1 The day I went to the hospital for my follow-up, the nurse called a name through the hallway intercom: Ethan Hayes. I lifted my head from my charts and saw him stepping out of the maternity wing. In his arms, he held a bundle wrapped in a soft blue-and-pink receiving blanket. Clinging to his arm was a young woman, laughing, her head resting on his shoulder as she called him babe. When Ethan’s eyes met mine, the smile on his face froze into stone. I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. I just felt a sudden, deafening ringing in my ears, like a flashbang had gone off inside my skull. Behind me, my cousin Giselle grabbed my wrist, her fingernails digging deep into my skin. “I told you not to come to St. Jude’s,” she hissed under her breath. I turned my head slowly to look at her. “You knew?” Giselle took a sharp breath, her face twisting into a look of sheer, unbothered annoyance. “Everyone knows. Ethan talked to the whole family weeks ago. He said he was terrified you’d have another breakdown, that he was waiting for the right time to tell you.” She let go of my wrist with a harsh flick. “Look at yourself, Nora. You can’t carry a child anyway. Did you honestly expect the Hayes family line to die with you?” My throat closed up as if a pair of hands were choking the life out of me. Two years ago, during that head-on collision at the intersection, I threw my body across the center console to shield Ethan. A ruptured spleen. A perforated uterus. Twenty-seven days in the ICU, hooked to life support while my body slowly leaked blood. The surgeon told him that a total hysterectomy was the only way to keep me alive. The man who signed the consent form to hollow out my body was Ethan. When my mother arrived at the hospital that night, her eyes were bloodshot. She didn’t hold me; she fell to her knees beside my bed, grabbing my cold fingers. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she had wept. “But your father’s cardiac stent surgery… we still owe the Hayes family over a hundred thousand dollars for his care. That girl gave Ethan’s family an heir. Just close your eyes and pretend you didn’t see it, okay? For your father’s sake.” I looked down at my flat stomach beneath my thin sweater. Underneath my clothes was a five-inch jagged scar. Ethan had given me that scar, yet my entire family expected me to spend the rest of my life bleeding gratitude. I stood up, folded my lab results into neat quarters, and slipped them into my coat pocket. “Don’t worry,” I said quietly, my voice remarkably steady. “I won’t make a scene.” I finally understood the truth: I was never the one in debt. “Nora, please, just let me explain!” The front door slammed open, the sound rattling the framed prints along the foyer wall. Ethan didn’t even bother taking off his shoes. He strode wildly into the living room, a box from my favorite bakery—the one that sold salted caramel mousse tarts—clutched in his trembling hand. Sweat beaded at his temples, his breathing heavy and ragged. He had chased me all the way home. I sat motionless on the sofa, holding the crumpled hospital report in my fist. “I don’t want to hear it,” I said. My voice was eerily calm. Ethan stopped in his tracks, startled. He was so accustomed to my gentle, understanding nature that my icy distance seemed to throw him completely off balance. He set the bakery box on the coffee table, dropped to his knees in front of me, and tried to take my hand. “That’s Sienna,” he stammered, his eyes brimming with a rehearsed mix of fatigue and innocence. “She’s a distant relative on my mother’s side. She came to the city alone, got herself pregnant by some deadbeat who ran off the second he found out. Mom took pity on her and asked me to help her navigate the hospital visits.” I stared down at him. I looked at the face I had loved for seven years. He was still so handsome. Even when he lied, he looked like the picture of an honorable, burdened man. “So,” I pulled my hand out of his grip, “her wrapping her arms around you and calling you her husband… was that your mother’s arrangement, too?” Ethan’s fingers twitched. He quickly smoothed his expression, leaning closer, his voice dropping into that soft, intoxicating register he always used when he wanted me to yield. “She’s emotionally unstable, Nora. The trauma of the abandonment broke her—she mistook me for him in a delusion. You have to believe me.” He reached up, trying to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “You’re the only woman in my heart. You suffered so much to save my life… how could I ever betray you?” He had whispered those exact words beside my hospital bed two years ago. Back then, I believed him. Hearing them now made a knot of nausea rise in my throat. “If she mistook you for her husband,” I stared directly into his dark eyes, “why does my entire family know about the baby, while I was the only one kept in the dark?” Ethan’s breath hitched. The air vanished from his lungs; he clearly hadn’t anticipated that Giselle had already laid out all the cards. Before he could answer, rapid footsteps echoed down the hallway. My mother barged through the unlatched door, gasping for air. “Nora! What is wrong with you?” She didn’t glance at my deathly pale face for a single second. She marched over, grabbed Ethan by the shoulders, and pulled him up from the floor. “Ethan works so hard to provide for you!” she snapped, turning her fury on me. “And you’re throwing a tantrum over nothing?” I looked at my mother. Blood relation felt like a sick joke written at my expense. “Nothing?” I let out a dry, bitter laugh. “He has a child with another woman, Mom. You call that nothing?” My mother’s posture stiffened. Avoidance flashed across her face before she lowered her voice into a harsh whisper. “Your body is broken! You can’t give the Hayes family an heir, and they deserve a legacy. Sienna already agreed—once the child is born, she’ll sign over full parental rights to you. You get a son without having to ruin your body further. What more could you possibly want?” I felt an absurd urge to laugh out loud. This was my birth mother. For a hundred thousand dollars of debt, she had wrapped me up in a bow and handed me over to be stripped of my dignity. Ethan frowned, looking uncomfortable. My mother’s bluntness was threatening to tear away the civilized facade he so desperately tried to maintain. “Mom, that’s enough,” he murmured, before turning back to me with an agonizing tenderness. “Nora, the baby was an accident. I promise you, Sienna won’t interfere with our lives. She’ll move out soon. You will always be my only wife.” He emphasized the word only, as if he were bestowing a grand royal decree upon a peasant. I looked down at the bakery box on the table. A sweet, hollow indulgence meant to buy my silence. “Ethan,” I said slowly. “I got my lab results back today. The doctor said my abdominal adhesions have infected my pelvic lining.” A crack finally appeared in Ethan’s composed mask. Panic flickered in his eyes— Then his phone vibrated loudly in his pocket. The screen lit up with a caller ID: Sienna. Ethan instinctively swiped to decline the call, but a second later, a voice note automatically played over his Bluetooth speaker. “Babe, the baby won’t stop crying… when are you coming home?” The sweet, needy voice echoed through the quiet living room. My mother cleared her throat awkwardly, looking at the ceiling. Ethan scrambled frantically, his fingers clumsy as he tried to kill the audio. Watching him fumble in sheer panic, I suddenly felt an overwhelming wave of exhaustion. “Go on,” I stood up and walked toward the bedroom. “Don’t keep your baby waiting.” 2 The next morning, I was woken by the piercing wails of an infant coming from the living room. When I opened the bedroom door, a wall of sour formula milk and soiled diapers hit me instantly. Sienna Brooks was sitting in the middle of my favorited ivory wool rug, cradling the blue-and-pink bundle. Ethan was at the kitchen island, measuring scoops of formula into a glass bottle. My mother and my mother-in-law, Helen Hayes, were hovering over the baby, beaming with pride. “Oh, look at that darling little nose,” Helen cooed, her face radiating a warmth she had never once directed at me. “He’s the spitting image of Ethan when he was a baby.” My mother chimed in eagerly. “Isn’t he, though? This is what real bloodline looks like.” The moment my bedroom door latched open, the laughter in the room evaporated. Every eye turned to me. Sienna lifted her head. She had a soft, harmless face with wide, innocent eyes. She stood up awkwardly, biting her lower lip as if she were terrified of my very presence. “Nora…” she whispered, her voice trembling. “I’m so sorry to disturb you. The water heater at my place broke last night, and the baby was freezing. Ethan didn’t want him catching cold, so he let us stay here for a few days.” I looked at her innocent posture, then at Ethan stepping out of the kitchen with the warm bottle in his hand, looking intensely embarrassed. “Nora,” he said softly, walking over to me. “It’s just until the plumber fixes the pipes. A day or two, I promise.” I didn’t answer him. I walked past them to the water dispenser, pouring myself a glass of warm water. The dull, gnawing pain in my lower abdomen pulsed with every step. “Do whatever you want,” I said, taking a slow sip. Sienna seemed caught off guard by my utter lack of explosive emotion. A flicker of something sharper—disappointment, perhaps—flashed through her eyes before she masked it. She cradled the baby closer and took a step toward me. “Nora, look at him,” she said sweetly, tilting the blanket so I could see the infant’s red, scrunched-up face. “His skin is so soft. Ethan told me you’ll be his mother now. Would you like to hold him?” I looked at the tiny face, but all I could see was the sterile white ceiling of the ICU two years ago, and the cold, unfeeling voice of the doctor delivering my sentence: Mrs. Hayes, to save your life, we had to perform a full hysterectomy. I took a step backward. “I don’t like children.” Sienna’s hands froze in mid-air. Her eyes welled with tears in an instant. “Are… are you repulsed by me?” She sniffled, big tears rolling down her cheeks. “I know I shouldn’t be here, but the baby is innocent! He has Ethan’s blood… why can’t you find it in your heart to accept him?” Ethan instantly set the bottle down, stepped up beside Sienna, and pulled her and the child into his arms. “Sienna, don’t cry, it’s bad for your recovery,” he murmured, gently patting her shoulder. Then he turned to me, his brow furrowed in disapproval. “Nora, she just gave birth. She’s emotionally fragile right now. Even if you’re upset with me, you shouldn’t take it out on a newborn.” My mother jumped up from the sofa. “Nora! How can you be so heartless? She’s offering you her child out of the goodness of her heart, and you give her that icy face?” I looked at the four of them standing together like a picture-perfect family portrait. I was the intruder. I was the villain. “I said, I don’t like children.” I set my glass down on the counter and turned toward the bedroom. “Stop right there!” Helen Hayes stepped into my path, her face hardened into a mask of cold contempt. “Nora Barrett, don’t you dare act so high and mighty. You can’t even lay an egg, yet we’ve let you keep the title of Mrs. Hayes out of charity. Now that Sienna has preserved our family line, you think you have the right to play the victim?” I took a slow breath, turning my eyes back to Ethan. “Is this what you think, too?” Ethan avoided my gaze, looking at the floor. “Mom is just thinking about the future of this family, Nora. Just… try to accept the baby. Do it for me.” Looking at his handsome, miserable face, I felt a wave of profound disgust. “Fine,” I smiled faintly. “Since we’re one big happy family now, I assume Miss Brooks will be paying half of the monthly mortgage on this condo?” The room went dead quiet. Ethan’s face turned instantly dark. “Nora,” he said, his voice dropping into a dangerous warning. “Do you really have to bring up money right now?” 3 The air in the apartment felt thick enough to choke on. This condo was purchased shortly after our wedding. Ethan had put down a portion of the down payment, but when his startup ran into cash flow issues, I liquidated my entire inheritance to cover the rest. Since then, the mortgage payments had been automatically debited from my salary account every single month. Ethan was a man who prized his reputation above all else. Bringing up finances in front of his mother and mine was equivalent to slapping him in the face. Sienna pulled timidly at Ethan’s sleeve. “Ethan… I don’t think Nora wants me here. I should just go. I can find a cheap basement apartment…” She made a move toward her luggage, but Ethan grabbed her wrist, stopping her. “You’re not going anywhere,” he snapped. He turned his glare back onto me, his eyes full of cold disappointment. “Nora, I give you a generous monthly allowance. Are you really going to nickel-and-dime me over a mortgage payment?” I met his glare with an unbothered stare. “The allowance you give me goes straight into paying off my mother’s casino debts and your father’s physical therapy bills. Ethan, I don’t even have three hundred dollars left in my checking account.” My mother reacted as if she’d stepped on a live wire. “You ungrateful brat! What casino debts?!” She rushed forward, trying to cover my mouth with her hand. “You married into a wealthy family! Giving your mother a little spending cash is your duty!” Helen sneered from the side. “Exactly. As if we haven’t spent enough pulling your family out of the gutter.” I brushed my mother’s hand away without a word, walked into the bedroom, pulled my suitcase out from the closet, and laid it open on the bed. If they wanted a family reunion, I was happy to clear the space. Ethan followed me in. He slammed his palm down on the open suitcase, stopping me from packing. “What kind of game are you playing now?” He squeezed his eyes shut, exhaling heavily to soften his voice. “Nora, I’m sorry if I lost my temper out there. But Sienna is only staying temporarily. Once she’s healed, I’ll rent an apartment for her.” I nudged his hand off my suitcase and continued folding a sweater. “You don’t need to put on an act anymore, Ethan,” I said smoothly. “You want to give your child a proper family. I’m stepping aside so you can.” Ethan’s expression warped into something terrifying. He lunged forward, grabbing my wrists with brutal force. “I told you, you are my only wife!” he hissed through clenched teeth. “That child is just a tool to keep my parents off my back! You can’t give me an heir—did you expect me to let my bloodline die out? I am trying to fix this for us! Why can’t you just understand that?!” A sharp pain shot up my arm, triggering a spike of agony in my lower abdomen. I gasped, my vision blurring for a fraction of a second. “Fixing this for us?” I lifted my head, locking my eyes with his. “Then why didn’t you fix things during the car crash two years ago? Why did you brace yourself and pull me in front of you when you saw that truck coming?” Ethan’s pupils contracted violently. It was the dark, unspoken secret between us. Publicly, he had told everyone that I had courageously thrown myself across him to shield his body. But we both knew the truth: in that split second of terror, his instinct had been to grab my shoulder and pull me into the line of impact. “You…” His grip loosened. A flash of raw panic crossed his eyes. “You’re out of your mind. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I didn’t bother arguing. At that moment, a loud crash echoed from the balcony, followed by Sienna’s high-pitched gasp. “Oh no! I’m so sorry!” I walked out of the bedroom. Sienna was standing on the balcony next to a shattered ceramic pot. It was a rare purple orchid—the plant I had bought and tended after coming home from the hospital. In those long, agonizing nights when the pain kept me awake, watching that orchid bloom had been the only thing tethering me to sanity. Now, the pot was smashed into pieces. The delicate roots were crushed under Sienna’s shoe, buried in scattered soil. “Nora, I’m so sorry,” Sienna looked at me with wide, innocent eyes. “The baby was crying, and I rushed past… I didn’t mean to knock it over. It’s just a plant, though… you’re not mad, are you?” Ethan walked up behind me, glancing indifferently at the ruined orchid. “It’s just a houseplant, Nora,” he said casually. “I’ll have my assistant order ten higher-grade ones from the nursery tomorrow. Sienna didn’t do it on purpose. Drop it.” I looked at Ethan, then down at the crushed flower bleeding its sap into the dirt. Suddenly, I felt so tired that I couldn’t even muster the strength to finish packing my bag. “Don’t bother,” I said softly, turning back toward the bedroom. “No matter how many you buy, it won’t be that one.” Behind me, Ethan’s voice rose in exasperation. “Nora! Do you always have to be such a buzzkill?” 4 For the next three days, I became a ghost in my own home. Sienna took over every inch of the condo. She lounged on my sofa, drank from my favorite mugs, and reorganised the kitchen. Every evening when Ethan returned from work, his first priority was to hold the baby. Their laughter drifted through the thin bedroom door, sharp and cruel. I kept myself locked in my room. The gnawing pain in my stomach was getting worse, accompanied by a fever that made my skin hot and clammy. My lab report was crystal clear: Severe pelvic adhesions with secondary internal infection. Immediate surgical intervention required. If I didn’t get exploratory surgery soon, sepsis was a real possibility. But I didn’t even have fifty dollars left to buy high-dose painkillers, let alone pay for an inpatient operation. On the fourth morning, the apartment was buzzing with activity. Today was the baby’s welcome party—a lavish, hundred-guest event Helen Hayes had booked at the city’s premier hotel ballroom. I sat at my small vanity, finishing the final document. It was a simple divorce agreement. I waived all rights to joint property, spousal support, and assets. My signature was already dried at the bottom. The door pushed open. Ethan stepped in, wearing a bespoke tailored tuxedo with a deep red rose pinned to his lapel. He looked radiant, successful, and thoroughly triumphant. “Nora,” he stood at the threshold, making no move to step inside. “We’re leaving for the venue now. It’s chilly outside, and given your health, you should stay home and rest.” He phrased it like a gesture of care, but we both knew the truth: he didn’t want a barren, pale wife ruining his perfect family debut. “Okay,” I said faintly, resting my back against the chair. My mother squeezed past him, her face split in a wide grin. “Nora, honey,” she rasped, shuffling toward my bed. “The Hayes family is hosting a big event today. Your mother-in-law said we need to put a substantial cash gift in the red envelope to show our respect. Do you have any money? Give me three thousand dollars.” I looked at my mother. I watched her swallow her daughter’s blood just to buy favor with a family that despised her. I pulled open my desk drawer and tossed my payroll debit card onto the mattress. “My paycheck cleared yesterday. There’s about four thousand in there,” I said evenly. “The PIN is my birthday.” My mother’s eyes lit up. She snatched the card off the bed like a hawk catching a field mouse. “Oh, you’re such a good daughter!” She didn’t even look at my gray, sunken face as she turned and ran out the door. “We’re leaving now! Order yourself some takeout if you get hungry!” Ethan lingered for a second, looking at me with a strange, fleeting unease. He seemed uncomfortable with how quiet I was today. But he didn’t ask a single question. “I’ll be back tonight,” he said, closing the door behind him. The lock engaged. The apartment fell into an absolute, suffocating silence. I pulled myself up from the chair. A searing wave of abdominal pain almost brought me to my knees, but I braced against the wall, taking slow, ragged breaths until the dizziness passed. I walked into the living room. Sienna’s half-empty glass of milk was still sitting on the dining table. I placed the signed divorce agreement on the center of the coffee table. Then, I unclasped my diamond wedding ring and set it gently on top of the paper. I took one last look around. This place had once been my dream home. I had picked out every tile, every curtain, every shade of paint. Now, the air smelled entirely of another woman’s perfume and baby powder. I didn’t take anything that belonged to him. I packed only a small duffel bag with a few old clothes and my thick folder of medical records. As I pulled my duffel bag across the threshold and opened the front door, my phone chimed in my pocket. It was a text from Ethan: Nora, Sienna feels awful about how things have been. I’ll bring home that salted caramel mousse tart tonight so she can apologize properly. I stared at the glowing screen. A bitter, quiet smile touched my lips. I didn’t reply. I tapped his name, selected Block Contact, and deleted the thread. I closed the door behind me and walked down the quiet hallway, my footsteps echoing in the empty space. Enjoy your happy family, Ethan. I’m done.
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