"Buy the bastards some milk," my wealthy fiancée laughed, flipping a twenty-dollar bill toward my ex-wife. I'd thrown her out of my life a year ago after believing she had cheated on me.

By 3:00 a.m., I had the signed affidavit locked in a secure digital cloud, accessible only by my personal legal counsel, Marcus Thorne—a fiercely loyal attorney who had handled my corporate accounts for a decade.

I sat in my SUV outside a dimly lit 24-hour diner on the edge of the county, staring at the rain streaming down the windshield.

Finding my son was a battle that required surgical precision against the Whitmore empire. But tonight, my heart was breaking for the woman I had destroyed.

I called my private head of security, Sam Rivera—a former military intelligence officer who had served with me during my brief contract years before I built my business.

“Rowan?” Sam’s groggy voice came through the line. “It’s past three in the morning. Is everything alright?”

“I need a location, Sam,” I said, my voice tight. “Maren. She’s living somewhere within a twenty-mile radius of the old county highway near Oak Creek. She’s... she’s collecting cans along the gravel roads. She has twin infants.”

There was a long silence on the line. Sam was one of the few people who had questioned the adultery scandal a year ago, but I had refused to listen to him.

“Rowan...” Sam said carefully. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I was framed, Sam,” I revealed, my breath hitching in my throat. “The whole thing was engineered by Richard and Tessa Whitmore. Maren was innocent. She’s been living in absolute poverty with my twin children while I spent the last year living in a lie.”

I heard Sam curse softly under his breath. “Give me two hours. I’ll run regional welfare records, utility registrations, and local shelter logs. If she’s in Oak Creek, I’ll find her.”

While I waited, I drove out to the gravel road where I had seen her earlier that afternoon.

The road was completely dark now, framed by overgrown cornfields and rusty barbed-wire fences. I pulled the SUV onto the shoulder, turned off the headlights, and sat in the dark.

I stepped out of the car. The rain had softened into a cool, light mist.

I walked along the ditch line, my polished leather shoes sinking into the mud. Ten feet ahead, shimmering beneath the moonlight, was something half-buried in the dirt.

I knelt down.

It was a small, plastic baby rattle—worn at the edges, its pastel paint faded by the sun. Beside it lay a small piece of blue paper. A food stamp receipt totaling four dollars and twenty cents.

I picked up the rattle, holding it tightly in my palm.

A memory crashed over me: Maren sitting on the floor of our first apartment, painting the nursery walls green because we couldn’t afford wallpaper. She had laughed, wiping a smudge of yellow paint across my nose, telling me that as long as we were together, our children would have everything they ever needed.

And I had thrown her into the wilderness.

My phone rang in my pocket, shattering the silence. I snapped it open.

“I found her, Rowan,” Sam said, his voice grim. “She’s renting a small, dilapidated cabin behind an abandoned auto body shop off Route 9. It’s registered under her maiden name. Rowan... the property is owned by a holding company tied to Whitmore Real Estate. They’ve been tracking her location the entire time.”

A cold anger flared in my chest. “They kept her close enough to monitor her, but poor enough to ensure she could never fight back.”