father had said. She didn’t know the name Adrian Vale except as half her blood. She didn’t know that while she slept wrapped in a hospital blanket, the man who helped create her was somewhere under chandeliers, planning a wedding built on lies.
But one day, she would know everything.
And I had already decided the truth would not reach her as pain.
It would reach her as armor.
Three days later, I left the hospital with Lily in my arms and my lawyer’s card in my pocket.
The world outside was painfully bright. Winter light reflected off parked cars, cold air biting my face. My sister Nora waited at the curb, hair tied in a messy knot, sunglasses hiding eyes that had cried with me through every miscarriage, every insult, every night Adrian came home smelling like Celeste’s perfume and called me paranoid.
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