Chapter 1

How much would it cost to rent out the entire amusement park downtown for a day? A few hundred dollars? A few thousand?

My hands shook as I pulled up my phone and looked it up. Six figures. My throat went dry, like it had been scorched.

"Dad, is Mom really rich?"

My son had gone quiet for a long time before he finally worked up the courage to ask. His small face was creased with confusion, begging me for an answer.

I felt a little dazed. Probably, yes.

Jasmine Pepper had once been worth over ten billion dollars, but she'd declared bankruptcy seven years ago, right after the man she'd always loved walked out of her life. She'd been a shell of herself ever since, and eventually she married me, the man who'd always trailed after her.

Jasmine didn't love me. She didn't love our son, either.

But I never, not in a million years, imagined she'd been faking poverty for seven whole years.

I looked down at my son's clothes, faded and shrunk from wear, and felt the blood drain straight out of my body. My chest ached so badly I opened my mouth and found I had nothing to say.

Maybe he noticed how upset I was, because he forced a smile like he didn't care.

"Maybe Mom's just busy. Let's go home, Dad. Don't be... don't be sad."

His voice kept getting smaller until it nearly disappeared.

My heart skipped. I cupped his small face in my hands and found it already streaked with tears. I pulled him into my arms and hurried away, nearly stumbling in my rush to leave.

My son kept twisting back to look over his shoulder, watching until the happy trio at the amusement park was too far away to see anymore.

By the time we got home, I'd been turning it over in my head for a long time, and in the end, I called a divorce lawyer.

…

The old front door let out a sharp creak. Jasmine was home.

I sat quietly in the bedroom and listened as my son bolted out to meet his mother the way he always did, like an excited puppy.

Jasmine still didn't hug him back.

He didn't react much to that. When disappointment becomes routine, a child stops expecting anything different.

He held up a picture and asked her eagerly, "Mom, can I have this toy?"

Jasmine's voice was distracted. "We'll talk about it later."

Normally, that would have been enough to make him drop it. But today he was unusually stubborn, like he was trying to prove something to himself.

His young voice came out sharp with defiance. "Why do we have to wait?"

Why did they have to wait? She clearly had money to spare on other kids. Why couldn't she spend any on him? Wasn't he her son?

The saddest part was that even with his voice trembling from the hurt, he never actually said any of that out loud.

In the end, Jasmine agreed.

By the time I came back to myself, my son was already wrapped around me in a hug, chattering excitedly in my ear.

"Mom's so good to me! She said yes! She really said yes!"

I was happy for him, so happy I couldn't sleep that night.

But he waited a day. Two days. A week. The toy never showed up.

Finally, on another night when Jasmine came home empty-handed, he broke down completely. He ran to the bedroom and cried in secret.

Jasmine didn't notice a thing. She just handed me a bag of herbs.

"Follow this recipe and brew it into a tonic," she instructed. "I'll take it with me tomorrow."

I recognized it immediately. It was a stamina tonic, the kind meant for a man.

Something inside me, some thread that had been pulled taut for years, finally snapped.

By the time I came to my senses, the herbs were already scattered across her, thrown without a second thought.

Jasmine stood frozen for a long moment, staring at me like she couldn't believe what she was seeing.