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💔😭 Every morning for four years, Edmund Hale set out two mugs on the counter. His wife is dead. Their son is three and a half. There's a file in the office safe with his son's biological mother's name on it — and he has never opened it. She just walked into his interview. Edmund Hale is 34. Widower. CEO of Ashford & Hale Consulting. He has a three-year-old son named Oliver and a white-gold wedding ring he hasn't taken off in four years. His late wife Rosalind couldn't have children. They chose an anonymous surrogate. Rosalind died two weeks before the delivery. Edmund signed the paperwork alone. This week he hired the best assistant he's ever had. Her CV is four lines long. Her blazer has four safety pins holding it together. She also happens to be the woman who carried his son for nine months — and he doesn't know it yet. But before his three-minute interview on Thursday, this is what his new assistant's Tuesday night looked like: Chapter 1 Our building squats on the corner like it surrendered years ago. Three flights of stairs with a banister that's been loose since I was nineteen, taken two at a time because the hallway light is dead. I hear Dennis — not father, because he doesn't deserve the title — before I reach the door. Deep-afternoon drunk, the kind that sharpens syllables into shrapnel. His voice punches through the cheap wood as I work the key into the lock. "Can't even read a goddamn paragraph," he's shouting. "What's the point of sending you anywhere when you come back stupider than you left?" "Dad, please — stop, that's my project —" Blythe's voice is high and tight, trying to sound calm the way I taught her to. "Waste of money." Something tears — paper, lots of it. "Waste of my fucking time and money, that's all you are." The door swings open and the apartment rushes at me: stale beer, radiator heat, the particular sourness of an alcoholic who quit on himself years ago. Dennis is standing over Blythe's desk, her binder in his fists, ripped pages littering the carpet like confetti at the world's worst party. "Dennis, put it down." My voice comes out flat, practiced, the way it always does when he's this far gone. He turns, eyes glassy, the capillaries in his nose doing their nightly roadmap routine. "She's failing every single class and you want me to just sit here and —" "She's not failing." I step into the doorframe and hold it. "Put the binder down and go sit on the couch, Dennis." Blythe is pressed against the far wall, arms locked around her sketchbook — the one thing she grabbed before he could reach it. "Don't you dare tell me what to do in my own house!" He barks and steps forward, close enough that I can count exactly what he drank and how much. "Your own house?" I don't move an inch. "The one you haven't paid rent on in three months?" His hand comes fast — open palm across my cheek, and my head snaps left, the sting blooming hot and immediate, my ear ringing, my vision whiting at the edges. Behind him, Blythe makes a sound that's half gasp, half a scream she swallows back. My fingers are already in my jacket pocket, already closing around the canister. I bring the pepper spray up level with his face, thumb on the trigger, arm steady. "Try it again," I say, and my voice is so calm it scares even me. "Please. I am begging you to try it again." He stares at the canister. Not shame — never shame — just the desperate calculation of the odds that are not in his favor. He drops the binder and shuffles past me, pulling Blythe's door shut with a slam that rattles every wall in this place. I wait until the couch springs groan under his weight. Then I lower the spray, slip it into my pocket, and cross to the bed where Blythe is sitting. She's shaking — not the dramatic kind, the quiet kind that lives in the hands and the jaw and somewhere behind the ribs. I pull her close and her forehead drops against my shoulder, fingers gripping my sleeve. "Hey. You're okay." I smooth her hair back and tuck a strand behind her ear, and my thumb brushes the skin just below. The crescent birthmark sits exactly where I knew it would be — small, curved like a moon someone pressed there on purpose. Same spot as mine. Same as Mum's. The apartment vanishes for one breath. The beer smell, the torn pages, the ringing in my ear — all of it drops away. Just her, with Mum's mark on her skin. "I'm calling the police this time." Blythe pulls back, reaching for her phone on the nightstand. "I mean it, Cora." I catch her wrist gently before she reaches it. "No. You need to listen to me first." "He hit you." Her chin is trembling but her eyes are bone-dry and furious. "I watched him hit you and you just stood there." "And when the police walk in, they see a drunk father and a sixteen-year-old with no legal guardian." I hold her gaze until she stops pulling. "You know exactly what comes next." "I don't care." But she's not reaching for the phone anymore. "I don't care what comes next." "Group home, foster placement with strangers." I let go of her wrist slowly. "And I can't get you back without a judge, a lease, a real paycheck." She slumps against the headboard, and I watch the fight drain out of her shoulders. "So he just gets to keep doing this forever." "Not forever." My throat works around the next word like it's made of glass. "For now — but I'm getting us out of here." "How?" She pulls at a loose thread on her pillowcase, not looking at me. "When — because you keep saying soon." "I know." I take her hand and hold it still. "I need you to trust me a little longer. Can you do that?" "What about the college money?" She looks at me with those green eyes — same shade as mine, same shade as a boy I held for ten seconds in a delivery room before a nurse took him away. "You said it was handled." "It is handled." The lie slides out smooth, the way it does when it matters most. "That money isn't going anywhere, B." She nods. Trusts me, every single time without question, and the weight of that settles between my shoulder blades like something I'll be carrying when I'm eighty. I stay until she falls asleep, her sketchbook open on the pillow, half-finished bird she'll never let me name. I close her door and step past Dennis, who's out cold, the television painting his slack face blue. In my room, I open the bottom drawer — the one that sticks and needs the jiggle-and-pull I perfected years ago. The agency profile is under the folded sweater, exactly where I left it. My photo, my medical history, my psych evaluation — all reduced to a laminated rectangle that calls me an excellent candidate. Last delivery: two years ago, one healthy boy, eight pounds and four ounces. I pull out my phone and type the URL from memory. The site loads in pieces — stock families smiling at nothing, a tagline in a font that costs more than my entire bank account. My profile page is still there, greyed out, inactive. One blue button at the bottom, patient and waiting like it always knew I'd come back: Reactivate Profile. Seven thirty-two in the bank, the fund that isn't a college fund, Dennis on the couch, Blythe's birthmark still warm under my thumb. My finger hovers. She doesn't press the Reactivate button that night. She falls asleep on top of her bedspread in her work trousers. In forty-eight hours, a job listing on her phone will change everything. In seventy-two hours, she will walk into a glass corner office in Central London. In seventy-three hours, she will see a silver picture frame on the shelf behind her new boss's desk. And Edmund will set out two mugs on the counter on Monday morning, like he has every morning for four years, and he will not know that the woman who will make his coffee at nine-fifteen is the woman who carried his son for nine months. #MyPassion #library #novel #booktok #bookish #bookrecommendations #romance #romancebook 📖 This is where Chapter 1 ends. Tap Read More to keep going — Cora's full story is waiting inside MyPassion 👇👇👇