The Surrogate He Discarded

Isobel Lancey grew up believing that intelligence was the only inheritance she would ever have.Raised in an orphanage and armed with nothing except relentless discipline, she graduated at the top of the country's most prestigious state university. Her future seemed clear: a stable career, financial security, and finally a life she earned with her own hands.Then she met Kristoff Dalton.CEO of Dalton Technologies. Brilliant. Untouchable. A man born into a world where people and emotions were negotiated like business deals.Kristoff offered her a contract.One year. A child. An impossible amount of money.Enough to save the orphanage that raised her.Isobel told herself it was only practical. She would give him an heir, he would fulfill his side of the agreement, and afterward they would return to being strangers.It was as simple as that.But living beside Kristoff Dalton was never simple.He was a man of precision, his life, he already planned it out—including a marriage to the infertile woman he had loved for years. Isobel was never supposed to matter. She was only meant to solve a problem.Yet somewhere between quiet midnight conversations, the tenderness, and the burning passion they both tried to suppress, the line between obligation and intimacy began to blur.Then the child was born.And she was cast aside.For the first time, Isobel experienced pain even greater than the harrowing labor that almost took her life.But fate soon brought her face-to-face with another man just as powerful—and far more dangerous.Morgan Foster.The enigmatic CEO behind Novare’s leading AI empire. A man known for his brilliance, ruthless influence, and the mystery surrounding his private life.A billionaire feared in boardrooms. A devoted father to twins. And a man who seems far too interested in IsobelWhat begins as a chance encounter slowly pulls Isobel into Morgan’s world—a world filled with secrets, power games, and a kind of warmth she never felt before.Before she realizes it, her life becomes deeply entangled with Morgan and his children… and for the first time after Kristoff discarded her, Isobel felt she was respected, needed and loved.When Kristoff and Isobel met again, for the first time in his carefully controlled life, Kristoff Dalton realized something terrifying:The woman he once treated as temporary became the only person he was never able to replace.