I never told my parents who my husband really was. To them, he was just a failure compared to my sister’s CEO husband. I went into labor early while my husband was abroad. Labor tore through me, and my mother’s voice was cringe. “Hurry up—I have dinner plans with your sister,” I asked my father to call 911, but he just indifferently read the newspaper. In the most helpless moment of my life, I was completely alone—until a helicopter landed.
Chapter 1: The Invisible Daughter
The air in my parents’ living room smelled of expensive lilies and old resentment. It was a smell I had grown up with, a scent that masked the rot beneath the floorboards of our family dynamic.
I was eight months pregnant, my ankles swollen to the size of grapefruits, my back throbbing with a dull, rhythmic ache that signaled exhaustion. Yet, here I was, on my hands and knees, scrubbing a microscopic stain off the mahogany coffee table.
“Elena, you missed a spot,” my mother, Linda, said. She didn’t look up from her reflection in the hallway mirror. She was adjusting a diamond necklace that cost more than my husband, Marcus, supposedly made in a year. “Tonight is important. Victor’s partners are coming to the gala. Everything must be perfect.”
“I know, Mom,” I grunted, struggling to pull myself up. The baby kicked hard against my ribs, a protest I wished I could voice. “But I really need to sit down. My blood pressure was high at the last check-up.”
