CHAPTER 5

Mia

From the hotel, I drove straight home with only two things on my mind.

First, I needed a shower. After that, I would go through everything I owned to see if there was anything worth selling. I couldn’t risk putting all my hope on Mason.

The house lights were on when I walked in, and the sound of laughter drifted from the living room. Ruben was there with one of his women. I didn’t bother looking properly.

I tried to walk past quietly toward the stairs, hoping to reach the bedroom without drawing attention, but Ruben’s voice stopped me before I could take more than a few steps.

“Hey.”

I paused.

“Get more ice for the drinks.”

I went into the kitchen, filled a bowl with ice, and brought it back to the living room. The woman sitting beside him barely moved, her leg resting on his thigh.

I placed the ice on the table and turned toward the stairs again.

“Wait.”

I stopped once more.

By then I knew better than to think it would end with the ice.

He leaned back on the couch, swirling the drink in his glass, the corner of his mouth lifting in a lazy smile.

“You asked me for three hundred thousand dollars. There’s no way I’m giving you that kind of money. But I can help you with something else.”

I waited.

“I can buy a burial plot for Lior,” he said. “That’s much cheaper than surgery.”

I closed my eyes and took a slow breath, fighting the violent urge to smash the glass in his hand.

He laughed behind me, and his mistress quickly joined in.

By the time I reached the bedroom, the rage inside me was suffocating. I slammed the door shut, pressed my back against it, and let out the scream I had swallowed downstairs.

Then I began searching. Drawers. Closets. Boxes I hadn’t opened in years. There was nothing that could help me raise even a fraction of what the surgery required.

Eventually I sat down on the bed and opened my hand. Two necklaces rested in my palm, the only things I owned that might be worth anything.

One of them belonged to my mother. She had given it to me years ago and warned me never to lose it. It was the only time I could remember her taking my side over Nina. I still remembered the day Nina tried to take it from me, insisting it suited her better. Mom had stopped her.

“She keeps that one,” she had said firmly.

I never really understood why it mattered so much, but I held on to it.

The second necklace came from Mason.

He had given it to me the night we went clubbing together. I could still picture the moment clearly, the way he stood behind me fastening the clasp around my neck before we left the hotel room.

“It suits the dress,” he had said with a small smile, adjusting it once like he wanted to make sure it sat perfectly.

The dress we had spent half the afternoon shopping for together.

I closed my eyes, and the memories pulled me back six years.

That summer, my parents decided to travel to Mumbai for a wedding with Nina and Troy. They told me to stay with my Aunt Mel in Los Angeles because they said they couldn’t afford my travel expenses.

It hadn’t surprised me. My parents had always treated me differently. Sometimes I even wondered if I was really their daughter.

Nina had her own room growing up. Mine was the small one at the end of the hallway, the one that still had boxes in the closet from when we first moved in.

Most of my clothes used to belong to her first. By the time they reached me, they were already out of style or slightly worn.

I wasn’t allowed to keep friends either. If someone called the house asking for me, Mom would always say I was busy with chores.

Eventually, people stopped calling.

Arriving in Los Angeles felt like an opportunity to give myself something I had never really had before – a chance to live.

I created a different version of myself.

A girl named Daisy with a new phone number and a life that had no connection to the one waiting for me back home.

I made sure no one knew where I lived or that Aunt Mel even existed. The plan was simple: enjoy one summer of freedom and return home as if nothing had happened. I got a job cleaning rooms in a hotel.

That was where I met Mason.

Those weeks became the happiest days I had ever known. When summer ended, I went home and tried to convince myself it had only been a dream.

A few weeks later, everything fell apart when I discovered I was pregnant.

The week before that, I had gone to my father’s office to drop off a document he had forgotten. That was the first time I met Ruben in person, though I had heard plenty about him before.

He asked me out, but I turned him down.

Partly because I knew the kind of man he was, and mostly because my heart already belonged to someone else.

Apparently Ruben wasn’t used to anyone telling him no.

He went straight to my father and told him he wanted to marry me. My refusal didn’t matter. My parents agreed immediately. When they discovered I was pregnant, I thought everything would change. I thought the baby would finally save me from marrying him.

My parents even tried convincing Ruben to marry Nina instead, but he refused. He insisted on marrying me.

And I had been paying for turning him down ever since.

More than once I thought about divorcing him, but leaving Ruben Caldwell was never that simple.

A loud knock on the door suddenly pulled me out of my thoughts.

Before I could even stand, Ruben’s voice echoed from downstairs.

“Mia! Are you deaf? Get the door!”

I hurried down the stairs and pulled the door open, only to freeze.

Mason stood on the other side.