### Chapter 1

On my due date, with a dull ache spreading through my belly, I was about to lie down on the ambulance stretcher when my husband dragged me to the curb and hailed me a ride-share instead.

"You've just got a stomachache. It doesn't mean the baby's coming today. Maya Abbott's finally getting her chance to experience 'being a mother.' Let her go first."

I stared at him, unable to believe it.

Austin Yates didn't even furrow his brow.

"You know Maya's uterine wall is thin. She may never be able to carry a child her whole life."

"I already promised her. I'd see her through the whole experience of having a baby."

I felt warm liquid running down the inside of my thigh. When I spoke, my voice had gone hoarse. "Austin, my water just broke!"

He sighed and looked at me the way you'd scold a child who didn't know any better.

"Don't scare yourself. This is Maya's one wish. You're her older sister. Would it kill you to let her have it? Once she's done, there's plenty of time for you to deliver."

Then he tossed down ten dollars of cab fare and lifted the fake heiress, Maya, into the ambulance.

I watched the ambulance scream off into the distance, and then a contraction hit and I doubled over from the pain.

I got lost at six, and my parents took in Maya, two years younger than me. Ten years later, the Fox family found me and brought me back, but the real daughter never once got treated as well as the fake one.

The biggest, sunniest room? My mother said Maya was delicate and had me give it up to her.

My brother's luxury cars, worth millions? Because Maya got carsick, the front passenger seat was always hers, and only hers.

The day of my engagement banquet happened to be her birthday, and my fiancé skipped the entire thing to keep her company.

And now, with a single "trouble conceiving," even as I was half dead from the pain, I was supposed to hand over my chance to "have a baby" to her first.

The ride-share driver ran three red lights getting me to the hospital. A nurse rushed me into the delivery room, glancing around, confused.

"Ma'am, where's the baby's father?"

What surfaced in my mind was Austin, gently stroking Maya's fake pregnant belly. I answered calmly.

"He just died."

A secondhand father like that, my child doesn't need.

...

The fluorescent light overhead went even paler in that instant, and the nurse froze.

Then she gave me a look full of pity. "Your husband is surely watching over you and the baby from heaven."

The contractions sharpened, and I screamed and clenched fistfuls of the sheet.

Through the pain, what rose up before me was the day I confirmed I was pregnant, Austin with his eyes gone red, holding me and crying with joy. The scene was still vivid.

When the painkiller went in, my whole body was shaking, and I couldn't tell if it was the cold or the pain.

I walked through the gates of death, and only then did I bring my daughter into the world.

Weak beyond words, I was moved into a hospital room, where the voices of other patients' families drifted in from the hallway.

"Did you hear? The CEO of Yates Group pulled every OB specialist in the hospital away to give his girlfriend a 'birth experience.' He even hired postpartum care and a nutritionist. He's spoiling her more than if she were actually having a baby!"

"Mr. Yates really is a good boyfriend. Other men should take notes."

The hand feeding my daughter went still.

The voices kept seeping in, finding every crack.

"Right? Yesterday I saw a pregnant woman come in on a ride-share, all by herself. There was only an intern doctor left for her. She screamed a whole day and night before the baby came. Isn't that pitiful?"

No wonder the doctor who delivered me had been so clumsy, botching the instruments until I was hemorrhaging below, slipping in and out of consciousness.

So it turned out it was only because he'd pulled all the doctors away and given them to Maya.

My vision blurred, and I wiped the tears away as fast as they came.

I looked down at my daughter curled against me, rubbed her soft little cheek, and something inside me settled into a decision.

I picked up the phone by my pillow, about to make a call.

A message from Austin popped up, relentless as a death summons.

"Don't rush to have the baby. Maya's still going through her 'difficult labor.'"

"If you deliver too early, the OB doctors won't be able to keep up, and it'll ruin Maya's experience."

"Oh, and don't tell anyone you're my wife. If people find out Maya isn't my girlfriend, her reputation will be destroyed."

Staring at these absurd words, I laughed until the tears came.

He really had outdone himself.

For Maya, he could actually bring himself to say "don't rush to have the baby."

He wanted me to accommodate her difficult-labor experience, her emotional pacing, her precious reputation.

But when he handed her my quota of anesthetic, he never once thought about whether I'd have a hard labor, whether I'd be in pain.

When he worried about her being talked about, he never once thought his own child would be called a "bastard."

Austin, take your time seeing her through the birth.

I won't be joining you.

I opened my contacts and dialed my lawyer friend.

"Zoey , I want a divorce. Please help me prepare the papers."

### Chapter 2

My friend went quiet for two or three seconds, then her voice went sharp. "You're not joking, are you? Everybody knows you'd give your life loving Austin Yates."

My chest was tight enough to hurt. When I spoke, I'd never been so certain of anything. "I'm leaving him. The sooner the better."

Zoey didn't ask anything else.

"Okay. I'll get the divorce papers ready as fast as I can."

I'd barely hung up when Maya's Instagram update pushed to the top of my feed.

"Turns out playing 'mommy' is so much fun. Thanks to a certain someone for humoring my little 'games.'"

She'd posted a string of videos.

In a luxury delivery room, Maya sat surrounded by specialists, legs spread, hamming up a laboring woman's screams.

Austin waited on her hand and foot, peeling an orange, wiping her forehead, rubbing her feet.

I carried our child for ten months, and he never once brought me so much as a basin of warm water to soak my feet.

I stared at the newest clip. In the water, he held Maya from behind to "help her deliver," coaxing her gently. "Come on, almost there. Just a little more and you won't have to suffer anymore."

I once told him I was scared of the pain and wanted to try a water birth. He'd asked coldly who was going to answer for it if it lowered the baby's IQ.

Something wrenched hard in my chest.

I let out a bitter little laugh.

So it wasn't that he didn't know how much agony childbirth was. He just didn't care about me.

That night, after I'd rocked our daughter to sleep, I picked up the phone to tell my family she'd been born. The room next door suddenly came alive with noise.

"Austin really came through for you. He should've married you from the start, not that knockoff." That was my brother's voice.

He'd once congratulated me on finally marrying Austin, saying it was me all along who'd been promised to Austin since childhood.

My father picked up the thread.

"That cheap little girl stole everything from Maya, and now she gets to be a mother too. My poor Maya only gets to play at it for a bit..."

He'd once knelt in his study to thank me.

Said if I hadn't handed over the billion my adoptive parents gave me, the Fox family would've been finished.

My hands and feet went numb. Step by step, I made my way next door.

Through the crack in the door, my mother stroked Maya's head with such tenderness, then rolled her eyes. "So calculating. Blood daughter or not, so what? Don't think for a second I'd take her side."

She'd once bragged to relatives that she'd staked her own reputation to recommend my brother, and only then had he landed his government post. Said I was the daughter she loved most.

But every kindness from the people I thought were closest to me had been an act.

Behind my back, I was the knockoff, the cheap girl, the scheming slut who stole her sister's fiancé.

Austin sat at the edge of the bed and didn't say half a word in my defense.

"You should focus on Maya. She's been so brave these two days. I'm proud of you."

My heart was already cramping with pain.

Bang! The door slammed open under my hand.

"The two faces on all of you. It's disgusting!"

They all stared when they saw me, eyes wide.

In his panic, my father knocked over the mountain of gifts they'd brought Maya.

I'd had my baby, and not one of them had bought her so much as a little outfit.

"Dorothy, listen to your father..."

I didn't want to watch the fake performance a second longer. I turned and walked out.

I hadn't even cleared the hospital when Austin came charging out of the building and threw an arm across my path.

There was no delight in his eyes at the baby in the stroller.

He didn't ask whether the birth had gone all right.

He clamped down on my wrist, his face cold. "Come home with me."

He gripped hard enough to crush the bone, and I fought against him.

"Home? So you can all keep humiliating me?"

Austin faltered, glanced down at the baby, and eased his grip a little. "You screamed at Maya and scared her into a panic attack. They're still working to stabilize her. Go back and apologize."

"Having a baby doesn't give you the right to be rude."

"Why should I apologize to her? She's the one who stole everything from me. She's the one who was rude, and she's the one all of you crowned with special privileges."

I was furious enough to lose my head, but I was afraid of waking the baby, so I didn't even dare fall apart.

Austin's brow creased.

"Your family only favored her a little because she grew up with no real family to love her, and they slipped and misspoke. Don't be so unreasonable about the bigger picture."

I laughed until my eyes were wet. "Then what exactly do you want from me?"

He reached out, trying to stroke my face and calm me down.

"Admit you were wrong. Make up with Maya."

"She's had a hard few years. She feels like she stole half of your family's love, and the guilt has driven her into depression. But she never owed you anything."

Rain fell from the night sky, and the biting cold seeped into my skin, into my heart, until even my soul was frozen.

I laughed and lowered my head to avoid his touch.

Tears mixed with rain and struck down into the cold night.

"I'll mail you the divorce papers, Austin."

His gaze tightened. Then a distinctive ringtone went off at his waist.

He answered without hesitation.

Maya sobbed something I couldn't make out, and he immediately turned his back to me, his voice going soft. "Don't cry. Dorothy's going to apologize to you. She's just petty, that's all."

### Chapter 3

"You're still doing the newborn-care class tomorrow, right? Get some rest tonight. Tomorrow I'll make you the prettiest mommy there."

He kept coaxing until Maya finally laughed through her tears, and only then did he hang up.

When he turned back to me, his face had gone cold again.

"You just had a baby, so I won't hold tonight against you."

He tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"Divorce? Where do you think you'd go if you left me? You think the Fox family would take you in?"

"Besides, you'd have died for me once. You think you can walk away from me?"

Back then, in the crash, I'd shoved him out of the car with everything I had and gotten myself pinned behind the twisted metal door. The scar was still on my shoulder. And now he was using it as leverage against me.

He went to keep Maya company without looking back.

The rain came down harder. I quickly pulled off my coat and draped it over the stroller.

Shivering, I dug out my phone to book a ride, and the next second an off-duty doctor pulled me into her car.

"I saw the whole thing. Why would you want a husband like that?"

She started the engine as she spoke. "When I had a hard labor, my husband stayed with me two days and two nights without closing his eyes. He cooked my recovery meals, got up in the middle of the night to take the baby on his own. He spoiled me and our child down to the bone."

I took the towel she handed me and wiped my wet hair, my nose stinging in secret.

Austin had gone three days and three nights without sleep for me once too.

When I was eighteen, I was kidnapped by an enemy of the Fox family. By the time they got me back, I was soaked in blood from head to toe.

The doctors said I might never wake up.

Austin, who had never believed in anything, knelt before the statue of the Virgin Mary and bowed his head, praying over and over.

In the dark, I could almost hear his prayer crossing every mountain and river, saying he would give up everything he had for me to open my eyes.

That year the rain poured down just like this. Maybe God was finally moved by how sincere he was, because after three days and three nights, I woke.

But Austin had knelt so long in the rain that his knees were nearly ruined.

I cried and cried because it hurt me to see it, and he just held me in his arms. "As long as you're all right, it's worth it, whatever happens to me."

There wasn't a single flaw in that young, honest love.

Why, in only seven or eight short years, was none of it what it used to be?

The doctor's sigh echoed through the car.

Bitterness rose from the bottom of my heart. I wanted an answer too.

Maybe everything changed the day Maya pulled out her medical records and announced, red-eyed, that she might never be able to have children.

He missed our most important wedding anniversary to take her to an art exhibit.

At my first prenatal checkup, in the middle of all that chaos, he left me there to go with her about a stye on her eye.

He turned the nursery I'd decorated myself into a piano room for her, saying that even if Maya could never be a mother, she at least deserved something to lean on.

When I got angry, he called me narrow-minded.

I thought that if I just kept enduring, one day he'd be moved. I thought he'd finally see how much I'd swallowed.

But every time I stepped back, what I got was him blocking me from getting into that ambulance with his own hands.

When I sent Austin the divorce agreement my friend had drawn up overnight, all he replied was:

"Knock it off once you've had your fun."

He was too sure of himself.

Back then it was me who'd cried and begged him to marry me, made a scene the whole city talked about, everyone telling him not to spoil me.

He figured this was the same. I'd act out for a couple of days, then come running back to him, meek and sorry.

But I didn't want to keep waiting for a turnaround that would never come.

After I nursed my daughter one more time, I curled up on the bed, worn out in body and mind, and fell asleep.

Half-dreaming, I thought I heard some movement over by the crib.

I assumed it was a maid coming to change the baby's diaper. My eyelids were too heavy to lift.

When I opened them again, the rain had stopped, and the sky was bright.

My phone buzzed on the pillow. Maya had posted on Instagram again.

In the photo, Austin and Maya were pressed close together, the two of them holding a little baby, lips puckered, kissing the baby's cheek at the same time.

The lights of the high-end postpartum care center were warm to the point of glaring, like a promotional shot of a family of three.

The caption.

"Being a mommy for a day~ Before anyone gets petty about it, let me say up front: the baby wasn't my idea, Austin practically forced her on me. "

My hand, about to lock the screen, went still.

The heart-shaped birthmark on the baby's forehead, the position, the shape, was exactly the same as my daughter's.