Chapter 3: She Gave Birth Alone. He Was with the Other Woman.

The contractions woke me at three in the morning.

I sat up in the dark, drenched in sweat, and knew before I even put my feet on the floor. My water had broken. The sheets were soaked. The baby was coming.

I didn't panic.

That might sound like something a strong person says. It wasn't strength. It was just — there was nobody to panic with. No husband to shake awake. No mother to call. No one sleeping down the hall who'd hear me gasp and come running.

Just me and the dark and the clock on the nightstand reading 3:07 AM.

I braced myself against the wall and walked to the bathroom. Washed my face. Pulled my hair back into a ponytail. Then I went to the closet and got the hospital bag I'd packed weeks ago — tiny onesies, tiny socks, a tiny knitted hat. All pink. I'd been hoping for a girl. Don't ask me why. Maybe because I wanted someone in my life who'd never look at me the way Roman did — like I was a line item on a budget he was trying to cut.

Then I picked up my phone.

"Mr. Chen," I said. My voice was steady, which was ridiculous, because a contraction hit me mid-sentence and I had to lock my jaw to keep from groaning into the receiver. "I'm in labor. Could you call the hospital, please."

The ambulance arrived in twenty minutes. The paramedic — a woman about my mother's age, if my mother had lived — helped me onto the stretcher and then looked around the empty foyer.

"Where's your family, honey? Someone coming to meet us there?"

I closed my eyes and leaned back.

"No family."

She didn't say anything after that. But I felt her hand squeeze mine, just once, before she let go.

At the hospital, they handed me the surgical consent form.

"We need a family member to sign," the nurse said, already looking past me for someone who wasn't there.

I took the pen.

"I'll sign it myself."

The nurse stared at me. I could see her working through it — the math of a woman eight months pregnant, no ring, no husband, no emergency contact, signing her own consent form at four in the morning in a hospital gown that was already damp with sweat.

"Ma'am... is there anyone—"

"There's no one." I wrote my name on the line. My hand didn't shake. "Let's go."

The delivery room was freezing white. Surgical lights. Tile floor. The kind of room that doesn't care who you are or what you've been through — it just wants you to push.

So I pushed.

I won't describe what it felt like. If you've done it, you know. If you haven't — imagine your body turning itself inside out while someone shouts harder, harder, I can see the head and your fingers are cramped so tight around the bed rail that you lose feeling in both hands.

I bit through my bottom lip. Tasted copper. Didn't make a sound.

Not because I was brave. Because I'd spent three years learning how to suffer quietly in the Cheng household, and it turned out that was exactly the wrong skill to have and exactly the one I couldn't unlearn.

"One more push — there we go — there we go—"

And then.

A cry.

High and furious and alive, ripping through the silence of that room like a siren.

A girl.

Seven pounds, two ounces.

Healthy.

Perfect.

They laid her on my chest. She was tiny — God, she was so tiny — red-faced and wrinkled and screaming like she was furious about the whole situation, and she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life.

I looked down at her.

And my eyes burned, and my throat closed, and tears ran down my temples into my hair, and I didn't wipe them away.

No sound. No sobbing. Just tears, falling quietly onto the top of her head, soaking into the dark wisps of hair she'd been born with.

I named her Nadia.

It means hope.

ROMAN

Same day. Ten in the morning.

The VIP prenatal suite at St. Catherine's Private Hospital smelled like lavender and money. Vivian was leaning against Roman's shoulder, holding up the ultrasound printout, tracing the blurry shape with a manicured fingernail.

"Look, babe," she cooed, voice dripping honey. "You can see her little hand right there. What should we name her? I was thinking something classic — Charlotte, maybe, or—"

Roman's phone buzzed in his pocket.

He pulled it out. A push notification from the Financial Times.

SUN CHARITABLE FOUNDATION LAUNCHES WITH $7 BILLION ENDOWMENT — HEADED BY HEIRESS SERENA SUN

Seven billion dollars.

Dropped into a charity like it was pocket change.

Cheng Corp's entire annual profit was barely two hundred million.

"Roman?" Vivian tugged his arm. "Are you listening? I said what about Charlotte?"

"Sure." He put his phone away. "Whatever you want."

"Ooh, and I saw this stroller yesterday — Italian, hand-stitched leather — it's only twelve thousand. Can you get it for me? Please?"

Twelve thousand dollars for a stroller.

And just like that, Roman thought of Serena.

Serena, who'd worn the same three maternity dresses on rotation for six months because she didn't want to ask him for money. Serena, who took the bus to every single prenatal appointment because she didn't want to bother his driver. Serena, who'd once spent twenty minutes in a store holding a sixty-dollar baby blanket before putting it back on the shelf.

He'd thought she was being cheap. Thought it was the poverty in her — the foster-kid reflex, the inability to spend money she hadn't earned.

Turned out she just hadn't wanted to spend his.

"Roman?" Vivian's voice again. Sharper now. "The stroller?"

"Buy it," he said. His voice came out colder than he meant it to.

Vivian kissed his cheek. He didn't react.

His mind was somewhere else. Circling the same three words like a dog chasing its tail.

Seven billion dollars.

Was she okay? Had she had the baby? Boy or girl?

He shook his head. Killed the thought.

Vivian's baby was the Cheng heir. Vivian's baby was what mattered. Serena's child was nothing — a footnote, a mistake, a name he'd never have to learn.

That's what he told himself.

The hollow feeling in his chest disagreed.

One month later.

I carried Nadia out of the hospital on a Tuesday morning.

The sun was ridiculous — bright and warm and absurdly cheerful, like the world hadn't noticed that I'd just spent three days alone in a hospital room with a newborn and no visitors.

Mr. Chen held the car door open. "Home, Ms. Sun?"

I looked down at my daughter.

She was awake. Her eyes had started to change — darkening, settling into a shape that was becoming more distinct every day. High nose bridge. Deep-set eyes. A face that was already, unmistakably, starting to look like—

Like Roman.

I brushed my thumb across her cheek. So soft. So small.

"Yeah," I said. "Home."

I got in the car. Buckled her seat into the base. Leaned back.

And said, very quietly, so only she could hear:

"It's okay, baby. You're just mine. You don't belong to anyone else."

The car pulled out of the hospital lot and into traffic. I held Nadia's hand — her whole fist wrapped around my index finger — and watched the city slide past.

I didn't look back.

I was getting good at that.

Three years later.

"MOMMY! Over here!"

Nadia was standing on the preschool steps, pink backpack bouncing, waving both arms like she was flagging down a rescue helicopter.

I crouched down and brushed the hair out of her eyes. "Hey, baby. Good day?"

"The BEST day. Ms. Torres said my painting was the best in the whole class. She put a star on it. A GOLD star."

"That's amazing. I'm so proud of you."

Nadia leaned in close, conspiratorial. "Mommy, tomorrow is Sports Day. The other kids said their daddies are coming too."

My hand paused on her backpack strap.

"Hmm." I kept my voice light. Adjusted her hat. "Well, Mommy's coming. That's pretty good, right?"

"Can you carry me on your back and run? That's what the daddies do."

"I can absolutely carry you on my back and run."

"Mommy's SO strong." She grinned — two missing front teeth, dimples, the kind of smile that could end wars — and grabbed my hand. "Okay let's go. I want ice cream."

I stood up, took her hand, and we walked to the car.

The late afternoon sun stretched our shadows out long behind us. One tall, one small. Walking steady.

ROMAN

The black Bentley slid through traffic on Kensington Avenue, heading back toward the office.

Roman was in the back seat, scrolling through emails, half-listening to his driver ask about a detour. He glanced out the window.

And stopped.

A little girl. Three, maybe four. Pigtails. Pink backpack. Walking away from the preschool gate, holding a woman's hand.

The girl turned her head to say something to her mother, and he caught her profile for half a second. Big eyes. Sharp little nose. A dimple on her left cheek.

Something in his chest lurched.

The car kept moving. The girl and the woman disappeared behind a delivery truck.

"Mr. Cheng?" The driver checked the mirror. "Still going to the office?"

Roman blinked. Shook it off.

"Yeah," he said. "The office."

He leaned back and closed his eyes. But the image stayed — that tiny profile, caught for half a breath through a car window, already gone.

He didn't know why it bothered him.

He didn't know why it felt like something important had just slipped through his fingers.

He told himself it was nothing.

It wasn't nothing.