Chapter 1

The pregnancy test didn't have two lines.

It didn't have three lines either.

The screen blinked a digital word that made my knees buckle: "TRIPLETS."

I dropped the plastic stick into the trash can like it had burned me. It landed on top of a torn check — five million dollars, made out to Isabella Vance, signed by Alexander Black.

The same Alexander Black who didn't remember my name.

The same Alexander Black who thought I was a paid actress.

The same cold, cruel, devastatingly beautiful man who had spent one night inside my body and then tried to buy his way out of it.

Now he'd bought something else.

Three heartbeats. Growing inside me. Right now.

I pressed both palms against my still-flat stomach. "You have got to be kidding me."

---

Eight weeks earlier

"It's a masquerade, Isa. No one will know who you are."

My best friend Chloe had been saying this for twenty minutes. She was already masked — silver feathers and too much glitter — while I stood in front of her bathroom mirror, holding a cheap black domino mask like it was a weapon.

"I don't do anonymous," I said. "I do architecture models, coffee runs for my boss, and crying into ramen. That's my brand."

"Your ex-fiancé married your sister last weekend. Your brand is sad. Tonight, your brand is mysterious."

She had a point. A painful, humiliating, my-life-is-a-disaster point.

I put on the mask.

---

The ballroom of the Ashford Hotel was drowning in gold and lies.

Everyone wore masks. Everyone pretended to be someone else. The billionaire playboys became humble artists. The socialites became maids. The truth was buried under silk and champagne.

I was just trying not to spill red wine on my borrowed dress.

That's when I saw him.

He wasn't dancing. He wasn't drinking. He was standing by the terrace doors, a wolf mask covering the top half of his face, watching the crowd like he was calculating exactly how much it would cost to buy them all.

His suit was charcoal grey. His jaw was sharp enough to cut glass. And his eyes — even through the mask — were the coldest blue I'd ever seen.

He looked at me.

I looked away.

He walked toward me anyway.

"Your dress is wrinkled," he said. No hello. No smile. Just an observation, delivered like a verdict.

"Your personality is wrinkled," I replied. "We all have flaws."

Something flickered in those blue eyes. Surprise. Then something warmer. Then nothing at all.

"Dance with me."

"Not a chance."

"It wasn't a question."

He took my hand. His fingers were rough, calloused — not the hands of a man who only signed checks. These were hands that built things. Destroyed things. Held things together by sheer force of will.

I should have pulled away.

I didn't.

---

We danced for three songs.

He didn't tell me his name. I didn't tell him mine. He asked what I did, and I said "I build things." He asked if I was rich, and I said "I'm here, aren't I?" He asked if I was lying, and I said "Everyone is tonight."

Then he kissed me.

It wasn't gentle. It wasn't romantic. It was hungry and desperate and confused — like he was trying to remember what it felt like to want something.

I kissed him back.

One thing led to a coatroom. The coatroom led to his penthouse. His penthouse led to his bed, which was cold and white and big enough to lose yourself in.

I lost myself in it.

And in the morning, he was already gone.

---

Present day

The note was on the pillow.

"Enjoyed the act. Name your price."

Attached to it was a business card: Alexander Black, CEO, Black Industries.

I'd seen that face on magazine covers. The youngest billionaire in New York. The man who fired his own father from the family company. The ghost who never smiled.

He had no idea who I really was.

He had no idea that the woman he'd dismissed as a paid actress was the hidden daughter of the Vance family — the rival empire his own father had tried to destroy.

He had no idea I'd taken his cufflink as I left. Gold, engraved with a wolf, embedded with a GPS he'd mentioned once in an interview.

And he definitely had no idea about the three heartbeats.

I shoved the pregnancy test deeper into the trash.

A knock on the door made me freeze.

---

I didn't open it. I couldn't. The peephole showed me exactly who I feared.

Alexander Black. Soaked from the rain. Rage in his eyes. Holding a key to my apartment — a key I'd never given him.

"You stole my cufflink," he growled through the door. His voice was low and dangerous, the same voice that had whispered lies in the dark. "It's embedded with a GPS. I've been tracking you for eight weeks."

I didn't move.

"I know you're in there, Isabella Vance." He said my full name like an accusation. "And I know you're lying about who you are."

His gaze dropped to the peephole — straight into my eyes. Then lower. To my stomach.

To the curve that wasn't there eight weeks ago.

His face went pale.

"Is that