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.

"You say you're repaying a debt of gratitude. But your idea of repaying it is watching the daughter of the man who saved you wear clothes off the clearance rack, two for thirty bucks?

"Brad, I had no idea you'd already gone back to your real family."

I smiled, mocking and sharp, and leaned toward him.

"Your father. Jacob Vance himself.

"What's the matter? That afraid of me finding out you've moved up in the world?"

"Desi, I actually—"

"Since you've already called me your kept woman."

I cut him off and held up the voice recorder. "A million dollars a month. You can manage that, right?"

"Desi…"

"I know you can afford it."

I stared at him, ice cold. "Young Master Vance."

Brad closed his eyes for a long moment.

A sigh escaped him. "Fine."

I wasn't worthy of the man Brad Vance had become.

I accepted that.

But since I couldn't have his love,

I'd take his money.

What he owed me was worth far more than a million a month.

He moved me into a villa.

The first month's payment hit my account, and he came home too.

"Desi, I was going to tell you. I just… hadn't found the right time."

"It's fine. Now we both know."

"Desi, I was just worried you'd misunderstand—"

"Don't worry, Young Master Vance."

I flashed him a smile. "Relax. I'll never cause trouble for your family."

I brushed past him, shoulder checking his on the way out.

He turned to look at me.

The rims of his eyes were faintly red.

Brad came home often.

I just never received him.

Sometimes he tried to hold me. I always stepped away, never letting him so much as touch a finger.

Our interactions were limited to his wire transfers and the occasional hollow pleasantry.

Until the day Claudia found the villa.

She wasn't there to confront Brad about keeping a woman on the side.

She was there to demand why I hadn't gotten rid of the baby.

"Didn't I make myself clear? The Vance family will never acknowledge some mistress's child!"

I said nothing. Just smiled, cold and thin.

"What, you think if you push this baby out, you can force my son to make you his wife?"

Claudia's laugh dripped with contempt. "Let me spell it out for you. Without my approval and his father's, no one will ever recognize this as his child!"

"Of course it's not his child."

I raised my voice. "This baby is inside my body. It will only ever be mine."

Claudia froze.

"I truly cannot understand how every single one of you talks about this baby being yours or his, but not one of you has considered that this baby is mine.

"I'm the only one carrying this child. What gives any of you the right to decide whether it lives or dies?"

Brad had already stepped out of the bedroom.

I turned to look at him, my smile razor-edged.

"You can call your lawyers right now. We'll sign an agreement. This child has nothing to do with the Vance family.

"Because this child…

"belongs only to its mother."

"You—!"

Claudia's jaw clenched.

Brad stepped forward and caught his mother's hand before it could swing at me.

"Mom. Drop it."

"What is that supposed to mean? You're protecting this homewrecker?!"

Brad exhaled slowly. "Mom, she knows her own mind. Once she's decided something, she doesn't turn back. She made this decision before she ever got pregnant."

Brad was heartless in many ways.

But he read people well.

Claudia ground her teeth. "You think running your mouth changes anything? I'm telling you, until his father and I say otherwise, you will always be the other woman."

"The other woman?"

I laughed. "Let me tell you what 'the other woman' really means, Aunt Claudia.

"Your daughter-in-law, Margot Sullivan, knew full well your son was my fiancé and still got pregnant with his child. She married him before I ever had the chance.