Chapter 1 - THE HOCKEY STICK
The hockey stick slammed across my shoulder before I had time to turn.
Pain exploded from my neck to my fingertips, and the force threw me sideways across Nathan Cole’s polished kitchen floor. My cheek struck the edge of a cabinet. My nose began bleeding almost immediately.
Lily screamed.
I crawled toward her before I even understood where my own hands were.
“Please! Don’t hurt my child!”
I pulled my four-year-old daughter beneath my arms and curled myself around her. Lily’s pale pink dress bunched beneath my knees as she sobbed against my chest.
Victoria Hayes stood over us in her white designer dress.
The woman was supposed to marry Nathan in six weeks.
At that moment, she looked capable of murder.
Both hands tightened around the heavy wooden hockey stick.
She raised it again.
I turned my injured shoulder toward her and covered Lily’s head.
“You have to die to keep the secret!” Victoria screamed.
That sentence terrified me more than the stick.
Because I knew which secret she meant.
The envelope in my uniform pocket pressed against my hip.
Sealed.
Unopened by anyone except the private laboratory that had mailed it.
For three days, I had carried it with me while trying to find the courage to tell Nathan that an unofficial DNA screening I had ordered had given me a reason to request a properly witnessed paternity test.
I had never planned to let Victoria see it.
But less than fifteen minutes earlier, she had walked into the laundry room while I was reading the laboratory’s cover letter.
She had seen Nathan’s name.
She had seen Lily’s.
And something inside her had changed.
The kitchen door flew open.
Nathan stepped through.
He froze.
His dark suit jacket was still buttoned from whatever business meeting had brought him home early. His gaze moved from the blood beneath my nose to Lily shaking under my arms.
Then he saw Victoria.
And the stick above my body.
“Victoria! What the hell are you doing?!”
She went completely still.
For one second, no one moved.
Then Nathan crossed the kitchen faster than I had ever seen him move.
He grabbed the hockey stick with both hands, ripped it out of Victoria’s grip, and threw it across the floor.
The wood hit the cabinets with a violent crack.
“Nathan…” Victoria backed away. “It’s not what you think!”
He ignored her.
He dropped to his knees beside Lily and me.
“Grace.”
“I’m okay.”
It was a lie.
“Where are you hurt?”
“My shoulder.”
Nathan reached toward me, then stopped himself before touching me.
That small hesitation almost broke me.
Four years earlier, he had touched me without thinking.
Four years earlier, I had believed for one impossible month that Nathan Cole and I might become something neither of us knew how to name.
Then my life changed.
And he never learned why.
Lily slowly lifted her face from my chest.
Her cheeks were wet.
Nathan looked at her.
She looked back.
Then my daughter reached one trembling hand toward him.
“Dad…”
Nathan’s face emptied.
I stopped breathing.
I had told Lily that morning that Nathan might be her father.
Might.
I had made her promise not to say anything until I spoke to him.
But a frightened four-year-old does not care about adult timing.
Nathan looked at Lily’s little hand.
Then at me.
“Grace?”
I could hear Victoria breathing behind him.
Fast.
Shallow.
Terrified.
I reached into my uniform pocket.
My fingers found the sealed envelope.
I had imagined giving it to Nathan privately.
Maybe in his office.
Maybe after Lily was asleep.
I had imagined having enough time to explain that the test inside was not legally conclusive, because I had used an at-home relationship-testing service and a sample from a drinking glass Nathan had discarded after helping Lily during a fever.
I knew how bad that sounded.
I knew I should have asked his permission.
I also knew what four years of uncertainty had done to me.
Now none of that mattered.
I placed the envelope in Nathan’s hand.
His eyes dropped to it.
PRIVATE DNA RELATIONSHIP REPORT.
His name.
My name.
Lily Miller.
Nathan looked completely dazed.
Victoria made a tiny sound behind him.
Not anger.
Fear.
Nathan heard it too.
Slowly, he raised his eyes.
“What do you know about this?”
Victoria’s lips parted.
“Nothing.”
That answer came too fast.
Nathan stood.
“Why were you trying to hit Grace?”
“She attacked me.”
I actually laughed despite the pain.
Nathan looked at the blood on my face.
Then at the hockey stick lying ten feet away.
“Try again.”
Victoria’s eyes moved toward the envelope.
I saw it.
Nathan saw it.
“What secret?” he asked.
“No secret.”
“You just screamed that Grace had to die to keep one.”
“I was angry.”
“You threatened to kill her.”
“She was trying to destroy us!”
The kitchen fell silent.
Nathan looked down at the envelope again.
Us.
Not him.
Us.
Victoria realized what she had said.
Her face drained even further.
Nathan did not open the envelope.
That surprised me.
Instead, he placed it carefully on the counter.
Then he pulled out his phone.
“Who are you calling?” Victoria demanded.
“An ambulance.”
“I’m fine,” I said automatically.
“You got hit with a hockey stick.”
“Lily needs me.”
“And she has you.”
His voice softened when he looked at her.
Then it hardened again.
“And after that, I’m calling the police.”
Victoria lunged forward.
“Nathan, don’t.”
He stepped between her and us.
“Stay where you are.”
For the first time since I had entered his household eight months earlier, I saw Victoria lose the thing she valued most.
Control.
She stared at Nathan.
Then at Lily.
Then at me.
“You don’t understand what she did four years ago.”
My pulse stumbled.
Nathan turned.
“What happened four years ago?”
Victoria said nothing.
I did.
“I got pregnant.”
Nathan’s eyes met mine.
I saw the memory strike him.
One night.
One month.
One abrupt goodbye.
His voice dropped.
“Grace…”
“I tried to tell you.”
Victoria closed her eyes.
And that was when I understood something I had never understood before.
I had spent four years believing Nathan ignored my message.
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But Victoria looked like a woman hearing a ghost knock from inside a locked room.
📖 Victoria’s reaction made Grace question whether Nathan ever received the pregnancy message she had sent four years earlier—or whether someone intercepted it first. 👇
