CHAPTER TWO

Ava’s POV

I had no idea how long I had been unconscious.

The last thing I remembered was the doctors barking instructions at each other across the room, Mrs. Chen frantically trying to reach Adrian on the phone while the call went straight to voicemail, and me trying too — several times, my fingers shaking against the screen — before the pain had swallowed everything whole and the world went dark.

Somewhere between all of that and pushing my daughter into the world, I had passed out.

The steady beeping of the machines was what pulled me back. I opened my eyes slowly, blinking against the pale hospital light, and found a nurse moving quietly around the room beside me. I reached out and touched her arm, and she turned with a warm smile that immediately softened the sharp edges of my disorientation.

"Oh, you are finally awake! We are so glad." She placed a gentle hand briefly over mine. "You have been out for twelve hours, Mrs. Cole."

Twelve hours.

I sat up slightly and raised my hands. My baby. Where is my baby?

She watched my hands for a moment, then shook her head with an apologetic expression. "I am sorry, I do not understand sign language." She paused, studying my face, then seemed to read the one thing written all over it. "But I am guessing you want to see your baby?"

I nodded immediately.

She crossed to a small crib at the other end of the room, and I held my breath without realizing it. Then she turned around with a tiny bundle wrapped in soft white cotton, and the breath I had been holding came out all at once.

"Congratulations, Mrs. Cole," she said warmly, placing the baby carefully into my arms. "You have a beautiful baby girl. She has been bathed and fed, and the doctors say she is in perfect health."

I looked down.

Everything else in the room ceased to exist.

She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my entire life. Impossibly small, impossibly perfect, her tiny lips parted in sleep, her little fingers curled loosely against her cheek. I had loved her from the moment I knew she existed, but holding her now — actually holding her — made that love feel like something physical. Something that took up space in my chest and pushed everything else out.

My baby. 

My daughter.

I held her closer, memorizing the curve of her nose and the softness of her skin, and then my eyes landed on her lips and my chest tightened in a way that had nothing to do with joy.

Her lips were shaped exactly like Adrian's.

Adrian.

The warmth in my chest cooled slightly at the thought of him. He had not been here. Through every hour of labor, every moment of fear and pain, every time I had reached for my phone with trembling hands and heard that voicemail greeting — he had not come. And now, hours later, he still was not here.

I shook my head and pulled my daughter a little closer. I had made a decision somewhere in the fog of exhaustion and emotion — I was not going to let his absence steal this moment from me. 

My daughter was here. 

She was healthy and whole and she was mine, and for right now, that was the only thing that mattered.

The door opened.

I looked up, and the small flutter of anticipation in my stomach dissolved immediately.

It was Daniel.

He walked in with his hands in his pockets, the familiar energy of self-importance radiating off him the way it always did. He stopped beside the bed, looked down at the baby in my arms, and his nose wrinkled.

"A girl?" His voice was flat with disappointment. "You had a girl?"

I shifted my daughter in one arm and raised my free hand. “Excuse me?”

"Don't play dumb with me, Ava." He crossed his arms, his expression hardening. "Do you have any idea what I had to do to secure your position as Mrs. Cole? The planning, the risks I took? And this is what you give me?"

Of course I knew what he had done. I was the one paying for it every single day.

"A son," Daniel continued, as if I had not signed anything at all. "That is what would have been useful to us. Yes, your marriage to Adrian has attracted some investments and a few small benefits, but a son — an heir — that would have opened real doors. That would have given us leverage. A girl?" He shook his head slowly. "What use is a girl to us?"

Use.

Useful.

The word detonated something inside me that I had not known was sitting there, loaded and waiting.

My hand was moving before I had even decided to speak. “Useful? How dare you walk in here and look at my daughter — MY daughter — and speak about her like she is nothing more than a tool for your schemes. How dare you stand there and think for even one second that you will use a child of mine the same way you used me. What right do you have? What right have you ever had?”

Daniel's expression shifted into something between irritation and amusement. "Oh, stop being emotional. Someone has to do what needs to be done around here. I have always been the one to make the hard decisions for this family, for this business, and—"

“You do nothing for this family. My hands moved fast and fierce, and I did not try to soften a single word. Everything you do is for yourself. Your greed. Your ambition. If you actually cared about us — about the company, about anything beyond your own selfish interests — you would not have pushed me into the situation I am living in right now. You would have stood up like a man and found a better way. Not manipulated people. Not gambled with my life like it was yours to spend.”

He rolled his eyes. "What would someone like you understand about any of this? You have always been useless." He glanced at the baby with that same flat, dismissive look. "And it seems you went ahead and had a useless daughter to match."

The rage that moved through me in that moment was so clean and so complete that it almost felt like clarity.

“Get out.” I signed it with every ounce of fury I had in my body, making sure he felt every word in my hands. “Get out of this room right now.”

"I am only being honest—"

“I do not want your honesty.” I held my daughter closer against my chest and met his eyes without flinching. “You are a monster, Daniel. A coward and a monster, just like our father was. And I want you to hear me very clearly because I will not be saying this twice — all my life I made myself small for you. I let you walk all over me. I let you use me and direct me and treat me like I existed only to be convenient for you. That ends today. The hold you think you have over me expired the moment you walked into this room and looked at my daughter the way you just did. If you think you can still pull my strings, you need to think again. That will never happen. Not ever again.”

Daniel stared at me for a long moment, galring at me so hard that if looks could kill I would have dropped dead seconds ago.

"You will regret this," he hissed.

“I have spent ten months living in regret,” I signed back. “I am quite used to the feeling.”

He held my gaze for another second, then turned toward the door with his jaw tight.

It was exactly at that moment that the door opened from the other side.

Adrian stepped in.

His expression was unreadable — that carefully blank face he had perfected, the one that gave nothing away and cost me everything. I sat up straighter, and despite everything, despite every wall I had spent the last ten months building around myself, something small and fragile lifted in my chest at the sight of him.

Then I saw her.

Vivian walked in behind him, elegant and composed, her hand resting lightly on the strap of her bag, her eyes moving around the room with the easy confidence of someone who belonged everywhere she went.

He had not been here for twenty four hours and now he is showing up with HER?

The small fragile thing in my chest quietly folded in on itself and went still.