I was dying in the delivery room. The famous surgeon who walked in to save me was the same man who threw me out into the freezing rain 9 months ago—my ex-husband. “Don’t try to trap me with a bastard child to save your meal ticket,” he sneered. He thought I had cheated. “We’re losing them!” the nurse screamed. But before I passed out, I whispered a secret that made him stagger backward in pure horror

I hear the nurse’s voice before I see the door open.

“Doctor Herrera, the patient is fully dilated, pressure dropping, fetal distress worsening. We need you now.”

For one impossible, agonizing second, the entire delivery room goes silent around me. The heart monitors keep their frantic beeping, the fluorescent lights keep humming their sterile, insect-like drone, and my body keeps tearing itself open from the inside out. But my own heart stops entirely for a completely different reason.

Because I know that name.

Herrera.

Nicolás Herrera.

The man who once kissed my forehead in the quiet dark and promised me forever. The man who, just nine months ago, stood in the center of our cavernous master bedroom, tossed my packed suitcase onto the freezing marble floor, and told me to disappear before his immaculate reputation was ruined.