Just A Vessel: The Surrogate's Escape

“I went to the bank to set up a trust fund for my twins, only to have the manager look at me with pity. "Mrs. Dunlap, the trust requires the *biological* mother's signature." I froze. I *was* their mother. Or so I thought. That day, I learned my husband, the most powerful Mafia Don on the coast, had used his ex-lover's frozen eggs. For six years, I wasn't his wife. I was just the incubator. When his "true love," Iliana, returned from exile, my life disintegrated. My children, poisoned by her lies, pushed me down the stairs and called me "just the nanny." Gavyn didn't help me up. He stepped over my bleeding body to take his "real family" out for ice cream. But the ultimate betrayal happened on a windswept cliff. Staged by Iliana, we were both tied up, allegedly rigged to explode. Forced to choose who to save, Gavyn didn't hesitate. He cut Iliana loose. "You did this to yourself, Alex," he said, driving away with the children, leaving me to die. He thought he was leaving behind a corpse. He didn't know I had skimmed ten million dollars from the household accounts. "Cut me loose," I told the hitman, transferring the money. "And tell him the ocean took me." Two years later, the Don is on his knees in my garden, begging for a second chance. Too bad he has to get through my new fiancé first-the head of the rival cartel.”