Chapter 2

I didn't go home. I couldn't. Instead, I went to the one place I knew they would be. The old oak tree on the edge of Central Park, the one Damien had once told me was his and Kiersten's childhood spot. He'd said it dismissively, as if it were a silly memory. Now I knew better.

Rain started to fall, a cold, miserable drizzle that soaked through my thin dress. I saw them from a distance. Kiersten Bentley was crying in his arms, her body shaking with dramatic sobs.

Damien held her like she was made of glass, his expression tender and full of a love he had never once shown me.

"She found out," Kiersten wailed. "Ella knows she's the real Bentley heiress. She came to the house. She's going to take everything from me!"

I stopped, hidden by the shadows of the trees. Another lie. Another piece of the puzzle I never knew existed. I was a Bentley? The daughter of the hotel magnate, Buster Bentley? It was impossible. I grew up in foster care.

"Shh, it's okay," Damien soothed her. "I'll handle it. I told you I would."

"But how, Damien?" she cried. "And what about the baby? You promised me a baby!"

The baby. Our baby. The one I had miscarried three months ago. The loss that had broken me, the one Damien had held me through, whispering that we would try again.

"Kiersten, listen to me," he said, his voice low and intense. "I never loved Ella. I pursued her for you. I needed her to carry our child so you wouldn't have to put your career on hold."

The world tilted on its axis. My stomach churned violently.

It wasn't our baby. It was their baby.

I was just the vessel. An unwitting surrogate.

"All of it was for you," he whispered, stroking her hair. "Everything."

A strangled gasp escaped my lips. I remembered the flowers he brought me every week, the late-night talks, the way he held my hand. I remembered him rubbing my swollen belly, talking to the baby inside, our baby.

It was all fake. A calculated, cruel deception.

"But what about the child?" Kiersten pressed, pulling back to look at him. "It's gone."

"We can have another," Damien said, his voice hard. "But there's something you don't know. The miscarriage wasn't an accident. The embryo transfer... it was your egg, but it wasn't my sperm. It was a donor's. I couldn't stand the thought of our child growing inside her."

The rain intensified, coming down in sheets, plastering my hair to my face. The cold seeped into my bones, but I didn't feel it. All I felt was a hollow, echoing horror. He hadn't just used me. He had violated me in the most profound way imaginable. The child I mourned, the child I believed was a piece of him and me, was a complete stranger.

My knees buckled, and I fell to the wet ground, my hands sinking into the mud. I remembered how he had cared for me during the pregnancy. He cooked for me, made sure I took my vitamins, forbade me from dancing. It wasn't out of love for me. It was for the precious cargo I was carrying for another woman.

A wave of nausea washed over me, and I vomited, the bitter taste of betrayal filling my mouth. I coughed, spitting out bile and tears.

Through the rain, I saw him get down on one knee.

He pulled out a velvet box.

"Kiersten Bentley," he said, his voice ringing with sincerity. "I have loved you my entire life."

"But what will people say?" she whispered, her tears suddenly gone, replaced by a calculating look. "About Ella..."

"They will say nothing," Damien declared. "Because no one will ever know. Buster Bentley has already agreed. He needs the Wolfe Media Group alliance more than he needs a long-lost daughter. You will remain the Bentley heiress. And Ella Cash... she will disappear."

He opened the box, revealing a diamond ring that glittered even in the dim, rainy light. "I've handled everything. She is nothing. You are everything. Marry me."

Kiersten's face broke into a triumphant smile. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

It wasn't a gentle kiss. It was a hungry, possessive claiming. They clung to each other in the downpour, a perfect picture of love and victory.

They finally broke apart, laughing, and walked away, leaving me alone in the mud and the rain.

The sound that left my throat wasn't a sob. It was a laugh. A broken, hysterical sound that echoed in the empty park.

My entire life was a joke. A tragedy written and directed by them.

I was a fool. A pawn. A surrogate. A ghost.

But as I lay there, something inside me shifted. The despair began to curdle into a cold, hard rage.

They had taken everything from me. My love, my body, my child, my career, my very identity.

I pulled out my phone, my fingers shaking but determined. I found the email from the American Ballet Theatre, the one offering me a principal dancer position, the one I had ignored for Damien.

My thumb hovered over the reply button.

They thought I would disappear. They thought I was nothing.

I would show them. I would make Damien Wolfe watch as I rose from the ashes he'd left me in. I would take back everything he and Kiersten had stolen.

I would make him regret the day he ever heard the name Ella Cash.

I typed my reply. "I accept."

Then I stood up, the mud and rain dripping from me, and walked away from the park, leaving the girl who loved Damien Wolfe behind forever.