I lay in severe pain on the hardwood floor of my home while my husband Vance attended a lavish birthday party for his mother. I was thirty nine weeks pregnant and experiencing a severe medical emergency that left me unable to stand. When I called Vance begging for help because our baby was in distress he dismissed my panic and told me to take a cab to Harborview Medical Center so he could finish his dessert. I realized in that heartbreaking moment that he cared more about his social life than the survival of our son. As I dragged myself toward the front door to wait for the ambulance I had managed to call I knocked over a stack of mail and noticed a thick ivory envelope from a prestigious Seattle law firm addressed to me. Before I could process why lawyers were contacting me the front door swung open to reveal an older gentleman standing in the rain. It was Warren Sterling the powerful billionaire who chaired the financial conglomerate where my husband worked and his striking gray eyes looked exactly like mine. He rushed to my side and promised I would never be alone again.

During the frantic ambulance ride to the hospital Warren gently wiped my forehead and explained that his private investigator had just confirmed my identity two hours earlier. He revealed that he had sent two certified letters over the previous six weeks both of which my husband had signed for and deliberately hidden from me. Vance had tossed the most recent envelope aside claiming it was corporate junk mail intentionally keeping me separated from my biological family. As we arrived at the medical center the hospital staff rushed me into an emergency surgery because my baby was struggling with low oxygen levels. I was terrified and asked for my son to be saved noting that my husband was not coming to help us. Warren stepped up with absolute authority and declared himself my father ordering the medical team to do whatever was necessary to save his daughter and grandson. I slipped out of consciousness to the sounds of monitors and rushing doctors wondering how my entire reality had shifted in a single evening and hoping desperately that my child would survive the operation.

I woke up to an empty abdomen and intense fear but Warren was right by my bedside to assure me that my son was alive and recovering in the neonatal intensive care unit. He apologized for taking thirty two years to find me explaining that he would never leave my side again as a nurse wheeled me in to see my tiny baby in an incubator. Shortly after Vance arrived at the hospital wearing an immaculate suit and pretending to be a worried husband who had been desperately looking for me. Warren quickly confronted him with the evidence that he had been partying during my medical crisis and that he had signed for the certified mail containing my family history. My father had security escort Vance out of the ward before returning with his sharp eyed attorney to deliver even more devastating news. They presented a document Vance had filed that very morning while I was in surgery petitioning for control over my future inheritance assets. The paperwork featured a perfectly forged version of my signature created at a shipping store while I was fighting for my life under anesthesia.

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