1 The valet stand outside the Plaza Hotel was a blur of tail-lights and damp city cold. Nate’s birthday gala had just wrapped up, and I was standing alone on the curb, waiting for my ride. That was when three men in custom suits, completely hammered, stumbled out of the revolving doors. They spotted me, their eyes dragging up and down my body, the crude remarks spilling from their mouths before they even fully surrounded me. One of them actually laughed, reaching into his pocket and tossing a crumpled hundred-dollar bill at my chest. “Dressed like that, sweetheart, what’s your hourly rate?” The crisp paper grazed my cheek and fluttered to the wet pavement. Before the shock could even fully register in my chest, a shadow violently cut through the light. Nathaniel Prescott’s face was a mask of pure, lethal rage. He grabbed the nearest guy by the lapels and threw a punch so hard it cracked. In seconds, he had them on the ground. When it was over, Nate straightened his cuffs, wiping his knuckles as he walked back to me. “Your dress is too revealing, Harper,” he said, his voice flat, devoid of the adrenaline that had just possessed him. “You can’t blame them for mistaking you for a working girl.” I looked down at the micro-mini sequined dress that barely covered my upper thighs. A hot, suffocating wave of humiliation crawled up my throat. So, he knew. He knew exactly how inappropriate this dress was. And yet, whenever Sloane Kensington—his childhood friend, his so-called savior—linked her arm through mine, pressing her palms together in a theatrical plea, he always took her side. “Harper, come on, you have a killer body. Just wear my new design for the launch, be a good sport. It’s free marketing for me.” Whenever she asked, Nate would chime in with that soft, reasonable tone. “Sloane’s begging you, Harper. Just help her out. It’s not a big deal.” Because of that, at cocktail hours, charity galas, and private dinners, if Sloane asked, I would eventually be coaxed by Nate into wearing whatever scandalous, unfinished piece she was calling “haute couture” that week. Just like tonight. I looked up, meeting his dark eyes in the freezing air. I asked, my voice terrifyingly steady, “This dress… wasn’t I the one you practically forced to wear it? Time and time again?” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “In your eyes, Nate, what exactly is the difference between me and the kind of woman they thought I was?” “Don’t be ridiculous, of course you’re not—” Before he could finish, a group of his friends—old-money heirs and venture capitalists—began filtering out of the hotel lobby. The men were in tuxedos; the women wore elegant, floor-length gowns or tasteful Chanel sets. And then there was me. In a cheap-looking, blindingly bright sequin slip, looking exactly like a VIP room bottle girl. The men’s eyes flicked unashamedly to my exposed cleavage and bare legs. One of them smirked, nudging Nate’s shoulder. “Got to hand it to you, Nate. Your girl really put on a show for us tonight.” Nate’s jaw clenched. The darkness returned to his eyes. He stripped off his tailored suit jacket, wrapping it tightly around my shoulders, effectively burying me in wool and silk before shoving me into the back of his waiting Town Car. The car glided into the Manhattan night. The tinted window reflected my face. The makeup was heavy, dramatic—done by a makeup artist Sloane had specifically hired for me. It was as trashy and loud as the dress itself. “Don’t overthink it,” Nate broke the silence, staring straight ahead. “Sloane is just getting her label off the ground. She needs the exposure. You have a great figure; you were just helping a friend out.” I didn’t answer. I turned to look at his Tom Ford suit, and then my mind drifted to the breathtaking, elegant, bespoke evening gown Sloane had worn to the gala tonight—ostensibly from the “same collection.” A bitter, self-deprecating laugh escaped my lips. Was it really about exposure, or was it about humiliation? Nate was a brilliant, ruthless CEO. He wasn’t blind. He knew exactly what this was. He was just playing dumb. Seeing my silence, he tapped the glass divider, signaling the driver to roll it up. Then, he pulled me across the leather seat and onto his lap. “You’re angry.” It wasn’t a question. “Harper, you know that if it weren’t for Sloane, the Prescotts would have never found me. She did me the greatest favor of my life. It’s only right that we help her in return.” I stared at him, my eyes tracing the sharp lines of his face, and gave a slow, empty nod. He was right. If it weren’t for Sloane connecting the dots on a missing persons forum, he would still be just “Nate”—the guy living in an illegal, windowless basement in Queens, working three shifts, refusing to spend more than five dollars on a halal cart meal so he could pay rent. He would never have known his last name was Prescott. He would never have become the heir everyone now bent over backward to please. But this man, who was so fiercely devoted to repaying his debts, had somehow forgotten the rest of it. He forgot that when I was eight, I was the one who found him half-dead and freezing in a snowbank, crying as I begged my mother to take him in. He forgot that when I was nineteen, after my mother died, I sold the tiny, run-down house she left me just to cover his tuition at Columbia. He forgot that when I was twenty-four, when that basement apartment caught fire, I fought against the tide of fleeing tenants and ran back into the flames to pull him out. He walked away without a scratch. But a burning ceiling beam collapsed on my right arm, crushing the bones in my hand. It crushed my hand, and it crushed my dream of ever holding a scalpel as a surgeon. Seeing me nod so obediently, Nate looked satisfied. “That’s my good girl.” He stroked my hair, a gesture that felt more like a reward for a well-behaved pet. But in the next second, his large hand slid beneath the hem of the jacket, gripping my bare thigh as he dipped his head to kiss me. Instinctively, I flinched, trying to pull away. Nate’s grip tightened on my waist, pinning me firmly against him. “What are you hiding from?” he murmured, his breath hot against my neck. “You weren’t afraid to put it all on display for the rest of the city tonight. Why play coy now?” My entire body went rigid. Having drunk men throw cash at my face, having his wealthy friends look at me like meat—none of it hurt as much as the sheer degradation of this exact moment. I stopped fighting. I went completely limp, letting him take the kiss. As the car hit the bumps of the city streets, my body swayed against his chest. I felt entirely numb, yet my mind had never been more agonizingly clear. I thought of Sloane again. Nate would never treat Sloane like this. With her, he was always restrained, always a gentleman. He never grabbed her waist in public. He never touched her legs. Even when Sloane got drunk at parties and leaned her head on his shoulder, he would politely slip his jacket off and place it between them as a barrier. When people teased them about it, he would just frown. “Watch your mouths. Sloane is a lady.” But I was a woman, too. We had relied on each other for survival for over a decade. Yet somewhere along the way to the top, he had lost the desire to cherish me. All that was left was disdain. The car pulled up to the Prescott estate in the Hamptons. Nate meticulously adjusted my twisted hem, wrapped his suit jacket tightly around me again, and carried me out of the car. I turned my head. I saw the driver’s face flush a deep, embarrassed red. I saw the staff at the front door exchanging knowing, sordid glances. In that moment, suspended in the cold air, I honestly couldn’t tell the difference between myself and the kind of woman Nate had accused me of acting like. When I woke up the next morning, Nate was already gone. On the nightstand sat a glass of lukewarm water and a blister pack of Advil he had asked the maid to leave for my hangover. Everything was exactly as it had always been. I stared at the water for a few seconds before getting out of bed and walking down to the massive chef’s kitchen. I had barely eaten a thing at the gala, and my stomach was a hollow, aching pit. Suddenly, all I wanted was a bowl of instant ramen with the spicy garlic-shrimp relish I had made last week. When we were kids, we were so poor we could barely afford fresh groceries. A bowl of cheap noodles, a spoonful of that pungent, savory homemade shrimp relish, and Nate would devour it like it was a Michelin-star meal. When he finished, he’d always push the empty bowl toward me, grinning. “One more, Harper. When I’m rich one day, I’m going to buy you a whole ocean of shrimp, and you can make this for me every single day.” I used to laugh and call him a loser, telling him the whole house would stink to high heaven. He’d laugh back, saying he’d happily die of the smell as long as he got to eat it. But today, I tore through the Sub-Zero refrigerator and found nothing. A maid heard the noise and hurried in. “Ms. Hayes, can I help you find something?” “Where is my shrimp relish?” She froze, looking incredibly uncomfortable. “It… it was thrown out yesterday.” My fingers stopped on the stainless-steel handle. “Why?” “Mr. Prescott said the smell was too overpowering.” The maid shot me a cautious, pitying look. “Ms. Kensington came by yesterday afternoon and said the seafood stench was making her nauseous. So Mr. Prescott ordered us to clear all the seafood products out of the fridge.” I didn’t say a word. After a long pause, I just let out a soft, “Oh.” He hadn’t liked the taste of it in a long time. But it wasn’t just the relish he had lost his appetite for. My cheap, working-class stomach had never quite adapted to the Prescott family’s wealth. I couldn’t stomach the thousand-dollar tins of beluga caviar he liked to order now. I pulled out my phone, intending to order some takeout from a cheap diner in town. The screen lit up. A message from Sloane popped up instantly. [Harper, thank you SO much! The PR generated from last night was absolutely insane!] I tapped the screenshot she attached. It was the promotional photo for her brand. In it, I was standing in the center of the ballroom in that cheap sequined scrap of fabric. Under the chandeliers, my bare legs looked long and starkly pale. The excessive amount of exposed skin on my chest was glaring, almost blinding under the flash of the cameras. The comment section was a war zone. [Is she actually a model? I thought Nate Prescott hired an escort for the night.] [Body is crazy, but she looks cheap as hell.] I scrolled down a little further. And there, I saw Nate’s verified handle. He didn’t defend me. He didn’t say a single word to shut down the crude comments. Instead, he was acting as Sloane’s hype man. [It’s Sloane’s first independent label launch. She’s poured her heart into it. Everyone show some support.] I had seen dozens of posts like this over the past year. I had looked at them so often that the initial sting of humiliation had long since scarred over into apathy. I gripped my phone and waited in the quiet kitchen. Sure enough, less than three seconds later, the screen flashed with an incoming call. The moment I answered, Eleanor Prescott’s voice tore through the speaker, a barrage of aristocratic fury. “Harper Hayes, how many times have I explicitly told you not to leave this house wearing that trash? Do you have any idea who was in that room last night? You stood next to Nathaniel looking like something he picked up on a street corner in Vegas!” I was being berated, screamed at by a woman who despised me, yet somehow, tears of profound relief pricked my eyes. At least there was one person left in this world who felt I shouldn’t be dressed like that. “Thank you, Mrs. Prescott.” The yelling on the other end came to a dead, screeching halt. Eleanor’s voice dropped, icy and suspicious. “Have you lost your mind?” Perhaps I had. Because I let out a broken sob and asked her, “Can you send me away? Please. I don’t want to be with him anymore.” Eleanor sounded genuinely taken aback. “You? Leave him? Weren’t you the one who willingly subjected yourself to the Prescott family crucible just to marry him?” It was true. The “crucible” wasn’t some medieval torture, but it might as well have been. His grandfather had forced me to stand outside the estate gates in the freezing November sleet for ten hours, refusing to let me inside, trying to prove I was just another gold digger who would break under pressure. I ended up in the ICU with severe pneumonia, nearly losing my life to prove I loved him. I couldn’t leave back then. I couldn’t bear to. We had survived the darkest parts of our lives together; our roots were tangled, bone and blood. You couldn’t just rip that out without bleeding to death. I had nearly died just for the right to stand next to him. How had it come to this? How was I now on my knees, begging the woman who hated me to help me escape? Silence hung heavy on the line. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and whispered, “The Prescott family is too high up. I was naive. I was holding onto a fantasy.” I heard a very faint sigh from the other end. I couldn’t tell if it was relief or pity. Finally, Eleanor spoke. “Fine.” “In three days, I will arrange for your departure.” Just before she hung up, she added, “I’ll have you flown to Geneva. There’s a highly renowned orthopedic surgeon there. He can fix your right hand.” My breath hitched violently in my chest. “My hand… it can be fixed?” After Nate had been recognized as the Prescott heir, he had flown in half a dozen specialists to look at my crushed hand. Every single one of them had shaken their heads, telling me too much time had passed, that the nerve and bone damage was permanent. That my surgical career was over. I had accepted it as my fate. But Eleanor let out a sharp, mocking scoff. “Of course it can be fixed.” “Nathaniel specifically instructed those doctors to withhold the actual treatment options from you. He said the life of a surgeon was too exhausting and stressful. He decided that living out your days as his wealthy, pampered wife was more than enough, and that you had no business picking up a scalpel ever again.” A high-pitched ringing pierced my ears. The world dropped away into a brief, blinding deafness. Over the years, I had harbored an ocean of regret and resentment. I hated myself for being so poor that I had to rent that illegal basement. I hated the upstairs neighbor for their faulty wiring. I hated the FDNY for arriving ten minutes too late. I even hated God for making sure it was my dominant hand that got crushed under the beam. But through all of that, I had never, not for a single second, hated Nate. Only now did I realize the truth. The thing that had ultimately destroyed my dream wasn’t the fire. It was Nathaniel. I dropped the phone and practically crawled up the sweeping marble staircase. Next to the master suite was a spare bedroom. For years, it had housed all my medical textbooks, my MCAT notes, and the short white coat I had only gotten to wear for six months during my clinical rotations. I had rarely gone in there, terrified that the grief of losing my career would swallow me whole. But things were different now. I stood in front of the door for a long time, drawing in a shaky breath, before shoving it open. The desperate, hopeful smile hadn’t even formed on my lips before it shattered. It was empty. The entire room was completely, utterly empty. “Where are my things?!” A maid came running down the hall, panicked by my scream. When she saw me staring into the barren room, she flinched. “Ms. Hayes, this room was cleared out a few days ago.” “Ms. Kensington mentioned she needed a studio space with good natural light and took a liking to this room. So Mr. Prescott told us to… dispose of all your belongings.” I lost my mind. I tore through every bedroom, every closet, every trash bin on the property. The staff couldn’t stop me, so they finally called Nate, pulling him out of a board meeting. “You can’t even keep an eye on one woman? What am I paying you people for?” The maids stood in the hallway, heads bowed, not daring to breathe. It had only been a year since he was brought into the Prescott empire, but he had already entirely absorbed the ruthless, suffocating aura of a man who ruled the world. He was no longer the broke kid who stood in front of an angry landlord, bowing his head and apologizing with a tight smile for being short on rent. The Nate standing before me now could sign a deal in sixty seconds that was worth more than a normal person would make in a lifetime. His time was expensive. So expensive that giving me five minutes of it felt like an act of charity. “Harper, what is it this time?” Hearing his voice, I lunged forward like a drowning woman grabbing a lifeline. “Where are my things?” “Nate, give me my things back—” His brow furrowed in deep irritation. “Those useless books? You can’t even be a doctor anymore, Harper. What’s the point of keeping them?” The tears spilled over, hot and fast. “No.” “I have to keep them.” I shook my head frantically, holding up my right wrist. Around it was a cheap, dyed-agate bangle. It was tacky and cloudy. My mother had bought it for twenty dollars at a flea market right before she died. “Don’t you remember?” “My mom used to say, for people like us, no matter how hard life gets, we always have to keep something to look forward to.” Just like after she died, I kept this fake jade bracelet as a tether to her memory. Just like after my hand was crushed, I kept those medical books I could no longer use. When you’re alive, you have to hold onto something. Because if you let go, you have nothing left. Nate hated it when people brought up his past, and he hated it when I brought up mine. He seized my wrist, his grip tightening violently, almost to the point of snapping the bone. “Harper, I haven’t been ‘people like us’ for a very long time.” He enunciated every word, heavy and cruel. “Only poor people need to rely on pathetic, imaginary hope to get through the day.” “I have everything I could ever want right at my fingertips. I don’t need to hope.” “But I do!” It was the first time I had ever screamed at him like that. “Nate, whether you need it or not is your business! But I am not you! Give me my books back!” His patience snapped. He reached down, ripped the cheap bangle off my wrist, and hurled it at the marble floor. It shattered instantly. Sharp, jagged fragments of dyed glass exploded across the floor, several of them slicing into the bare skin of my feet. Beads of blood welled up. I stood paralyzed. Nate stepped over the glass, cupping my face in his large hands, forcing me to look up into his cold eyes. “The books are at the city dump. They’re gone.” “And you are never to wear twenty-dollar flea market garbage in this house again.” “Harper, it’s time you learned how to be a proper Mrs. Prescott.” The man Nate had become was a liar. The very same night he told me to act like a “proper” Prescott wife, he walked into the bedroom with Sloane in tow. “Sloane designed a new dress today. There’s a charity gala in three days. I want you to wear it and get her some more press.” I looked at the sketch. It was a mock-cheongsam, but the slit was cut scandalously high, all the way up to the hip bone. What respectable, proper wife of a billionaire would ever be caught dead in a dress like that? Fortunately, I was a liar now, too. In three days, Eleanor Prescott was sending me on a plane to Switzerland. I was never going to wear that dress, and I was never going to attend that gala. But I looked at him and said, “Okay.” Nate looked pleased. “I have to fly out tomorrow,” he said casually, looking down at his phone to type an email. “I probably won’t have time to see you the next couple of days, but I’ll be back in time for the gala.” “Alright,” I murmured. I didn’t ask where he was going. I didn’t need to. Because when he had handed me his phone to look at the dress design, I had seen the flight confirmation pop up as a banner notification. JFK to Paris. Two first-class tickets. Ever since returning to the Prescott family, Nate constantly reminded me that his time was a finite, priceless commodity. Not a single minute could be wasted. That was why he couldn’t have breakfast with me. It was why he couldn’t watch a movie with me. It was why we barely had time to just sit and talk anymore. But when it came to Sloane… He could somehow carve three entire days out of his schedule just to escort her to Paris Fashion Week. That night, Nate was relentless. He pulled me into bed and took me over and over again, rough and demanding, until late into the night. By the time he finally finished, a dull, throbbing ache had settled deep in my lower abdomen. He had just pulled the heavy duvet over me when his phone rang. Sloane’s voice drifted through the receiver, light and giggly. “Nate, we’re flying out to Paris tomorrow, and I am suddenly craving those late-night tacos from that food truck in Brooklyn. Keep me company for one last American junk-food run?” Without a second of hesitation, Nate threw the covers off and began pulling on his clothes. The cramping in my stomach intensified, twisting sharply. I curled into a tight ball. “Nate, my stomach hurts… really badly. Can you take me to the ER first?” His hands paused on the buttons of his shirt. A second later, he resumed buttoning. “If you’re going to play the jealous girlfriend, Harper, at least pick a believable symptom.” “When your hand was literally crushed to pieces, you barely made a sound. Now you have a little stomach ache and you need the ER?” The bedroom door clicked shut. I sat there in the dark for a long time. In the old days, I used to bite my tongue until it bled rather than complain about pain, terrified of making him worry. But even then, he always noticed. He would hold me, his eyes red, whispering sweet things, looking as though he wanted nothing more than to absorb my pain into his own body. But now, I was begging him for help, and he simply didn’t believe me. The agonizing cramps grew violent, tearing through my insides. It wasn’t until I felt a rush of warm fluid sliding down my inner thighs that I finally looked down. The pristine white sheets were saturated with a massive, spreading pool of crimson. When I woke up, the sterile smell of a hospital room hit me. Eleanor Prescott was sitting in a chair by the bed. Her expression was a complicated mix of pity and ruthless pragmatism. “You were pregnant. But due to intense physical exertion, you lost the baby.” I stared blankly at the ceiling tiles. When I spoke, my voice was just a hollow rasp of air. “Does Nate know?” The maid standing by the door shook her head, looking at the floor. “We called Mr. Prescott while you were in surgery. But he said his flight was boarding, and that unless the sky was falling, it could wait until he got back.” I didn’t say anything else. My mind drifted back to the year my mother died. Nate had knelt before her cheap headstone in the rain and pressed his forehead to the wet grass three times. The teenage boy with red-rimmed eyes had sworn an oath to the dirt. “I swear to you, whatever happens to Harper is the most important thing in my life. Forever.” How did it take only one year in a penthouse for ‘forever’ to expire? Three days later, I was discharged. Eleanor personally drove me to the tarmac where a private jet was waiting. Exactly one year ago, Nate and I had walked through the iron gates of the Prescott estate, our fingers locked together, shoulder to shoulder. He had looked at me and said, “Harper, no one will ever be able to tear us apart again.” One year later, I was walking away completely alone. All I was taking with me was the half-million dollar severance check Eleanor had handed me, and the dozen shattered pieces of my mother’s cheap glass bracelet in a velvet pouch. As the jet engines roared, lifting me into the clouds, the sky outside my window turned a brilliant, blinding blue. And at that exact moment, on another runway just miles away, a first-class flight returning from Paris touched down on American soil.
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