The letter landed beside my coffee with one sentence that changed everything: pay fourteen hundred by the first or pack.

I looked across the kitchen at Rowan, my husband’s mother, standing beside the quartz counter as though she owned the place. Callum stood ten feet away, staring at his sneakers.

“Maybe we should talk about it,” he said.

I looked around at the solid wood cabinets, white oak floors, and appliances I had helped choose. Over twelve weeks, I had spent sixty-one thousand seven hundred dollars from my savings managing contractors while working full time.

Then Rowan reminded me the building belonged to the Baxter family.

Not me.

I picked up my purse.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll go back to my apartment.”

Callum finally looked up.

The color drained from his face.

He knew something I didn’t.

And suddenly, I understood why his family had been so certain I would have nowhere else to go.