Chapter 1: The Divorce

The divorce papers hit the coffee table hard enough to rattle my teacup.

"Sign."

One word. That's all Roman Cheng had for me after three years of marriage and eight months of carrying his child.

I didn't look at him right away. The baby kicked — a good, solid thump right under my ribs — and I pressed my palm flat against my belly, steadying us both. Easy, I thought. We're okay.

Then I looked up.

Not at Roman. At the woman standing behind him.

Vivian Wu. Cream-colored sundress, one hand draped delicately over her stomach, her face arranged into that perfect little expression she'd been rehearsing since college — the wide eyes, the trembling lip, the I'm-so-sorry-I-didn't-mean-to look that made men want to protect her and women want to slap her.

She caught me staring and dropped her gaze. Her fingers tightened on her belly.

I looked back down at the papers. White paper. Black ink. My name already printed in the signature line.

They'd had this drawn up in advance. Of course they had.

"Vivian's pregnant," Roman said, like he was reading off a quarterly report. Flat. Bored. "The Cheng family can only have one heir. Sign, and I'll make sure you're taken care of financially. You won't have to worry."

One heir.

I almost laughed.

The baby kicked again. His baby. The one he hadn't looked at — hadn't acknowledged — in months. But sure. One heir. And it wasn't going to be mine.

"Serena." Margaret Cheng's voice sliced through the room from the head of the dining table, where she sat like she was holding court. She lifted the lid of her teacup, scraped it slowly across the rim — a sound like nails on a chalkboard — and took a sip. "You've been in this family for three years. That's long enough for you to understand where you stand."

I said nothing.

"If it weren't for that baby in your belly, you wouldn't have lasted this long." She set the cup down with a sharp clink. "Now that Vivian's carrying a Cheng, well — let's just say blood matters. And yours has always been... thin."

Thin.

That was the word she liked. Not poor. Not common. Thin. Like I was watered-down soup. Like my dead parents and my hand-me-down childhood and my scholarship education made me something less than human.

Three years I'd heard it. Three years of swallowing it down with my dinner and pretending it didn't burn.

Vivian stepped forward. She pulled a tissue from her bag — the expensive kind, the ones that come in little silk pouches — and held it out to me.

"Serena, I'm so sorry," she whispered. Her voice was so soft it could cut glass. "I know this is hard. If you need to cry, it's okay. This is all my fault..."

I didn't take the tissue.

I didn't look at her.

I looked at my belly. At the place where my daughter — I was sure it was a girl — had just gone still, like she was holding her breath, waiting to see what I would do.

Roman frowned. I could feel it without looking. He'd expected the crying. The begging. The part where I fell apart and he got to feel like the reasonable one. Maybe he'd pictured me grabbing his arm, saying please, I'll be better, I'll be whatever you need me to be — the way I did on our wedding night, when I'd been stupid enough to think love was something you could earn.

I didn't give him any of that.

I picked up the pen.

Vivian's eyes flashed. Just for a second. A tiny spark of victory she couldn't quite hide.

"Smart girl," Margaret said. "The sooner this is done, the better for every—"

I flipped to the last page and signed my name. Steady hand. Clean strokes. No hesitation.

I set the pen down.

"I'm leaving with nothing," I said quietly. "The baby takes my name. And after today, no one from the Cheng family contacts us. Ever."

Roman's head snapped up.

Something moved behind his eyes — confusion, maybe, or the faintest ghost of something he didn't want to feel. His mouth opened. Closed. He decided it wasn't worth the effort.

Vivian's smile got wider.

Margaret nodded, satisfied. "Good. Get out. Before I change my mind."

I braced my hand against the armrest and pushed myself up. Eight months pregnant, and everything hurt — my back, my hips, the places where my body had reshaped itself around a child her father didn't want.

The housekeeper appeared with a suitcase. My suitcase. The same one I'd brought when I married in — small, scuffed, the zipper pull missing its coating. Three years in the Cheng mansion, and everything I owned still fit in a carry-on.

I bent to pick it up and something seized in my lower back. A white-hot bolt of pain that made me suck air through my teeth.

Roman was two steps away.

He didn't move.

He didn't even look at my stomach.

I steadied myself. Grabbed the handle. Started walking.

The living room carpet was thick and my footsteps were silent. I felt like a ghost leaving a house that had never been home.

At the front door, I stopped.

I didn't turn around.

"Roman," I said. My voice was very calm. "I hope you never regret this."

He laughed. Short, cold, through his nose. The sound of a man who was absolutely certain he was making the right call.

"Go," he said.

I pushed the door open and walked out.

The sunlight hit me so hard I had to squint. For a few seconds, everything was white — the sky, the driveway, the whole blinding world outside the Cheng family's front gate.

Then my eyes adjusted.

And I saw the car.

A black Maybach, parked at the curb. Three men in dark suits stood beside it. The one in front wore wire-rimmed glasses and carried a briefcase that probably cost more than everything I'd owned in my entire life.

When he saw me, all three of them stepped forward. In unison. Like soldiers.

The man with the glasses bowed his head.

"Ms. Sun." His voice was quiet, respectful, and absolutely serious. "Your maternal grandfather, Mr. Lincoln Sun, passed away in his sleep three hours ago. He was eighty-seven years old."

I stared at him.

Grandfather?

I had a grandfather?

My parents died when I was six. After that, nobody came for me. No aunts, no uncles, no long-lost relatives showing up at the foster home. I'd spent twenty years believing I was the last of my bloodline — that there was nobody left in the world who shared my DNA.

"This is the notarized will." The lawyer opened his briefcase and produced a document heavy with seals and stamps. "Mr. Lincoln Sun's entire estate — including but not limited to cash holdings, equities, real estate, corporate shares, and private collections — valued at approximately fifteen billion dollars, has been left to a single beneficiary."

He looked up at me.

"You, Ms. Sun."

Fifteen billion dollars.

The number didn't make sense. It was too big to hold in my head. Like someone telling you the distance to the sun — you hear it, but you can't feel it.

Behind me, I heard a crash.

Margaret's teacup had hit the floor. Porcelain shattered across the marble. Hot tea splashed her silk dress. She didn't even flinch. She was just standing there, jaw slack, staring at me through the open door.

Vivian's mask cracked. The delicate hand on her belly was shaking.

And Roman —

Roman turned around.

For the first time all day — for the first time in months, maybe — he actually looked at me.

I was still the same woman. Same faded maternity dress. Same battered suitcase. Same girl he'd scraped off the bottom of his shoe and tossed out with the recycling.

But something had shifted. I could feel it in the way the air changed.

"That's impossible," Margaret sputtered behind me. "She's an orphan — she doesn't have — a grandfather? Fifteen billion — it's fake, it has to be fake—"

Nobody answered her.

The lawyer held the car door open and offered his hand to help me in. "Ms. Sun, please. Your grandfather left additional arrangements. We can discuss them on the way."

I lowered myself into the back seat, one hand on my belly. The leather was cool and soft. The door closed with a quiet, precise click — the kind of sound expensive things make.

Through the tinted glass, I could see Roman standing in the doorway.

He hadn't moved.

He was staring at the car like a man watching a building collapse in slow motion, realizing too late that he was still inside.

The Maybach pulled away.

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. My hand stayed on my belly, warm and still.

"Ms. Sun," the lawyer said carefully from the front seat. "My condolences for your loss. There is... one more thing. Your grandfather's will — it's not just one document. There's a second one. The contents are... sensitive. We should wait until you've had some rest before we go over it."

I didn't open my eyes.

I didn't ask what was in the second will.

I sat there for a long time, feeling the baby shift and settle, feeling the car eat up the miles between me and the life I was leaving behind.

Finally, I said two words.

"Keep driving."

And then:

"Don't look back."