Old Love, Late but Deepest

Ella Miller was a nobody from a dying industrial city. Leo Blackwood was the king of the river. She came to him on her knees, begging for money to save her father. He gave her a contract that made her his property. Three years. No freedom. No questions. She endured. She saved. She planned. Then she got pregnant. Leo announced his engagement to a railroad heiress. Ella knew she would never be free if he found out. So she lied. She told him the baby belonged to another man. He believed her. Or he pretended to. She escaped to Seattle, built a new name, and raised her son. Six years later, she returned to paint the city's walls. The first face she saw was Leo's. The second was her son's, a mirror image of his father. Ella thought she had outrun her past. But Leo had been waiting.