Chapter 1
My husband shoved me, nine months pregnant, off a cliff for fifty million dollars.
He had no idea I’d survive.
Or that my real dad owns the insurance company he’d planned to steal from.
The snow ate my scream before it could reach anyone.
Wind bit through my coat, sharp as shards of glass.
I was nine months pregnant.
My belly so heavy I could barely bend, so full of the son I’d already named Liam in my head.
Ethan had driven us high into the Aspen mountains that afternoon.
Snow blinded every window of the SUV.
I’d begged him to turn around.
Told him the roads were too dangerous, that Liam could come any day.
He’d smiled and stroked my hair.
Said he wanted one last quiet moment with just the two of us before our lives changed forever.
I’d believed him.
The wind howled so loud I could barely stand when he made me get out.
My boots slipped on the ice.
I reached for his arm to steady myself.
That’s when I looked into his eyes.
Nothing.
No anger.
No regret.
Just cold, empty space.
Like I was a thing to be discarded, not his wife of three years.
Before I could draw a breath, both his hands slammed into my shoulders.
The ground vanished.
I fell backward into open air, fingers scrabbling for rock, for branch, for anything to hold.
My only thought wasn’t for myself.
It was Liam.
Please, God. Let him live.
Through the swirling white, I heard Ethan laugh.
“Goodbye, Emily,” he called. “Neither of you will suffer much longer.”
Then everything went white.
I crashed onto a narrow ledge halfway down.
Pain ripped through my ribs so hard I saw stars.
My left wrist twisted under me with a sickening crack.
A sharp, tearing ache tore across my stomach.
Blood filled my mouth, thick and metallic.
I forced my eyes open, staring up at the cliff edge through the snow.
Ethan was still there.
Beside him stood Brittany.
My best friend.
The woman who’d hugged me at my baby shower, who’d brought me peppermint tea every week when my morning sickness was worst, who’d slept in our guest room when Ethan was “working late.”
Who’d been sleeping with my husband the entire time.
“Is she dead?” Brittany asked, her voice shaking so bad I could barely hear it over the wind.
Ethan shrugged.
Dusted snow off his gloves like he’d just swatted a fly.
“For fifty million dollars…”
He smiled.
The same smile that had made me fall in love with him.
“She’d better be.”
Then they turned and walked away.
They never looked back.
I lay there for what felt like hours.
Snow piled on my frozen coat, seeping through the tears in the fabric.
I drifted in and out of dark.
Every breath burned like fire.
Every heartbeat felt weaker than the last.
I wrapped both shaking hands tight around my stomach.
“Please,” I whispered, my throat raw. “Stay with me, Liam. Please.”
Just as the dark pulled me under for good, a searchlight cut through the storm.
Brighter than the sun.
A helicopter.
Someone lowered down on a cable through the wind, moving fast.
He wasn’t wearing a rescue uniform.
Just a long black coat, silver hair whipping wild around his face.
The second I saw him, I knew.
Years before, after my mom died, I’d found an old photo tucked in the back of her jewelry box.
A man with the same silver hair, the same sharp, kind eyes.
Jonathan Cross.
Founder of Cross National Insurance.
The exact company holding my fifty million dollar life insurance policy.
And according to the last letter my mom ever wrote, hidden in the lining of the box…
He was my biological father.
“Emily?” he whispered, kneeling beside me on the ledge.
His hand was warm when he touched my face.
I tried to speak.
Only blood came out.
He laid his hand gently over mine, where I was clutching my stomach.
His voice was like steel, soft but unbreakable.
“You are not dying today. Neither of you.”
At the hospital, doctors swarmed me.
Cut away my frozen clothes, shouted orders back and forth.
Broken ribs.
Fractured wrist.
Internal bleeding that required emergency surgery.
Then, after it was over, they pressed the doppler to my stomach, searching for a heartbeat.
One second.
Two.
Three.
A tiny, fluttering sound echoed through the room.
Weak.
Fragile.
Alive.
Tears burned down my frozen cheeks, hot against the cold skin.
I’d never heard a more beautiful sound.
Jonathan never left my bedside.
He sat in the hard plastic chair for twenty hours straight, holding my good hand.
His face was calm, but I saw the white-hot rage burning behind his eyes.
Rage for the man who’d tried to kill his daughter and grandson.
“Ethan already filed the claim,” he said quietly, three days after I woke up.
I turned to him, every muscle in my body going tight.
“He told police you slipped in the storm. The official report says you and your son both died of exposure.”
My chest felt like it was caving in.
“He requested the full fifty million payout the same day he left the mountain.”
Ethan thought he’d buried us forever.
Thought no one would ever question his perfect grieving husband act.
Thought he’d get away with murder and live the high life with my best friend.
Slowly, I lifted my bruised, swollen hand from my stomach.
The fear that had lived in my bones since the day I fell melted away.
Something colder, sharper, stronger took its place.
May you like
For the first time since Ethan’s hands hit my shoulders…
I smiled.
