Chapter One

I’d been secretly married for five years. My son’s fever wouldn’t break, and I had no choice but to bring him to work.

The chairwoman’s new male assistant threw a suspension notice in my face. “This is an office, not a daycare. Take your little bastard and get out.”

I laughed in his face, picked up my son, and pushed open the door to the chairwoman’s office.

In front of every executive in the company, I set my child down on her desk. “Mrs. Whitmore, your grandson is sick.”

“That fine son of yours hasn’t been home in a month. You can clean up this mess!”

Chapter One

Noah burned against my arms like a coal fresh out of the fire. And he set off every bit of the rage I’d been swallowing for five long years.

The air around us froze.

This was Midtown Manhattan. The top floor of the Whitmore Group’s headquarters, the inner sanctum outside the chairwoman’s office.

Up here, even people’s breathing usually had a careful, metallic edge to it.

Right now, because I’d barged in, the whole floor had gone dead silent.

The chairwoman’s new assistant, Trevor Gage, still had a smug sneer plastered on his gelled-up face. It froze at the corners of his mouth before he could wipe it off.

The suspension notice in his hand had been knocked to the floor by the gust when I shoved the door open. It lay there like a white moth that had fluttered twice and died.

“Jillian Kent! Have you lost your mind?” His voice was shrill enough to hurt.

I ignored him.

All I could see was the woman behind the enormous walnut desk, her face as still and dark as deep water. The iron-fisted head of the Whitmore Group, Margaret Whitmore.

She was also my mother-in-law.

A mother-in-law who, for five years, had existed mostly as a name in Colin’s mouth. A woman so far above me that I could count on one hand the times I’d really met her.

The door to the conference room next door stood wide open. A room full of executives in tailored suits turned their heads in unison. Their eyes swept like searchlights between me, the flushed, feverish child in my arms, and Margaret.

Shock. Disbelief. Curiosity. And, buried underneath it all, a little gloating.

I could read every bit of it.

Because ten minutes earlier, I’d been the joke.

Lead designer Jillian Kent brought her kid to work, got humiliated in public by the chairwoman’s assistant, and was ordered to go home on suspension.

“This is an office, not a daycare. Take your little bastard and get out.”

Those words had gone into my heart like a poisoned nail.

And they’d nailed shut the coffin of the old Jillian, the one who swallowed every insult and still tried to hold on to one last scrap of dignity.

I laughed.

It was a quiet laugh, but it had the recklessness of someone ready to burn everything down.

Holding Noah, I walked step by step through all those stunned stares, right up to that desk, the symbol of absolute power.

It was piled high with documents, every one of them worth millions.

Without a moment’s hesitation, I set my burning-hot son down on that cold wood, gently, but with total conviction.

“Waaah!”

The shock of the cold desk finally broke the cry Noah had been holding in. It was thin and weak, like a wounded baby bird.

That cry pierced every ear in the conference room like an invisible needle.

And it pierced the hard shell on Margaret’s face.

I watched her pupils contract and spoke without any expression at all. My voice was clear and calm, almost strangely peaceful.

“Mrs. Whitmore, your grandson is sick.”

I pointed at Noah, who was shaking all over as he cried.

“Acute fever. A hundred and three point six. He’s been burning up for half the day.”

Then I lifted my eyes and looked straight into hers, and I threw the words I’d prepared at her, one at a time.

“Your fine son, my husband, the president of the Whitmore Group. Colin Whitmore.”

“Unreachable for thirty-two days, four hours, and thirteen minutes.”

“I can’t find him. So you can clean up this mess!”

The whole floor erupted.

“Colin?”

“Her husband is Colin Whitmore?”

“That kid is... Colin’s?”

The whispers rolled in like a tide, every word soaked in disbelief.

Trevor’s face went white. He’d finally realized what kind of wall he’d just run into, but he still charged forward with false bravado and tried to grab me.

“You crazy bitch! What are you talking about?”

“Get away from me!”

I kicked out hard and drove the heel of my shoe straight into his shin.

He yelped and hopped back, clutching his leg, his eyes full of fear.

I didn’t spare him another glance. I kept my cold stare on Margaret.

“You don’t get to talk here!”

Bang!

Margaret slammed her hand on the desk. The sound finally cut through the chaos.

Her face was ashen with fury. Her gaze raked over everyone in the room like a blade.

“Everybody out!”

The executives fled the war zone as if they’d been pardoned, scrambling over each other to get out.

Trevor tried to slip away too, but one icy look from Margaret pinned him in place.

“You. Stay.”

The office door slammed shut, cutting off every prying eye outside.

For a moment, all that was left was Noah’s weak crying and a silence between the three of us so heavy it could crush you.

Margaret stared at the child in my arms, flushed with fever and drenched in sweat.

Her expression was impossibly complicated.

Shock. Anger. Scrutiny. And something else, something darker, that I couldn’t read.

I took my phone out of my pocket and, without unlocking it, pressed the screen to light it up.

It showed a month of call history.

A full page, every entry the same name: Colin.

And after each one, a long string of red: “No Answer.” “Declined.”

I tossed the phone down in front of her.

“Feel free to call him from my number and see if he picks up.”

Margaret’s eyes rested on the screen for three seconds. Then she looked away.

Noah’s little hands grabbed at the air and closed, without his knowing it, around the expensive Montblanc pen on her desk.

Margaret visibly stiffened.

Her eyes finally left my face and fell on the grandson she’d never met.