Perfect Life

I was a top hand model, my hands insured for seven figures. They bought me a life in a sleek Central Park apartment and a diamond ring from my fiancé, Chase Strong.

At my engagement party, he insisted I get a manicure from his high school friend, Karis. She soaked my hands in what she called a "new cuticle softener." It was acid.

A week later, I found out I was pregnant. I thought a baby would fix the peeling skin and raw blisters, that it would fix us.

But when I told Chase, his face was a mask of cold fury. He said a baby didn't fit his plan.

He drove me to a desolate mountain, pushed me out of the car, and told me he was leaving me there to think about how easily he could take everything away.

The man I was going to marry, the father of my unborn child, left me to die in the freezing darkness.

He didn't just ruin my hands and my career; he wanted to break my spirit.

But as the sun rose, something inside me shifted from fear to ice-cold rage. I would not let his child be another chain to bind me to my jailer.

When he returned, expecting to find me broken, I looked him in the eye and told him, "I'm getting rid of the baby."

Then I turned and started walking down the mountain, toward a life he could never touch.

Chapter 1

The pain started as a strange, unwelcome warmth.

Clare Jennings looked down at her hands, submerged in the small ceramic bowl at the nail salon. Karis Manning, the technician, was smiling, her eyes bright and friendly.

“Just a new kind of cuticle softener,” Karis said. “It's all the rage in Europe. Chase said you deserve only the best.”

Chase.

The name was a balm. Clare's fiancé, Chase Strong. He had swept into her life like a prince from a storybook, promising a world of glittering parties and adoration that silenced the constant, nagging disapproval of her own parents.

He had promised her the world. Her hands had delivered it.

As a top hand model, Clare's hands were her life. Insured for seven figures, they paid for the sleek apartment overlooking Central Park and were the reason for the diamond glittering on her left ring finger.

Now, that life was burning.

The warmth intensified, shifting to a prickling heat, then to a sharp, undeniable sting.

Clare pulled her hands from the bowl with a gasp.

Water splashed onto the pristine white counter.

“Is something wrong?” Karis asked, her smile unwavering.