Chapter 3

“Audrey, have you really become shameless enough to steal credit for anything Lila did?”

Bryce spoke first, looking down at me as if I were beneath him.

He had been the one who betrayed me, yet somehow everything had become my fault.

“Audrey, can you stop making a scene?”

Nolan sighed as well, as though he had finally put down a burden.

“If you’re going to lie, at least make it believable. I was stranded in Minneapolis. You grew up in New York City. How exactly were you supposed to cross nearly a thousand miles to save me?”

“And don’t blame me. Because of you, I nearly drove the person who actually saved me to her death.”

“That’s why I lashed out and used a sham courthouse marriage and fabricated trust documents to get revenge on you.”

“It was only fair.”

Fair.

Of course.

“Did you ever stop to wonder why Lila was in Minneapolis?”

I closed my eyes. I had never imagined I would be forced to tear open the most painful wound my mother and I had ever shared.

“I was there because my father had been keeping his mistress and her daughter in Minneapolis, and my mother found out! She took me halfway across the country to catch my father with his mistress!”

The snow had been bitterly cold that year.

Even the little warmth I had offered that night had come back to leave me colder than before.

“Audrey, enough. Stop lying to yourself.”

Nolan brushed a loose strand of hair from my temple with pity.

“I forgot to mention something. The cookies that little girl gave me were made with peanut butter.”

“You’re allergic to peanuts. Lila was the only one in your family who liked peanut-butter cookies.”

Everyone had always bent over backward for Lila. Why should my father have been any different?

He had forgotten my peanut allergy and brought me Lila’s favorite cookies, convinced he was doing something kind.

I never got the chance to say any of that.

Lila had already stepped forward and put on a fragile, tearful look.

“It’s okay, Uncle Nolan. You can say Audrey was the one who saved you. I won’t argue with her about it.”

“These past years were borrowed time for me anyway. As long as Audrey is willing to give birth to the baby Bryce and I are having, I’d accept anything—even death.”

Both men’s expressions changed instantly.

Bryce pulled her behind him and glared at me.

“Audrey, you hurt Lila once six years ago. I won’t give you the chance to do it again.”

Nolan soothed her with the same careful tenderness he had always used on me.

“Don’t worry. I won’t let anyone hurt you. Your baby will be born safely.”

That one promise silenced everything I had been about to say.

Suddenly, I was exhausted.

Nothing I said seemed to matter anymore.

Basking in the protection of both men, Lila looked openly triumphant. When she saw me standing there frozen, calculation flickered across her face, and she put on that fragile expression again.

“But I’m scared. What if Audrey tries to get revenge by ending the pregnancy?”

“At eight months, the baby can survive outside the womb.”

Bryce immediately agreed.

“She’s right, Uncle Nolan. Audrey is already eight months along. Why not deliver the baby by C-section now? Then Lila won’t have to keep worrying.”

“I won’t do it! Nolan, do you hear me? I will not give birth to that damned child. I’d rather die!”

I stared at Nolan and clutched his sleeve tightly.

He remained silent for a long time, his gaze settling on Lila’s tear-bright eyes.

After a moment’s hesitation, he gently pulled his sleeve free.

“It’s okay. It won’t hurt.”

In that moment, whatever remained of my heart died.