Three months into my pregnancy, a woman appeared at my husband's side.

Mature, striking, dripping with confidence. Nothing like me.

Every time she parted ways with my husband, she seamlessly rejoined hers.

I asked her to meet me.

I slid the photos of her and my husband's private rendezvous across the table.

"Does your husband know you're sneaking around with mine?"

Her red lips curved upward.

"I remember you.

"You're the one my son keeps on the side, aren't you?

"I heard you're pregnant. Well, so is my daughter-in-law.

"The Vance family doesn't accept children born to mistresses."

A bank card slid across the table toward me.

"Ten thousand dollars. Get rid of it, and buy yourself something nice to recover."

——

I stared at the bank card, then looked up at the woman in disbelief.

I'd always assumed she was just an older woman. Well-maintained, sure.

But she was actually my husband Brad Vance's mother?

"I take good care of my skin. Sorry for the misunderstanding."

Claudia Abbott, Brad's mother, tilted her red lips into a thin smile.

"My son likes to play around with women. That's his business.

"But there's one rule: no bastard children.

"Ms. Simmons, I suggest you take care of it yourself."

My hands flew to my stomach.

"But we're married!"

"You mean the marriage certificate?"

A man's voice came from the doorway.

Claudia turned with a smile. "Honey."

The two shared a brief kiss.

The man sat down beside his wife, smiling.

"Young lady, that certificate was fake. He'd already legally married the other girl by then. He was afraid you'd cause a scene, so he had some friends of mine stage the whole thing.

"Don't take it personally."

I stared at the man in front of me.

A titan of the martial arts world.

A master-level swordsman.

Jacob Vance.

"Mr. Vance..." The name left my mouth before I could stop it.

Brad Vance, the boy my father had taken in and raised, his birth father was the Jacob Vance? The man I'd only ever seen on television?

If it was him, then staging a fake marriage registration would have been effortless.

I pressed my hands against my belly.

No words came.

"Our daughter-in-law is also three months along.

"The Vance family has rules. We don't accept children from women outside the marriage.

"Our son was lost to us for a time when he was young. He didn't grow up under our guidance, and when it comes to women, he lacks the discipline a Vance man should have.

"He's caused you trouble. I apologize on his behalf. But this child..."

Jacob Vance pointed at my stomach. "You'd best handle it yourself."

Claudia was escorted to the Maybach by Jacob.

I sat alone in the chair.

I watched him shield her head with his hand as she ducked into the passenger seat, then close the door behind her.

Every gesture careful. Attentive. Practiced.

Exactly the way Brad treated me.

There was one thing the Vance men passed down without fail.

They cherished their wives.

Up until an hour ago, I'd believed I was one of them.

Brad came home to find me on the couch. I'd been sitting there for three hours, not moving.

He leaned in to kiss me, same as always.

For the first time, I pulled away.

His handsome eyes crinkled with amusement.

"What's wrong? Jealous?"

I said nothing.

"You went to see her?"

I looked at him.

"Babe, there's nothing between me and her."

He reached out, one long arm pulling me into his chest.

"Of course there isn't." I let my lips curl. "What could there possibly be between a son and his mother?"

The arms around me went rigid.

I pulled out a report I'd printed at the county clerk's office.

I pushed the phone toward him.

"Care to explain?"

Brad stared at the screen, at the civil registry that held no record of him and me.

The smile on his face stiffened.

Then slowly drained away.

He let out a long breath and released me.

"Yes. I lied to you."

"Why?"

My voice cracked before I could stop it.

"We had a deal. On the eighteenth anniversary of the day we met, we'd get married!"

Brad's shoulders sagged.

"I never planned to lie to you.

"But the girl has a fierce temper. She refused to be the other woman."

Those soft, heavy-lidded eyes turned to me, full of tenderness.

"I'm sorry, Desi. You've been wronged."

"I knew you first, didn't I?"

He said nothing.

"I was engaged to you first, wasn't I?"

Silence.

"Who is she?"

"Desi..."

"WHO IS SHE!"

Tears spilled down my face with the scream.

He gripped both my shoulders. "Easy. You're carrying a baby. Don't do this to yourself."

"Tell me who she is!"

I shoved him away, sobbing.

He faltered for a moment.

Then shook his head. "I can't."

"You want to protect her that badly?"

A bitter laugh tore out of me. "Afraid I'll show up at her door?"

"Desi."

Brad's voice went cold.

It was the tone he only used before stepping into a fight, a warning carved from ice.

"If you accept things the way they are, we can go on like this. The two of us.

"But if you insist on finding her...

"I'm sorry. Even you will pay the price for that."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "Brad!"

He picked up the jacket he'd just taken off.

"You're too worked up tonight. Cool down on your own. I'll come see you tomorrow."

"Are you going to your wife?"

His footsteps stopped.

He turned.

"Desi, you're crossing a line."

His Rolls-Royce pulled away without a backward glance.

I laughed.

Crossing a line.

I was the one whose line had been crossed.

Three months pregnant.

Which meant that girl had conceived at the same time I did.

The next morning I got dressed, put myself together, and walked into Brad's martial arts studio.

Two Rolls-Royces sat parked out front, one black, one pink.

One was Brad's.

The other had to be his wife's.

Inside, Brad was guiding a young woman through a form, adjusting her stance with both hands.

The instant I saw her face, every drop of blood in my body turned to ice.

How could it be her?

No wonder Brad had refused to let me find out.

My hand flew to my left arm, pressing the raised, ugly scar that would never fade.

That was the girl I had dragged out of a pack of thugs five years ago.

Back then, Margot Sullivan had been thin as a reed. Her family's martial arts studio had just been burned to the ground by their enemies.

Her parents had died in the fire, trapped in their sleep.

She was an orphan who hadn't yet learned her parents' craft.

Anyone could push her around.

That night, in a dark alley, I threw myself over a girl I'd never met.

I blocked the knife with my left arm.

I didn't know how to fight.

I'd only ever picked up a move or two from Brad.

By the time the struggle was over, I was covered in blood.

Margot had gotten away with scrapes.

When I woke up, she was kneeling beside my bed, crying, saying, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry."

In her, I saw the same defiance Brad had carried when he was young.

I gave her the money to reopen the studio.

Every day, I watched her train from her parents' old manuals until her body was mottled with bruises.

She said she would rebuild what her parents had built.

She said she would find the people who did it and make them pay.

Never again would she let someone else stand in front of her and take the hit. Because she'd been hurt.

The girl trained like she was trying to destroy herself, pushing her body well past its limits.

So I dragged her in front of Brad myself.

At first, he didn't want to take her on as a student.

"She's reckless, aggressive, impossible to teach. No instructor could handle her."

I massaged his shoulders, brewed his tea, sweet-talked him into compliance.

Coaxed him into letting Margot stay.

But after a while, I noticed I didn't need to put in a good word for Margot anymore.

Brad started extending her training sessions on his own.

Her technique grew sharper, more refined with each passing week.

When no one else was around, he even taught her lethal moves he'd never shared with anyone.

In the end, the people who'd burned down her family's studio were left broken and bleeding.

Sullivan Martial Arts Studio reopened.

Overnight, it became a sensation.

The three of us threw a small celebration.

Over drinks, she said the person she was most grateful to was me.

But I never imagined her way of showing gratitude was climbing into my fiancé's bed.

I wrenched the door open.

Margot, mid-session with Brad, looked up at me in surprise.

I crossed the room in three strides.

Shoved her hard.

"This is how you thank me?!"

Margot stumbled back a step.

Her eyes reddened. She lowered her head and said nothing.

"You're disgusting!"

"Desi!"

"Get out of my way!"

I tried to push past Brad's arm.

A hand clamped around my wrist.

He threw me to the ground.

"She's pregnant! What the hell are you doing?!"

I hit the floor clutching my stomach.

Stared up at him in disbelief.

Something flickered across his face, as though he'd just remembered I was pregnant too.

A flash of regret passed through Brad's eyes.

"There's nothing I can do about this."

"Nothing you can do..."

"The night of the celebration, we'd both had too much to drink."

Brad exhaled. "Margot saved my life once. You know I've made plenty of enemies over the years."

"She saved your life!"

My voice shook. "What about my father?

"Didn't my father save your life too?

"He didn't just find you on the street and raise you as his own son. He died for you!

"Because of all those enemies you made! My dad took a knife for you. Bled out from his heart!"

"And I've been repaying that!"

Brad's voice turned cold.

"Letting you be my kept woman. Isn't that repayment enough?

"Without that debt, did you really think you'd qualify to be my mistress?"

My body swayed.

I barely stayed on my feet.

Right...

Brad was Jacob Vance's son.

My family was nobody. A small household with nothing to our name.

We'd gotten lucky once, finding a lost little boy on the street.

Let him be my father's son for eighteen years.

But even with all those years of raising him,

it didn't change the fact that I wasn't good enough for him.

Was that really how it was?

I gripped the edge of the table.

Pulled myself up on shaking legs.

Brad reached out instinctively to steady me.

I shoved his hand away.

Then he saw what I slowly pulled from my pocket. A voice recorder.

"Without that debt, did you really think you'd qualify to be my mistress?"

"The night of the celebration, we'd both had too much to drink."

His own voice played back from the device.

I pressed pause.

His breath caught. "Desi..."

"You said I'm your kept woman, right?"

I smiled at him. "Then I should at least be getting paid."

My gaze drifted to Margot's earrings, worth half a million dollars at minimum.