Chapter 1: A Man Without a Backbone

Ethan Hale sat frozen behind the wheel, staring at the three paternity reports on the passenger seat. Beneath each lab’s official letterhead, the words No Biological Relationship stabbed at his eyes.

All three daughters.

None of them related to him by blood.

The eldest was fifteen, the second eleven, the youngest six. He had raised them for all those years, and not one of them was his own flesh and blood.

It was insane.

A chill ran through his whole body. He gripped the steering wheel so hard his hands shook, pain and anguish twisting together in his chest.

He and his wife, Claire Lowell, were the same age. They had met at twenty-four, fallen in love, married, and shared sixteen sweet years together.

In that time she had given him three daughters, which was no small sacrifice. Most women lost their figures after giving birth, but not her. Three pregnancies had only made her body riper and more perfect, with curves in all the right places. There wasn’t a single wrinkle on her face, and her skin was fair and delicate. It was as if she had stopped aging at twenty-eight.

Her family was powerful, and she was an only child. Five years ago she had inherited the family business, taken over as chairwoman of the Lowell Group, and become the richest woman in Easton overnight.

A wealthy beauty for a wife and three angelic daughters. For a long time, Ethan had believed he was the happiest man in Easton.

Who could have imagined...

Then there was his own background. He came from a family of commercial fishermen, about as ordinary as it got, and both his parents had died of illness five years ago. He had almost nothing left to call a background at all.

He was just an ordinary doctor on the inpatient floors of Easton University Hospital. Eighteen years on the job, and he was still an obscure attending physician.

Maybe his wife had treated him like a fool all these years, like an obedient dog she could order around, betray, and humiliate. Maybe all her kindness and patience had only ever been charity handed down from on high.

Even if he went home and confronted her, a woman that rich could toss him a few bucks to go away and keep quiet, and he might never even learn who the other man was. And even if she did tell him the name, there was nothing he could do about it. The thought only made him more miserable.

So he ran. Instead of going home, he walked straight into the first bar he passed.

From the moment he slid into a back booth, he never stopped pouring.

Ethan was handsome and clean-shaven, and in his dress shirt and slacks he had a refined, bookish air. But the way he was drinking, he might as well have written his whole sad story across his face. It didn’t take long for the women who worked the bar looking for free drinks to set their sights on him.