---- Chapter 3 Ivy Farley POV: | sat in the dark of our penthouse, the city lights of Chicago glittering like scattered diamonds below. The divorce papers lay on the polished mahogany table, unsigned. A day had passed. Then two. My lawyer had called three times. Holden hadn't shown. He hadn't called. The silence was a living thing, a suffocating presence that filled every corner of the life we had built. | had expected a fight, a negotiation, a war. | had not expected to be ghosted like a one-night stand. On the third day, a package arrived. A small, elegant box delivered by a courier. It wasn't from Holden. The return address was a generic post office box. My hands were steady as | opened it. Inside, nestled on a bed of black velvet, was a silver picture frame. It was a photo of Holden and Kaela. They were at the cabin. He was sitting on the porch swing, and she was curled in his lap, her head resting on his chest. He was smiling. Not his public, calculated smile, but a genuine, soft smile that reached his eyes. The kind of smile he used to reserve only for me. His hand was resting protectively on her stomach. ' Beneath the photo was a note, written in a delicate, looping ---- script. He says | remind him of you. But you' re old, and you can' t give him what he needs anymore. | can. The future belongs to us. Tucked inside the note was a sonogram picture. A tiny, grainy image of a life just beginning. | didn' t shatter. | didn' t scream. | simply stared at the image, a cold, methodical fury building within me. He hadn't just replaced me. He was replacing our son. "Leo," | said into the intercom. "Find her. | don't care what it takes. Find the girl." The name on her employment records at the downtown coffee shop she'd worked at was Kaela Espinoza. The irony was so thick it was nauseating. He had found a girl with a name that echoed mine. A cheap knockoff. My plan was simple. Holden wouldn' t sign the papers? Fine. | would give him a reason to. | would take away his precious new future, and | would make him watch. We found her two days later, leaving a prenatal appointment. My men were professionals. She was bundled into a black van before she could even scream. The meeting point was the old shipyard, a place of rust and ruin on the edge of the city. A place where we had closed many deals and ended many lives. The sky was the color of ---- lead, a heavy, oppressive gray that matched the mood in my soul. A biting wind whipped in off the lake, carrying the promise of sleet. When | arrived, Kaela was already there. She was suspended from a crane by a harness, dangling twenty feet above the churning, icy water of the canal. She was terrified, her face pale and streaked with tears, but when she saw me, her fear morphed into a pathetic kind of bravado. "He's going to kill you for this!" she shrieked, her voice thin against the wind. "Holden will hunt you down and kill you!" | walked to the edge of the pier, ignoring her. | lit a cigarette, the flame flickering in the wind. "Holden doesn't kill women," | said calmly, exhaling a plume of smoke. "It's one of his few rules." "I'm not just some woman!" she screamed, twisting in the harness. "I'm carrying his child! | am his family now! You're just the old bitch he's throwing away!" | almost smiled. She was so young, so naive. She thought a baby was a trump card in our world. She had no idea how little that mattered when empires were at stake. Headlights cut through the gloom. Holden's sedan screeched to a halt at the entrance to the pier. He got out, his face a thundercloud of fury. He saw Kaela dangling from the crane, and his eyes found me. ---- "Ivy, for God's sake!" he roared, striding towards me. "Let her down!" | took a slow drag from my cigarette. "Sign the papers, Holden." | gestured with my chin to the divorce documents Leo had placed on a nearby crate, held down by a rock. "This is insane!" he yelled, stopping a few feet from me. "Is it?" | asked, my voice soft. "You're the one who taught me. Leverage. Find what they love most and squeeze." Kaela was sobbing hysterically now. "Holden! Help me! The baby!" Her words were a physical blow. The baby. The child that should have been ours. The future he had stolen from me and was giving to her. "She called me an old bitch, Holden," | said, my voice dropping to a whisper. "She said you were throwing me away. Is that what this is? Twenty years, wiped away for a new model?" He didn't answer. He just stared at me, his jaw tight, his hands clenched into fists. His silence was all the confirmation | needed The sleet started to fall, tiny, sharp pellets of ice that stung my face. "Sign the papers," | said again, my voice flat and devoid of emotion. "Or she takes a swim. Your choice." ---- He looked from me to the crying girl suspended over the water, his new life hanging by a thread. The man | had loved for two decades looked at me as if | were a monster. Maybe | was. He had created me, after all.