Chapter One

In the seventh year of my father's affair, my mother was diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Her first reaction was to get down on her knees and beg the doctor not to tell my father.

Dr. Eleanor was so angry she cried.

"Rosa, who are you trying to be, some kind of saint?"

"You think this will make that bastard break down sobbing and see the light?"

"Punishing someone else by dying? Have you lost all self-respect?"

But Mom only smiled, her eyes resting gently on me.

"What would I want with his regret?"

"I'm going to win my Hope a future."

——

Chapter One

When Mom and I walked out of the hospital, Dad was already gone.

All he'd left her was a text.

My time is valuable. I've left.

Mom gripped her phone and stared at it, lost in thought.

It made me think of the past too.

I have hemophilia. For as long as I can remember, I've been in and out of hospitals.

Every single time, Dad would drop whatever he was doing and wait patiently.

Mom would tease him. "Don't you get tired of this?"

Dad would take me out of her arms and steal a kiss on her cheek.

"Never. Every second I spend waiting for you two makes me happy."

Squeezed between them, warm and snug, I was happy too.

Her finger trembling, Mom deleted the text.

Then she messaged Dr. Eleanor instead.

Did the fake health certificate get to Vivian?

When the answer came back yes, she walked me home.

Mom used to walk so fast and light that I could never keep up.

Now I had to hold her up just so she could walk.

The moment we got home, she ran into the bathroom and coughed up a mouthful of blood.

When she was done, she lifted her head and stared at the handprint on the mirror.

The blood was so dark it was almost black. I was terrified, and I called Dad right away.

There was a woman laughing on the other end of the line, but I was used to that. I pretended I didn't hear.

Crying, I told him Mom had late-stage stomach cancer.

Dad came home fast.

When he saw the shocking red in the toilet, he swept Mom up into his arms.

"Don't be scared. We'll go get you rechecked by the best doctors there are."

"I'm here. I won't let anything happen to you."

He'd always said the women on the side were just toys. The one he loved most would always be Mom.

He'd always been a man of his word.

But just then came the sharp click of high heels. Vivian, in her white dress, had shown up again.

She held her head high and slapped a piece of paper against Dad's chest.

"Vince, you're such a fool. That hag's been playing you and you don't even know it!"

"Late-stage stomach cancer? Please. It's just another trick to get your attention!"

"A friend of mine at the hospital sent me this. She's perfectly healthy!"

I could see it clearly. That paper was the very health report Mom had Dr. Eleanor fake.

I opened my mouth to explain, but Mom grabbed me and held me back.

All I could do was watch Dad's face go dark.

"Faking an illness to win me back, and getting Hope to lie for you."

"Rosa, you've really outdone yourself!"

Ignoring my pleading, Dad stormed out.

Mom watched him leave with his arm around that woman, and a faint smile appeared on her pale face.

I was sobbing so hard I could barely breathe.

"Mom, why are you pretending to be healthy?"

Mom gave a soft sigh.

"Because Vivian is too stupid."

"Too stupid to ever think of framing me for faking it."

"So I had to make the evidence for her."

"I'm building up moral credit. The more of it I build, the more he'll feel he owes you..."

"Besides, once your father finds out her report is fake, he'll never believe anything she hands him again."

I didn't understand.

All I knew was that Mom was dying, and so I cried even harder.

Mom wiped my tears, and as she wiped them, she started crying too.

"Vincent, you're so smart. How could you fall for an idiot like Vivian?"

Mom used to be the mistress of O'Malley, the boss of the Irish mob. Dad was a nobody, a low-level errand boy scraping and bowing for whatever scraps anyone would throw him.

One look across a banquet table, and a rose bloomed out of nowhere in that rotten soil.

Mom sweet-talked O'Malley into handing Dad a fortune, plus several blocks of territory and the businesses on them.

Later, the FBI put O'Malley away on racketeering charges. By then, Dad had become one of the most powerful men in New York's underworld.

While everyone laughed at him, he went looking for Mom, who'd been passed from man to man.

No more words were needed. They got married right away.

After they married, Dad spoiled her until she was the most dazzling woman in New York.

He gave her a château in France and a stake in the family's holding company.

When she got pregnant with me, he even spent a fortune to buy her the right to name an asteroid.

They could have stayed that happy forever.

Until I was born.