Chapter 1

VIVIAN'S POV

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Lowe. We can't file this under your name."

I stared at the nurse behind the desk, my fingers tightening around the folder I'd waited three years to hold.

I'd struggled with a chronic illness for years, and it had also made pregnancy impossible. Even as a former doctor, I'd never been able to figure out what was wrong with my own body.

After six months of treatment, my doctor finally had told me I was healthy enough to have a baby. I’m here today to register our marriage details so the doctor can help us conceive.

"What do you mean you can't file it?"

The nurse glanced at her screen, then back at me. Something in her expression made my stomach tighten.

"Your husband already has an open file with us. Under a different wife's name."

For a moment, I forgot how to breathe.

"His what?"

"His wife." She hesitated. "I'm sorry. The records are confidential, but the marriage certificate and ID he provided match another woman's file. She registered with us two weeks ago. For a pregnancy."

I stared at her, waiting for her to laugh or tell me there'd been some mistake.

There had to be a mistake.

"Nathaniel and I have been married for five years." I heard the sharpness in my voice and forced myself to soften it. "You must have mixed up the records. Could you check again, please?"

She did.

I watched her fingers move across the keyboard.

Then she shook her head.

"I'm sorry."

I let out a short laugh. It sounded strange even to my own ears.

A clerical error. A duplicate record. Someone else's husband with a similar name.

Nathaniel called me every night when he traveled. He asked whether I'd eaten, reminded me to keep taking my vitamins, and talked about the nursery we'd finally started planning. Just last week, he'd sent me pictures of baby furniture and asked which crib I liked best.

A man planning a family with me wouldn't have another wife.

He wouldn't.

I clutched the folder against my chest and walked away before the nurse could say anything else.

I repeated those words to myself all the way to the elevator.

There was a mistake.

There had to be.

But when the elevator doors opened onto the hospital lobby, I saw him.

Nathaniel stood near the floor-to-ceiling windows, barely six feet away from me. His suit jacket hung over one arm, and his tie was loosened just enough to make him look relaxed. He had one hand resting on a woman's stomach.

Not just resting there.

His palm moved slowly over the curve of her belly, his fingers spreading as though he were already familiar with the life growing inside her.

The woman tilted her head back and laughed at something he said.

Then she covered his hand with hers.

My feet stopped moving.

I knew that face.

Chloe.

Chloe, my husband's business partner's daughter. Chloe, who was nearly ten years younger than Nathaniel and had a habit of showing up wherever he happened to be. Chloe, who had once sat across from me at dinner and told me how lucky I was to have a husband who loved me so much.

I'd believed her.

I'd even felt sorry for her sometimes. She'd grown up surrounded by money and privilege, but Nathaniel had always treated her like a little sister, and I'd thought she wanted the kind of attention he gave me.

Now I watched her lean into him as if she belonged there.

"Do you think the baby will look more like you or me?" she asked, looping her arms around his neck like it was nothing. Like there wasn't a wife three feet away holding a folder with her name crossed out of it.

"However it comes out, it'll be perfect," Nathaniel said. The voice he used with me. The exact same voice.

I wanted to scream his name.

I wanted to walk over there, pull his hand off her stomach, and demand that he explain himself.

But my body wouldn't move.

Chloe said something else, and he smiled.

He actually smiled.

I couldn't remember the last time he'd looked at me like that.

Nathaniel had been getting busier lately, and he's becoming more and more distant toward me.

But right now, he's holding Chloe in his arms and smiling at her...

Then they turned toward the exit and walked straight past me.

Neither of them noticed me standing there.

I don't know how long I remained frozen in the lobby.

When I finally snapped out of my shock, I rushed to my car, jumped inside, and started the engine.

Follow them, my mind urged.

I trailed their car to a private club downtown, slipped in through the back while the valet was busy, and found the door to their private room half open.

A toast was already underway.

"—so let's hear it for Nathaniel," a man's voice rang out, glasses clinking. "The man's a genius. A beautiful wife at home, and Chloe on his arm everywhere else. Best of both worlds!"

Laughter. The warm, easy laughter of men who'd known each other for years.

A voice I didn't recognize added, "Come on, Nate, you have to tell us. How do you do it? Vivian doesn't suspect a thing?"

My blood went cold at my name.

I peeked through the gap in the door. Nathaniel leaned back in his leather chair, one arm draped over Chloe's shoulders, looking completely at ease.

"Simple," he said, swirling his drink. "While Vivian's an ex-doctor. But now, she's just a housewife, cut off from the outside world. She won't know a thing."

More laughter. My hands had gone numb around the doorframe.

"And Chloe?" someone asked.

Chloe swatted his chest. "I'm also your wife—the real one."

"Wife number two," the first voice teased. "Cheers to our sister-in-law!"

"Sister-in-law!" the room echoed.

The glass nearly slipped from my fingers.

Sister-in-law.

They called her that. Casually. Like it was a joke they'd been making for months.

Like they all knew.

Everyone but me.

I don't remember walking back to my car. I only remember sitting behind the wheel, gripping it so hard my knuckles ached.

I pressed a hand over my mouth.

And now I finally understood that I couldn't keep looking for the truth in a man who had spent five years teaching me not to question him.

So I went to the registry office. I need a clear answer.

*****

A clerk with kind eyes listened as I explained that I needed to verify my marriage certificate.

"I'm sorry, ma'am. There's no record of a marriage between you and Mr. Lowe."

There was no record of my marriage.

Nathaniel had told me once that he was too busy to file the paperwork himself. He'd promised to have someone handle it on his behalf, and I'd never questioned him.

Why would I?

Apparently, I hadn't been the only woman he'd made that promise to.

For five years, my body wouldn't let me get pregnant. Chronic illness, the doctors said. Be patient, they said. Nathaniel never complained—not out loud. He held my hand through every disappointment, sent me flowers after every negative test, told me it would happen when it happened.

Just when I thought I could finally try for a baby of my own, I discovered that my marriage didn't even exist.

I canceled the registration. The doctor's question, when I went back to sort out the file, was gentle. "Are you certain, Mrs. Lowe? You could re-file under your own name whenever you're ready."

I touched my stomach and shook my head. Grief has a strange way of narrowing down to logistics when it can't survive as feeling.

I was in the waiting room when Nathaniel called.

My thumb slipped and answered before I could stop it.

"Vivi, you're at the hospital? Are you hurt?" His face filled the screen, brows drawn in exactly the concern I used to find unbearably sweet.

"I'm fine," I said evenly. "I'm just here with Lauren for a stomach thing. Stay and finish your trip."

I have apparently always been better at lying to protect him than he ever was at lying to me.

"I love you, Vivi," he said before hanging up, and I let the words land somewhere far away, where they couldn't reach anything important.

The marriage was fake. The nursery was a lie. The man who'd held my hand through every disappointment had been building a family with someone else the entire time.

I could live without Nathaniel. I'd already started, somewhere in the last three hours, learning how.

But my mind was still too clouded to think straight.

I left the hospital and had no idea where to go.

Outside, the sky was gray. Cars moved through the street, people hurried past with coffee cups and shopping bags, and somewhere nearby, a child was laughing.

Suddenly, a horn blared.

I turned toward the sound, but the car was already too close. My foot caught the edge of the pavement, and the ground tilted beneath me.

I stumbled.

Before I could hit the ground, an arm locked around my waist and pulled me back.

For one breathless second, I couldn't move.

I looked up into a pair of black eyes I had never seen in my life, and for one strange, suspended second, the noise in my head went completely, blessedly quiet.