes died completely.

Miles. Stella. Chloe.

You stole my child. You hijacked my life. You trampled seven years of everything I gave.

Fine.

I walked into the study, locked the door, and opened my laptop. The cold glow of the screen reflected off eyes that held nothing but ice. Spread across the desktop were the files: every piece of evidence that Miles had been secretly siphoning off assets.

My fingers flew across the keyboard, backing up every last document.

Two days later, Miles appeared at my door holding a stack of papers, his expression arranged into something meant to look serious. "Martha, I need your cooperation on something."

The harsh light of the study fell across the header: Pruitt Group Supplementary Investment Agreement. The words practically burned.

I gripped the papers. My fingertips went white. Inside, I laughed, cold and bitter.

This agreement was a trap he'd dug well in advance. It demanded that the Pruitt Group inject three hundred million dollars into his shell company within seven days. Miss the deadline, and he'd seize control of the family's core holdings. Worse still, he'd listed me as a joint guarantor. One default, and the Pruitts and I would lose everything.

Miles had always been after the Pruitt fortune. He wasn't even bothering to hide it anymore.

"Dad finally agreed?" I arranged my face into eager delight, though behind my eyes there was nothing but frost. "You've been saying for months that cash flow was tight. What a relief."

Miles looked supremely pleased with himself, his tone dripping with condescension.

"Well, it helps having the Pruitt heiress on my side. Your father does have conditions, though. He wants both of us to sign, and there's a residential commitment addendum. Stella's pregnant. The master bedroom faces south, better for the baby. You'll need to move into the guest room."

I feigned shock. "That's our bedroom. We've slept there for seven years..."

He let out a cold laugh, his voice stripped of all pretense.

"My car just broke down, by the way. From now on, you can walk to pick up Chloe from school."

He watched the color shift in my face, then added with lazy menace, every syllable laced with ice:

"That stretch of road is crowded. Lots of traffic. She's still so small. If something were to happen to her, well, that would be unfortunate."

He shoved the papers toward me, impatient. "Sign, and the funds transfer immediately. You don't want Chloe to suffer, do you?"

He was using Chloe as leverage. He had no idea I already knew the truth: Chloe was never my biological daughter.

I lowered my eyes, arranging my features into a picture of reluctant anguish. "Fine. I'll sign. But I need to read through this carefully first."

"What's there to read? It's all been agreed on."

Miles kept checking his watch, visibly agitated. "Stella's waiting upstairs. I need to take her to her prenatal appointment after I sign."

I stood there, a dull blade sawing back and forth across my chest.

When I was pregnant, I had asked him once, carefully, timidly, to come with me to just one appointment. He'd frowned like I'd asked him to swallow glass, his face twisted with irritation, his voice thick with disgust.

"Prenatal checkups are a woman's thing. What would a grown man look like sitting in that waiting room? People would laugh."

All those freezing memories of sitting alone in examination rooms, clutching my own hands in my lap, crystallized now into the calm behind my eyes.

The more desperate he got, the calmer I became.

The last few pages of the document had already been quietly replaced with divorce terms and asset-freeze clauses. All I needed was for him to put pen to paper first.

I pretended to read carefully, asking about trivial details to stall for time.

Miles lost patience, just as I knew he would. He snatched the document out of my hands and signed without hesitation.

"Quit dragging your feet. What do you think I'm going to do, poison the ink?"

His signature slashed across the page in a careless scrawl. He didn't so much as glance at the clauses that followed before tossing the document back to me. "Your turn."

I picked up the pen. My grip was steady, my hand sure. I signed my name with the kind of composure that only years of swallowed rage could produce.

In that moment, every ounce of hatred I'd buried for seven years finally found its way out.

Miles Winfield, everything you owe me, I'm collecting with interest.

He gave a distracted nod and headed upstairs without sparing me a single look.

I dialed my lawyer the second he was gone. My voice could have frozen steel.

"The agreement is signed. Initiate divorce proceedings immediately. Freeze every account Miles Winfield has linked to Pruitt Group assets. Every dollar he's siphoned off stays right where it is. He doesn't walk away with a cent."

I'd barely hung up when Stella appeared in the study doorway, one hand bracing her lower back, her face arranged in the smug expression of someone who thought she'd already won.

"Martha, all signed? Guess you're not as stupid as I thought."

The venom surging behind my eyes found its target. I closed the distance in a single step and slapped her across the face with everything I had.

Stella staggered. Before she could recover, I seized her arm and forced her to the floor, driving my knee into her back to pin her there.

"Miles!" she shrieked. "Help me!"

Miles came barreling into the room, eyes wild with fury.

His foot slammed into my chest.

I lost my balance. My lower back cracked against the corner of the desk, and white-hot pain tore through my entire body.

He didn't even look at me. He crouched beside Stella and gathered her into his arms, his voice shaking. "Stella, are you okay? The baby, is the baby all right?"

Stella buried her face in his chest and sobbed, trembling with theatrical distress.

Miles lifted his gaze to me. His words dripped with poison.

"Martha, you psychotic bitch. She's pregnant, and you still put your hands on her?"

I braced myself against the floor, cold sweat beading across my skin as agony pulsed through my waist and stomach.

"Apologize to her. Now." His voice was a blade.

I bared my teeth in something that wasn't a smile and didn't say a word.

His face went ashen with rage. He stood, pulled out his phone, and dialed. "Get over here. Take her to a psychiatric facility. She needs to be treated for whatever's wrong with her head."

Bodyguards materialized within seconds.

I fought through the pain. While Miles bent over Stella, stroking her hair, murmuring reassurances, my fingers locked around my phone in a death grip.

Fingerprint unlock. I dialed the number I knew by heart.

One ring.

"Dad, Miles is trying to have me committed..."

My sister's voice burst through the speaker, urgent and fierce.

"I heard what Miles has been doing to you. I'm coming right now. I'm bringing you home."

The bodyguards pinned me to the cold floor.

I lifted my eyes and stared at Miles. His gaze was glued to Stella. His fingertips traced slow, reverent circles over her belly, as if he were cradling something priceless.

And me? I was just the inconvenient lunatic in the room.

"Miles, are you blind? Can you not see what she really is beneath all that fake sweetness? Seven years ago, the two of you conspired to swap my baby. Seven years you've been scheming together to destroy me. Did you really think I never figured it out?"

The color drained from his face. For one instant, raw panic flickered in his eyes before fury swallowed it whole.

"What the hell are you raving about? You've completely lost your mind!"

"I've lost my mind?" I pointed straight at Stella, every word ripped from somewhere deep and bleeding. "You two are the ones who drove me to this! Stella, do you have the guts to admit it? Admit that seven years ago you paid Jemima Finch to switch my baby. Admit you've been lacing my supplements with poison. Admit that every last bit of it was for the Pruitt fortune!"

Stella's face went chalk-white. She burrowed deeper into Miles's arms, forcing composure into her trembling voice. "Miles, she's having a breakdown. Listen to what she's saying. It's insane. I never did any of that. Never."

"Still lying!"

I lunged for her, desperate to drag the truth out, but Miles seized my wrist and squeezed until the bones ground together.

"Enough!"

He shoved me backward. I stumbled, and the back of my head cracked against the doorframe. A dull, throbbing pain bloomed across my skull.

He raised a hand toward the bodyguards. "Get her out of here. I don't want her dirtying Stella's sight."