Chapter 1

"Ms. Sheldon, are you absolutely sure about this? Lily is only five—"

I cut the lawyer off and signed my name on the relinquishment papers. "I'm sure."

Outside the window, the rain was pouring.

I looked up at the skyscraper across the street. Behind the floor-to-ceiling windows on the thirty-seventh floor, Ethan Vance, the CEO of Vance Enterprises, was holding a meeting.

He wore a flawlessly tailored black suit. His expression was cold, his every movement carrying the aloof authority everyone in the business world knew him for.

Nobody knew that this man was legally my husband.

And nobody knew we had a five-year-old daughter together.

It had been three years.

For the past three years, I had worked as a regular chauffeur at his company. I drove him to and from work every day, listening to his cold commands: "Chloe, turn left," or "Chloe, park here."

He never spared me a second glance in public, as if we truly were nothing more than employer and employee.

Lily had learned to call me "Mommy" when she was two, but she never dared to call Ethan "Daddy."

Because Ethan had once told her: "Don't let me hear that word in public."

Lily was a good girl. She really never said it again.

But I knew that every night, she would hug the only stuffed animal Ethan had ever bought her, whispering, "Goodnight, Daddy. You looked so handsome today. Will you look at Lily tomorrow?"

That stuffed toy was just a cheap doll Ethan had grabbed from a convenience store three years ago for twenty-nine dollars.

Yet, Lily treated it like her most precious treasure, hugging it close for three whole years.