Chapter 1 - THE BABY HE WOULDN’T TOUCH
Julian stood beside my hospital bed like he was attending a board meeting.
Not the birth of his daughter.
Not the first morning of Maya’s life.
A board meeting.
I was still shaking from the C-section, pale blue hospital gown twisted beneath the blankets, one IV taped to my hand and our newborn daughter fully swaddled against my chest.
Maya made a soft little sound in her sleep.
I looked at Julian.
“Do you want to hold her?”
He did not even look at the baby.
“I already have a son with Victoria.”
The room seemed to lose oxygen.
My sister Sarah, who had been sitting quietly near the window, looked up so sharply the chair creaked.
I pulled Maya closer.
“You had a baby with her?”
Julian adjusted the sleeve of his charcoal blazer.
“Four months ago. My family already met him.”
For several seconds, all I heard was the hospital monitor.
Soft beeps.
My own broken breathing.
The quiet city morning beyond the windows.
Victoria.
His assistant.
His former assistant, supposedly.
The woman he had told me was “ambitious but harmless.”
The woman whose name I had stopped mentioning because every time I asked, Julian made me feel childish.
He looked at Maya then.
Not with tenderness.
With calculation.
“I’m not putting your daughter into the Vance family structure.”
Your daughter.
Not our daughter.
My hand tightened beneath Maya’s blanket.
Sarah stood slowly.
“What does that mean?”
Julian ignored her.
I felt something inside me crack so cleanly it almost sounded calm.
“You’re choosing them?”
He looked straight at me.
“I’m choosing the future of my family.”
My tears stopped.
I looked down at Maya’s tiny face, mostly hidden inside the white hospital blanket.
She was less than twelve hours old.
Already, her father had decided she was a threat to a future he preferred.
I looked back at him.
“Then this is the last moment you’ll ever get from us.”
For the first time, Julian’s confidence faltered.
Not because he believed me.
Because I had not pleaded.
Sarah moved to the tray beside my bed and placed a closed brown folder on it.
Julian saw it.
The color drained from his face before anyone opened a single page.
Sarah’s voice was cold.
“Elena, show him what Victoria signed.”
Julian stepped back.
“Where did you get that?”
The nurse near the doorway looked from him to the folder, then to me.
May you like
And I realized Julian had not come to the hospital to meet Maya.
He had come to inform me that he had already replaced her.
