Chapter 1

Both of our parents died, leaving me and my younger brother to depend entirely on each other.

I worked to the bone to raise him into a grown man.

Until the year he turned twenty.

To marry a divorced woman sixteen years his senior, he secretly got a vasectomy.

He even slammed the medical papers right onto the coffee table, yelling at me with bloodshot eyes:

"Weren't you always breathing down my neck to get married and have kids?"

"Well, I'm sterile now!"

"I'm not marrying anyone except Amber!"

"If you keep pushing me, I swear to God I'll cut ties with you forever!"

I stared at the brother I had raised with my own two hands, my entire body turning ice-cold.

Fine. If that was what he wanted, I was done being his sister.

The year our parents were killed in that car crash, Leo was twelve, and I was twenty-one.

One accident took two lives, leaving behind a girl who had just gotten into college and a terrified little boy who did nothing but cry for our mom.

To keep food on our table, I dropped out.

I bussed tables at diners during the day and stocked shelves at grocery stores all night.

At my absolute broke lowest, I didn't eat a single scrap of meat for three straight months.

I couldn't even afford pads, having to wash and reuse old rags.

I never dated, and I never thought about marriage, because I had a younger brother clinging to my side.

I clawed my way up from an entry-level temp to CEO of my own company.

Once, I drank so much at an executive client dinner that my stomach started bleeding internally, and I collapsed into a coma.

The doctor told me, "Keep burning the candle at both ends like this, and you won't live to see thirty."

I replied, "I can't die. If I die, what happens to my little brother?"

And yet, this very boy I had bled myself dry to protect went and sterilized himself for a woman he hadn't even known for a full month!

"Leo, have you completely lost your mind?!"

My voice shook uncontrollably. "You're only twenty! Do you even understand what a vasectomy means?!"

Leo stood in the center of the living room, his neck flushed crimson, his eyes defiant. "I know exactly what it means! I did it on purpose!"

"Didn't you always look down on Amber? Didn't you want me to cut her off?"

"Now that I can never have kids, no one else will want me. I'm hers forever!"

My vision blacked out for a split second, and I had to steady myself against the wall.

Amber was lounging on the sofa nearby. Wine-red curls, stilettos, blood-red manicured nails.

I knew who she was.

Thirty-six years old. Divorced twice.

She had a son in middle school—only five years younger than Leo.

Just last month, she was working as a barista at the café downstairs from my office building, shamelessly seducing my brother until the entire company was gossiping about it.

"I will never accept a woman like her," I gritted out through clenched teeth. "Over my dead body."

Right on cue, Amber dabbed a tear from her eye, putting on a fragile, timid act. "Leo, sweetheart, I told you not to pressure Chloe. It's okay if we don't sign the marriage certificate. As long as I can be with you, I don't care about anything else..."

"Look at how you're bullying her!"

Leo snapped, lunging forward and shoving a finger right into my face.

"Chloe, you don't know a damn thing about love! Amber might be divorced, but she actually cares about me! She makes me happy!"

"As for you? You treat me like an inmate in a maximum-security prison! You veto my dating life, you monitor who my friends are!"

"You don't care about me. You're just a controlling freak!"

"Don't you ever forget—you're just my sister. You are not my mother!"

Every single syllable sliced straight into my chest like a jagged blade.

Bleeding me dry.

I stared dead at Leo. "What... did you just say?"

Leo acted as if a dam holding back years of resentment had finally broken.

"Did I stutter? All these years, you act like you own me just because you fed me!"

"Well, I'm an adult now! I have the right to live my own life!"