My Stepmother…

“Yes, sir.”

I looked from one man to the other.

The stranger took off his knit cap. Beneath the scruffy beard and dirt, there was suddenly something impossible to miss—posture, presence, the way everyone else around him seemed to bend their world into place the second he spoke.

“I know this is frightening,” he said. “My name is Wesley Ashford.”

I had heard that name before.

Everybody in Georgia had.

Ashford Energy. Ashford Development. Ashford Foundation. The man on the cover of magazines in doctor’s offices and behind the mayor in campaign photos. The one they called the richest man in the state. The billionaire who lived in Atlanta and donated libraries, hospital wings, scholarship funds.

The richest man in Georgia.

Standing in front of me in dirty clothes beside a ditch at six in the morning.

I shook my head because it made no sense.

He seemed almost sad about that.

“I’ll explain later,” he said. “Right now, I need to get you and your baby somewhere safe. Can you come with me?”

I should have been terrified.

A strange man. A billionaire. Security. Black SUVs.

But Darlene had just handed me to the road like garbage.

And nobody had ever looked at me with the kind of controlled fury I saw in Wesley Ashford’s face—not because they hated me, but because someone had hurt me.

So I nodded.

His shoulders loosened, only a little.

“Good,” he said. “You’re safe now.”

Nobody had used those words on me in a long time.

Safe.

I didn’t know whether to believe them.

But when he opened the SUV door himself and helped me inside like I mattered, something in my chest cracked open anyway.

The leather seat was soft enough to make me feel ashamed of my bare, dirty feet.

I curled them under me, clutching my backpack on my lap. The inside of the SUV smelled like cedar and clean air. There was a folded blanket waiting on the seat, and Wesley—Mr. Ashford, my brain insisted—picked it up and handed it to me.

“Here.”

My fingers shook as I took it.

“Thank you.”

He closed the door gently, then came around and got in beside me. Not too close. Just enough that I wouldn’t feel alone.

Up front, the suited man—Miles—was already speaking quietly into a phone.

“Dr. Patel is meeting us at St. Margaret’s, sir. Elena’s on her way to the estate.”