Chapter 3

When I was thirteen, my mother died of an illness.

My father's other women and their children began circling.

To keep me clear of the family's power struggles, my sister quietly sent me away from Harborview to study in Pearlport.

I was too young to understand. I thought she saw me as dead weight, that she'd thrown me away.

Out of that resentment, I never once admitted who I was to anyone outside.

Then my father died too, and my sister became the new head of the family. She was busy cutting down the other branches' influence, with even less time for me.

At college I met Cora. She made me feel cared for, like I mattered to someone, and I fell in headfirst.

But because I'd been hurt saving her, my sister refused to accept us being together, no matter what. We had a violent fight over it.

I never went back to Harborview.

Even so, my sister still worried I wasn't living well.

So from the moment Cora started her company, she quietly funneled our family's resources her way.

Through third parties she brought in funding, lined up projects, planted elite talent, and looked the other way about all of it.

She said, "A young Mason heir. His future wife can't be anything less. She shouldn't drag my brother down."

The absurd part was that everyone outside thought I was the one dragging Cora down. Even she believed it.

My ID and a few other important things were still at the wedding suite.

The next day, I didn't wait for Cora to come get me. I hailed a cab and went home myself.

The moment I walked in, I saw Allan Delgado standing in front of the full-length mirror in a cream, hand-embroidered suit.

"Cora, do I look good?"

Cora had her arms around his waist, doting on him.

"You're handsome. You look good in anything."

My eyes darkened. My mother had made that suit for me with her own hands before she died.

Through her pain she'd imagined the man I'd grow into, and cut it to my father's build when he was young.

She wanted me to wear it after my own wedding, when I brought my wife home for a family holiday dinner. It was the last gift she ever gave me.

I'd kept it carefully for over ten years and never once brought myself to wear it.

"That's my suit. Take it off."

The words came out flat and sudden, and startled them both.

Cora spoke first, surprised. "Emmet, how did you get here by your—"

She didn't finish. Something in my eyes must have registered, because her own went wide.

"When did you get your sight back? Why didn't you tell me?"

Her face was a tangle of things. Pure happiness was not one of them.

I looked at her, and let the sarcasm show. "Yesterday. Right when you dumped me in that abandoned factory and married another man. Disappointed, aren't you?"

For a moment Cora had nothing to say.

It was Allan who came toward me, eyes rimmed red.

"Emmet, don't blame Cora. She just has too strong a sense of responsibility. She didn't want people talking about me and the baby. Once you two register the marriage, you'll still be the real man of the house."

"I haven't been back to my hometown in a long time. My parents heard I'd had a wedding and told us to come home for a family dinner. The baby's a year old now. He should meet his grandparents."

"Cora only had me wear this suit because I didn't have anything decent on hand. I'll give it back right now—"

He made a show of taking it off, tears spilling down his face in strings.

As if he were the one being humiliated.

Cora pressed his hands still and turned to me, displeased.

"Your parents are long dead. Where else do you have a home to go to, besides here with me? He may as well wear it. No sense letting it sit there wasted."

"Since you can see now, we might as well be plain about it. Allan and I have a son. There's no way I'm leaving the two of them out in the cold."

"But that doesn't mean I'm throwing you away, Emmet. From now on you and Allan get along. He goes out to the social functions with me, and you stay home and mind the child. You never fit in at those kinds of events anyway."

I couldn't spare the energy to argue with her ridiculous words, or the faint disgust threading her tone.

One thought kept circling in my head.

Their child was a year old?

Then the time Cora got pregnant was exactly when my daughter died.

Cora and I once had a daughter.

She'd worried she wouldn't look good in a wedding dress while pregnant, so we'd decided to hold the wedding after the baby was born.

But before our girl even turned one, she died of a congenital heart defect.

I was destroyed by it. If Cora hadn't stayed at my side, I might have thrown myself off the roof.

So all that time she was playing the devoted partner in front of me, she was cheating?

No wonder in those weeks she was always saying she had to work late at the office, or sleeping in the study.

She'd been afraid I'd find out she was carrying another man's child.

Before I could say anything, a baby's cry broke out from the nursery.

Something dropped in my chest.

I got there before either of them.

The scene inside froze me where I stood.

The crib that had once belonged only to my daughter now held Cora and Allan's child.

And the photo wall I'd built for my daughter piece by piece, with Cornelia's help.

Every picture had been swapped out for shots of the three of them together, mother, father, and son.

I looked at them, lost.

"Where are the photos of my daughter?"