LOGINNora Ashford thought she was giving a desperate couple the gift of life. Instead, she became a pawn in a cruel game. Contracted as a surrogate for billionaire CEO Marcus Wolfe and his fiancée Jade Rivers…. Nora's former best friend…. she endures nine months of isolation, control, and cold indifference. But when she gives birth, Marcus rips the baby from her arms and discards her like trash, invoking a contract clause she never saw coming: zero custody, zero rights, zero compensation beyond medical costs. Broken and alone, Nora discovers the devastating truth…. Jade was never infertile. The surrogacy was a lie to avoid "ruining her body." Worse, Marcus isn't just ruthless; he's the man who had her father killed five years ago to steal his groundbreaking tech company. Enter Elias Moretti… a dangerous nightclub owner with mafia ties and a smile that promises violence. He saves Nora from rock bottom and offers her something irresistible: revenge. He'll help her destroy Marcus and reclaim her daughter. But Elias has secrets of his own. He orchestrated their meeting. He's been watching her for years. And the baby Nora carried? The fertility clinic switched the sample. Elias is the biological father. Caught between two ruthless men…. one who discarded her, one who's obsessed with her…. Nora must become the player instead of the pawn. As Marcus realizes what he's lost and begins a terrifying pursuit to win her back, and Elias's true motives unravel, Nora faces an impossible choice: revenge or redemption, safety or passion, the monster she knows or the devil she's falling for. In a world where everyone has an agenda, Nora must fight for her daughter, her identity, and her survival.
View MorePOV: Nora Two years changes the shape of things in ways you don't notice until you stop and look back. Ashford Studio had moved into a larger space six months ago, a proper floor in a building near the river with actual conference rooms and a kitchen that didn't double as a storage area. Eight full time staff now, a waiting list that had stopped embarrassing me to mention, and the kind of reputation that came from doing the work correctly rather than from any deliberate campaign to be known. My father had built the same way. I understood now that the method was in the blood. Aria started preschool on a Tuesday in September. She had opinions about it before she arrived, during, and afterward. The opinions were largely positive once she established that the other children were willing to negotiate, which apparently took approximately forty minutes of assessment before she decided the situation was acceptable. Her teacher had sent me a message at pickup saying Aria had organized the
POV: Nora I knew my answer before I left the cemetery. I had known it, I think, somewhere underneath the thinking, since the Sunday he had put the box on the cushion between us and then picked it back up without pushing. The clarity I had told him I needed had arrived at my father's grave in the specific way clarity often arrived for me, not as a decision made but as a recognition of something already true. I waited three days before telling him. Not because I was uncertain but because I wanted to sit with the fullness of it before speaking, to make sure what I said came from somewhere settled rather than somewhere reactive. He came to pick up Aria on a Saturday and I asked if he could stay for a few minutes after the handoff. He looked at my face and said yes and put Aria down to play and sat at the kitchen table the way he had sat at hundreds of kitchen tables with me over the past two years, hands on the surface, present. I sat across from him. "I've been thinking about your
POV: Nora I went on a Wednesday morning, alone. Aria was at childcare and the studio could manage without me for a few hours and I had been meaning to go since the proposal and hadn't been able to find the right version of the day for it. Wednesday arrived and felt like the one, no specific reason, just the particular quality of a morning that seemed to have space in it for something important. The cemetery was the kind that had been there long enough to have old trees growing through it, the roots of them lifting the path edges in places in the slow patient way of things that have been growing for a hundred years and intend to keep going. My father's grave was in the east section, a simple stone, his name and dates and below them the single line he had written down once and my mother had kept and used when the time came. It said: He built things that lasted. I stood in front of it for a moment before sitting down on the low bench nearby, the one that had been there every time I
POV: Nora It happened on a Sunday. Not a significant Sunday. Not an anniversary of anything or a carefully chosen date. Just the kind of Sunday that builds naturally into something without announcing its intentions, the kind where the morning starts with coffee and Aria demanding specific breakfast items and the afternoon moves into a park visit and then back to the apartment where she eventually runs out of energy and goes down for a nap earlier than usual, leaving the afternoon with an unexpected quiet in it. We were on the sofa. Elias had a book he hadn't opened. I had a design file I had looked at twice without processing. Aria was asleep down the hall. The city was doing its usual Sunday thing outside the window, slower than weekdays, unhurried. He closed the book he hadn't been reading and put it on the cushion beside him. "I've been thinking about something for a while," he said. "I want to say it and I want to be clear before I do that I'm not saying it to create pressure
Nora's POVI wake up to sunlight cutting through the blinds and immediately wish I hadn't.My body feels like it's been hit by a truck. Everything aches. My stomach is cramping, my breasts are rock-hard and leaking through the hospital gown, and between my legs, there's a dull, constant throb that
Nora's POV"Push, Miss Ashford. One more push."The doctor's voice sounds like it's coming from underwater. Everything hurts. My body doesn't feel like mine anymore. It hasn't for nine months, but right now, it feels like I'm being split in half.I grip the hospital bed rails and push. A scream tea
Nora's POVI spend the night at the shelter. Four hours of sleep on a cot that smells like bleach and desperation. My body is wrecked. Bleeding through the pads they give postpartum women. Breasts leaking. Everything hurts.But I drag myself up at seven because I need to meet Detective Chen at ten
Nora's POVThe apartment smells like mildew and old takeout. I drop my bag by the door and the sound echoes in the empty space. Almost empty. I still have my mattress on the floor, a folding chair, and a lamp. Everything else got sold months ago to make rent.I should lie down. My body is screaming












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