Chapter 1

"Yulia, you shameless skank! Xander is NOT a Johnson!"

At my son's graduation party—the day we were celebrating him getting into a top ivy league university—my ex-mother-in-law crashed the event, dragging my ex-husband and his new wife along with her.

She threw a paternity test in my face, demanded I pay back what she called "child support," and tried to destroy my reputation in front of everyone.

The whole room erupted. Dozens of phone cameras swung toward me.

Looking at the three of them and their ugly, twisted faces, I didn't flinch. I didn't cry.

I calmly reached into my purse and pulled out a yellowed, confidential medical document.

"Yvonne Johnson—eighteen years ago, when you were on your knees begging me to do IVF, you had a very different tune."

The August heat was brutal.

The air conditioning inside the seafood restaurant was cranked up high, but I still felt a thin layer of sweat on my skin.

Today was Xander's graduation party.

Eighteen years old. Top 1% SAT score. Accepted into an Ivy League university.

I stood near the entrance greeting guests in a custom-made red dress. Xander stood beside me in a crisp white button-down shirt—he'd shot up to six feet tall, with little dimples that appeared at the corners of his mouth every time he smiled.

"Mom, go take a break. I've got this."

He handed me a cup of hot coffee.

I took it, my eyes watered up just a little.

Eighteen years.

From a tiny newborn to this tall, handsome young man standing next to me. I raised him on my own—playing both mom and dad—and I'd done it.

"That Miller girl really has it made! Look at the son she raised!"

"No kidding. Single mom and everything—she really pulled through."

Friends and family gathered around us, the compliments flowing freely.

I smiled and nodded along, feeling a weight finally lift off my chest.

Xander had done well. His future was wide open. And I'd done my job—at least most of it.

Then the front doors burst open with a deafening bang.

The crash cut through every conversation in the room.

Everyone froze and turned toward the entrance.

The smile died on my face.

Yvonne Johnson.

My ex-mother-in-law.

She swept in wearing a bright red silk dress, a gaudy string of pearls around her neck, a designer bag hanging from her arm, and a look on her face like she owned the place.

Behind her came my ex-husband, Albert Johnson, and his new wife, Mia.

Albert had packed on a lot of weight—his shirt stretched tight over a beer gut—and his hair had thinned considerably on top. Mia was dressed to the nines, tottering in sky-high stilettos, clutching Albert's arm with her chin tilted up like she was royalty.

The three of them looked like three toads who'd crashed a Swan Lake —revolting no matter how you looked at them.

"Yulia! You shameless slut!"

Yvonne was still halfway across the room, but her grating voice cut through everything.

The entire hall went dead silent.

Xander instinctively stepped in front of me, brow furrowed tight. "What do you think you're doing?"

"What am I doing?" Yvonne let out a cold laugh and raked her eyes over Xander with open contempt. "I'm here to expose your mother for what she really is!"

She closed the distance in a few steps, yanked a stack of papers from her bag, and flung them straight at my face.

The sharp edges sliced across my cheek. It stung.

"Come get a good look, everyone!" Yvonne spun around to face the room and shouted at the top of her lungs. "This woman—Yulia—was sleeping around behind my son's back! That boy is a bastard, and the Johnson family has been stuck supporting him for years without knowing the truth!"

The room exploded.

Friends and relatives turned to each other, the whispers swelling like a wave.

"Oh my God, is that true?"

"No way—Yulia always seemed so… normal."

"You never really know someone, do you? Look at how sure that woman sounds."

Xander's face went white. He stared at the papers scattered across the floor, his fists clenched so tight his knuckles cracked.

I took a deep breath and bent down to pick up the paper from the floor.

A paternity test report.

The conclusion section read: Albert Johnson is excluded as the biological father of Xander Johnson.