Chapter 1

My sister-in-law kept a notebook. In it, she'd logged every date her brother and I had slept together.

Six years married, and we finally had a child of our own.

Before I could even say the words, she pulled out that notebook and threw it down in front of me.

"Last month you and my brother were together five times, tops. The rest of the time you were away on business trips. Is this baby really his?"

My husband swallowed the whole story, tore up the pregnancy report, and slapped me across the face. "My sister's right. Six years and nothing. Why would you suddenly get pregnant so easily now?"

I was thrown out, sent back to my parents' house. My sister-in-law's parting words: they'd only take me back after the eighth week, once the paternity test was done.

I quietly blocked every one of them, then turned around and booked a paternity test and an abortion for a month later.

1

The thick notebook slammed down on the coffee table, and in the same moment Anthony Dickerson's hand came up and cracked across my face.

My head rang, and the last of the joy was still sitting on my lips.

Through the blur, I watched Hester Dickerson pick up the pregnancy report and rip it to shreds.

There was a faint sneer at the corner of her mouth. "I've never met anyone like you. Cheating on my brother and acting like you've got every right to."

I steadied myself and looked at Anthony. "You believe her?"

His face was red with anger. Before he could get a word out—

Hester pointed at the notebook on the table. "My brother's a man, he doesn't keep track of these things. But I do."

"It's all right there in my book, every time you two slept together. Last month it was only five. Six years you couldn't conceive, and now, right after a business trip, suddenly you're pregnant?"

"The Dickersons have carried one son a generation for eight generations. We are not letting some other man's blood into this family."

I fired back. "Six years without a child, and that was because your brother's sperm didn't measure up!"

"Then how did you get pregnant so easily this time?"

I gave a bitter smile. Six years of endless pills, endless injections, and in Hester's mouth it all came down to one word: easily.

"Anthony, you're really going to let your sister slander me like this?"

He turned his head away. "Slander or not, you know in your own heart."

I sucked in a breath, and a cold went through me from head to foot.

The moment that slap landed, I should have seen straight through the man in front of me, his cowardice, his stupidity.

Ever since Hester moved in, she'd been feeding him poison, stirring up trouble.

And he always took his sister's side. Time after time, she was the reason we fought.

Afterward he'd use her age as an excuse and ask me to let it go.

Every time I let it go, she only pushed harder.

This time she'd gone as far as logging the most private thing in my life.

My cheek burned, and I dropped down onto the couch.

Hester shot Anthony a look. He hesitated, uneasy, and stayed where he was.

She rolled her eyes at him, turned, and went into the bedroom. When she came back out, she had my suitcase.

She opened the door and threw the suitcase out.

I shot to my feet. "What do you think you're doing!"

She waved a hand. "My brother's too soft-hearted to tell you to get out."

"I'm not as easy to talk to as he is. I will not have a woman who cheats on my brother staying in our house."

I looked at Anthony, unmoved. "Your house? Don't forget this apartment is my premarital property!"

"So what? You married my brother, so my brother has a share in it too. And you're the one at fault, so it's only right you walk away with nothing."

Hester actually made me laugh.

"Is that what you think too?"

Hester never even finished high school. She knew nothing about the law.

Anthony was a graduate of a top university. That was the very reason I hadn't cared, back then, that his family was ordinary.

His eyes darted away, and his silence said he agreed with every word she'd said.