Once the baby’s born, we bring him to your condo. You raise him as your own. Everyone will believe you finally conceived. You get to be a mother, my son gets his heir.

You have nothing to lose.”

Nausea climbed the back of my throat.

They didn’t just want to betray me. They wanted to conscript my grief — to use me as a human shield, laundering their scandal by casting me as the devoted mother of an illegitimate child.

They wanted to chain me to this marriage to protect their image.

I set the crushed boxes down on the hallway credenza. The cream inside was mashed to paste — a fair picture of whatever feeling I had left for this man.