The impact of my own words hung in the icy early morning air, thick and sharp like shattered glass.
“That child isn’t yours. Forget me. Not everything in this world revolves around you.”
The moment the last syllable left my lips, a wave of nausea, fueled by absolute panic, churned my stomach. My legs felt like rags, so weak that if Malik’s truck hadn’t been right behind me, I would have collapsed onto the snow. My chin, my hands, my insides trembled; my entire body was a bundle of nerves at the limit of human endurance.
Lying to Sebastian Volkov to his face was the most dangerous thing I had ever done, but the visceral fear of what he represented—his power, his coldness, the glass cage that awaited me in New York—was the fuel that ignited my maternal desperation.
I had lied to him beca
