Chapter 1

At our second wedding, the one meant to remarry us, I found a positive pregnancy test in Robert Randall's pocket.

He expected me to walk out cold, maybe blow it up again until the whole city knew.

This time I smiled, took out my phone, and ordered ninety-nine sets of lingerie in ninety-nine different styles, plus ninety-nine bottles of male enhancement pills, with a note: "Mind those tired kidneys."

His face went livid. I didn't stop. I sent off ninety-nine VIP specialist appointments at an OB-GYN clinic for good measure.

After the ceremony, Robert stood at the vanity and explained himself. "I'll handle everything. The child included."

I kept wiping off my makeup, not sparing him a glance. "Just remember to book me as your doctor for the prenatal checkups. Win-win."

My indifference unsettled him.

He gripped my chin, firm enough to force my eyes to his. "I don't care what game you think you're playing. Don't try anything."

I turned my head away. In the mirror, my own face looked bloodless under the makeup.

Then Robert's phone rang. A round of pitiful sobbing came through the speaker, and his face twisted with fury.

He hurled the bottle of makeup remover off the vanity, straight at me.

The mirror shattered. A shard flicked up against my eyelid, and something warm slid down with the tears.

He looked at me with disgust, threw on his suit, and left.

Watching his cold back disappear, I immediately called my private lawyer.

"I have proof of his affair, and proof he transferred our marital assets. I want everything that's mine back."

The lawyer agreed at once that it could be done.

Only then did I slowly hang up.

Robert and I had been promised to each other before either of us was born, our parents sealing a business alliance with the engagement of two unborn children.

We grew up playing together. From the day we met to the day we married, it took us a full twenty-five years, and for twenty-five years he loved me.

Then in our three years of marriage, he tore me apart for a woman he'd picked up at a bar, and after every time, he left me to clean up the mess they'd made.

I couldn't take it. I filed for divorce.

Half a year later, my father died despite everything the doctors tried. At the funeral, Robert told me he would cut ties with that woman and remarry me. His condition: I sign over the shares my father had left me in his will. After that I could go on being an OB-GYN and being Mrs. Randall in peace.

I agreed. Not because I still loved him. Because I'd discovered he had already gutted my father's company and carried off everything in it.

This time, I would take back every last thing that was mine.

…

I changed back into light denim and went to the Randall house.

While digging for proof of how Robert had moved the company's assets, I found something else: the ruby-and-diamond rings, the ones that had once stood for our love, thrown into the trash.

I picked up the custom-made pair without thinking, and tears dropped onto the back of my hand before I knew they were falling.

Seven years ago, I'd said I envied the snow up north. He spent hundreds of millions and ordered the weather bureau to make it snow for me every winter.

On a bitterly cold night, he stood with me in the snow and watched the flakes spin down until they blanketed our hair. He pulled me close and kissed me like he couldn't stop. After a long while, he dropped to one knee and proposed, and we slid the ruby rings onto each other's fingers, both of us happy.

In our first year of marriage, in this very wedding home, Robert lay tangled with a woman he'd met at a bar, the two of them wound together, their wanton sounds something I couldn't bear to hear.

I froze in the doorway and let the tears come.

For more than twenty years, Robert couldn't stand to see me cry. That time, he ordered the housekeeper to press a pillow over my mouth to muffle it. "Done crying yet? If you don't mind, treat it as a live demonstration. Take notes."

Was any of that love real?

Robert's bodyguards burst into the study and cut the memory short. I struggled the whole way, but they forced me into the car anyway.

They shoved me along and brought me to one of Robert's private stadiums.

"I knew you were up to no good. You think knowing a little medicine gives you the right to cut Tiffany Easton with a scalpel?" Robert said, one arm around the woman beside him.

She stroked the slight swell of her belly, her voice climbing thin and shrill. "She cut me with a scalpel yesterday. If I hadn't shielded the baby the whole time, we'd have lost our child."

I asked at once, "Where's your proof? I have an alibi."

Tears welled instantly in her eyes, and she turned to Robert, weeping prettily. "Robert, let it go this time. As long as our baby's fine, I can stand a little hurt. It's nothing."

Robert pulled out a golf club and brought it down hard across my back. "I'm not blind and I'm not deaf! Don't think I don't know about all the rotten things you've done behind my back!"

The pain dropped me to the floor, my eyes burning. "If I did it, I'll own it. I didn't, and you won't force me to."

Robert glanced at the woman with her face full of injury, then his eyes swept back to me, impatient. "Touch one hair on Tiffany again and I'll scatter your father's ashes in the river so his soul never rests. Try me."

Something frightened slipped into my eyes.

My father's death was the damp grief I kept buried inside. I knew how vicious and cunning Robert was. He would do it.

Before I could say a word, a bodyguard threw a bucket of ice water over me.

The cold cut straight to the bone. I stared at that disgusting face of his and bit down hard on my tongue, until the taste of iron pulled me back to myself.

To get at the evidence of how he'd emptied out my father's company, I made my voice come out rough. "Fine. I understand. I'm sorry."

Robert took a gun from a bodyguard and handed it to the woman. "Baby, your turn to hit back now."

He looked at me, ice in his eyes. "Ten rounds in that pistol. You can dodge. Where you get hit is down to your luck."

"Wait. Tiffany's pregnant, she can't move around easily. This is only fair."

Robert pulled off his tie and bound my legs together.