in those moving vans, Mr. Vance,” Evelyn stated coldly. “You have fifteen minutes to clear your personal vehicles off the premises before they are impounded.”
Victoria looked at Julian with utter disgust. “You’re a penniless fraud.”
She didn’t waste another second. She flagged down a passing taxi, threw her bags into the trunk, and sped away without looking back once.
Julian fell to his knees in front of the locked iron gates, staring at the legal papers lying on the pavement before him. He pulled out his phone and frantically dialed my number over and over again.
Miles away, in my quiet, sunlit hotel suite, I sat nursing Cora. I looked down at my phone as his name flashed across the screen for the twentieth time.
I didn’t answer. I simply swiped left, blocked his number forever, and held my daughter tight—knowing that our future was finally, completely ours.
EPILOGUE
Part I: The View From Above
Six months after the iron gates of the Sterling estate swung shut in Julian’s face, the early morning light over downtown Richmond painted the skyline in brilliant shades of amber and rose.
From the floor-to-ceiling windows of my new penthouse, the city stretched out quiet and still below. There were no ghosts here. No lingering scents of cheap perfume, no echoing footsteps of an entitled mother-in-law, and no suffocating memories of a man who had treated my devotion as his personal bank account.
I stood by the glass holding a warm cup of chamomile tea, feeling the steady, rhythmic pulse of my baby daughter breathing against my shoulder.
Cora was half a year old now. Her bright blue eyes—so full of wonder—looked up at me, completely untouched by the storm that had surrounded her arrival into the world. When I looked at her, I
