Chapter 1

My suitcase caught Chloe Hartwell squarely in the shin. She cried out and dropped to the floor, the color draining from her face.

“You’re insane! You’re an outsider here — how dare you put a hand on me?”

I stopped, turned, and looked down at her. “I’m the outsider?

“You came into this house when your mother married my father. What gives you the right to call me anything — or to stand in my own front door?”

Before I came back, my biological father, Victor Hartwell, had warned me about the stepsister waiting at home. Chloe was spoiled, he said, but not cruel. He asked me to be patient with her.

Apparently he’d mistaken stupidity for innocence.

Elaine Hartwell finally shook off her shock and rushed to help Chloe up, glaring at me over her daughter’s shoulder.

“Of course a girl raised on the streets has no manners. Until Victor acknowledges you publicly and puts your name in the family trust, you are not a Hartwell.”

Murmurs rose around us.

Only then did I remember that Victor had invited half the city’s business community to today’s welcome-home reception.

Chloe lifted her chin. “Sophie, I understand that nobody ever taught you how to behave while you were out there wandering around. But you could at least show some respect for the Hartwell name.”

She looked pointedly at my stomach.

“Dad invited important people here today, and you turn up six months pregnant. Do you have any idea what they’ll say about our company?”

Then she reached out and jabbed a finger into the curve of my belly.

“Forget an abortion. If I told the doctors to make sure you could never get pregnant again, Dad wouldn’t say one word to me about it.

“A woman like you never makes the same mistake only once.”

The guests crowding the doorway nodded along.

“Mr. Hartwell has always treated Chloe better than his own blood.”

“We came to congratulate him on finding his daughter, not to watch an unmarried girl parade around with a belly that size.”

“Blood doesn’t make an heiress. Chloe was raised for this life.”

“And she attacked Chloe the second she got here. Once Victor sees this, he’ll put the real daughter right back out on the street.”

I almost laughed. A room full of people passing judgment, and not one of them had anything behind the talk.

I’d looked into Victor before I agreed to come back. He was shrewd, practical, and devoted to profit above everything else.

His affection for Chloe rested mostly on her engagement to Blake Mercer, the sole heir to Mercer Group. That alliance had commercial value.

But Victor also knew I was Adrian Sterling’s secret wife. In what world would he trade that for Chloe?

Before I could say any of it, Ethan Hartwell grabbed my wrist and hauled me aside.

“Haven’t you humiliated us enough?” he hissed. “This family keeps its name clean. That’s the first rule here.

“If you can’t manage that much, what makes you think you can come back? Apologize to Chloe, and then get rid of the baby.”

I glanced at his hand around my wrist, then raised my eyes to his face.

“Ethan, you’re an idiot.”

He stared at me.

I tore my wrist free. “You won’t even stand up for your own sister. Aren’t you afraid Mom’s going to climb out of her grave tonight and settle it with you herself?”

He stumbled back two steps. “Don’t try to scare me.”

I ignored him and turned to Elaine.

“If my research is right, you used to be my mother’s private physician.”

Her expression tightened.

“If this family cares so much about its good name, shouldn’t the mistress who married her patient’s husband have been the first one shown the door?”

Her face went scarlet. “Mistress? Have you lost your mind?”

She dragged in a breath and pitched her voice for the crowd.

“Everyone here knows your mother ran off with another man. She died in a car crash before she got very far. Victor and I married afterward.

“You come into my home and accuse me of adultery? You have no shame at all.”

I went still.

Another man?

That wasn’t what the file Adrian had commissioned said.

Before I could ask, Elaine stepped closer, malice sharpening her voice.

“Your mother was filthy, and so are you. Like mother, like daughter. Since she died before she could teach you any decency, I’ll do it for her.”

She turned to the security guards. “Don’t just stand there. Put her in a car.”

Chloe clutched Elaine’s arm, nodding hard. “Take her to the clinic now. That bastard should never have come near this family.”

The guards actually started toward me.

I drew a slow breath and stepped back.

“My child isn’t a bastard. He has a father, and his father will be here any minute.

“So let’s see which one of you still wants to touch me when he walks in.”