My husband asked me to abort our baby so his mistress could keep hers. The package showed up at my door that morning. I thought it was from Ethan — something thoughtful, something for our baby. It was thoughtful, all right. Just not for me. Inside was a VIP contract for the most exclusive postpartum care center in the city. Top-tier. Six-figure deposit. The kind of place where you booked a year out and prayed. I stared at it for a second. Then I called him. “Ethan, why the rush?” I said, smiling into the receiver. “The baby’s only three months along. You didn’t have to book this early.” A pause on the other end. Then his voice came through, warm and soft. “Baby, cut me some slack — it’s my first time doing the dad thing. I just wanted to get ahead of it. Put it aside. I’ll handle it when I get home.” Something warm bloomed in my chest. “God, you’re already nailing this dad thing.” Everyone praised Ethan Lockwood as the perfect husband. He doted on me. Anticipated my needs. Took care of every detail of the pregnancy. I ended the call and stood there smiling for a second, like an idiot. Then I flipped to the second page. Estimated due date: next month. The 15th. My baby was only three months along. I knew the date by heart, because Ethan had cried when I’d shown him the first ultrasound — the kind of broken crying I’d never seen from him before. Next month. Next month? I read the line again. And again. And that was the moment — standing in my own foyer, in the house my husband had picked out for us, holding a contract with my name on it — that I understood something. The first-time father in his voice hadn’t been for me. The gentleness. The of course I don’t know what I’m doing, let me take care of it — none of it had been for me. He knew exactly what he was doing. He just wasn’t doing it for me. Maybe it was a printing error. That’s what I told myself. But my hand wasn’t listening. I pulled up the maternity center’s website. Tapped the contact number. Something cold and slow began to spread behind my ribs. “Seraphine Maternity Suites, how may I help you?” “Hi. I’d like to check on an order. Number 8867. Patient name Nina Lockwood.” “One moment, please.” The hold music clicked on. Then off. “Mrs. Lockwood?” The receptionist came back, her voice warm as melted butter. “Yes, ma’am, your reservation is fully confirmed. Estimated due date is the fifteenth of next month. You’ve booked the Platinum Suite — that’s our top-tier accommodation. Mr. Lockwood paid in full. The physical contract was couriered to your address. You should have it in hand any day now.” My hand trembled. “Are you — are you absolutely certain it’s Nina Lockwood?” I pressed. “Confirmed, Ms. Moore,” she interrupted. “Mr. Lockwood left a special note — you’re expecting twins and need extra care. Don’t worry. Our facility’s fully equipped. Medical team’s on standby twenty-four seven. You and your babies will be safe.” The phone almost slipped out of my hand. Twins? I hung up. Sat down on the couch. My hands and feet had gone ice cold. The name was right. The ID number was right. But I was carrying one baby. Only three months pregnant. And Seraphine? Seraphine was the kind of place that even a week’s notice was enough. There was no reason on earth to book this far ahead. Unless you needed the name on the paperwork to match a face that wasn’t going to be there. I sat very still. My hand drifted, almost without permission, to the small flat curve of my stomach. Whose baby was she carrying — and why was it due next month?
Ethan didn’t come home until well after midnight. I didn’t turn on the lights. I’m not sure why. Maybe I wanted to see his face in the moment before he could arrange it. Maybe I just didn’t trust my own expression under a lamp. The contract was spread open on the coffee table in front of me. I’d reread that one line so many times I could’ve recited it backwards. He had three years to learn my face. He should know what’s coming. “Nina?” The hall light clicked on. His footsteps came toward me, slow and tired. “Sweetheart, why are you sitting in the dark? You know that’s bad for —” I didn’t answer. I just looked at him. After a beat, he came closer, every line of his face arranged into something gentle and concerned, the role he’d been playing for three years and was very, very good at. He bent down to kiss my forehead the way he did every night. I turned my face away before his lips could land. “Nina?” There was a small, careful confusion in his voice now. “What’s wrong?” “Ethan.” I kept my voice level. “The contract from the maternity center arrived today.” “The due date is next month. And it says I’m carrying twins.” For half a second — just half — his face did absolutely nothing. Then he laughed, soft and rueful, and crouched down in front of me. He took my hand in both of his, the way he always did when he was about to talk me out of something. “God, sweetheart, I was going to tell you about that today.” His thumb traced over my knuckles. “Their system glitched last week — merged two patient files together. I already called and chewed them out. They swore to me they’d fix it.” He looked up at me with the same warm, apologetic eyes I’d been looking into across a kitchen table for three years. He squeezed my hand. “Come on, baby. You’re pregnant. You can’t let yourself spiral over something like this. It’s not good for her.” A week ago, I would’ve believed him. A day ago, I would’ve believed him. But this time, I was really looking. And I didn’t miss the flicker of panic at the bottom of his eyes.
Wait. The panic in his eyes told me he was about to. “A glitch in the system,” I repeated softly. I slid my hand, slowly and deliberately, out from under his. “Then how did the pregnancy timeline — the one someone wrote in by hand — also come out wrong?” His thumb, which had been tracing my knuckles, stilled. Three months ago, the day the second little pink line had shown up on the test stick, this man had wept into my hair and sworn — he’d never forget the date as long as he lived. But on that contract, neither date had anything to do with me. I waited. I gave him the chance. I watched him, hoping he’d give me a reason I could believe. He didn’t speak. A small, hot tremor crept into my voice before I could stop it. “It’s because the top suite at that place is impossible to get into, isn’t it.” I wasn’t asking anymore. “That’s why you booked so far in advance. That’s why you put it under my name.” “You couldn’t risk her name showing up anywhere.” “Nina —” Ethan rose to his feet. He turned away from me, ran a hand through his hair, and stood with his back to the room. For a long time, he didn’t say anything at all. When he finally spoke, his voice was so quiet I almost missed it. “Her name is Lena. She — she’s an intern at the company.” My mind went blank. Lena. Lena Moore. Nina Lockwood. Two syllables apart. Almost a joke, if you said them too fast. “At last year’s Christmas party—” His voice was strained now, threaded with something he wanted me to read as shame. “I’d had too much to drink. She — she’s just a girl, Nina. She’s under a lot of pressure right now —” Too much to drink. I almost laughed. In three years of marriage, had no one ever bothered to tell my husband that when he drank too much, he physically couldn’t get it up? “After that night,” he went on, eyes on the floor, “she got pregnant. The doctor told her it was twins. She wanted to terminate. I was the one who told her not to. They’re — they’re two lives, Nina. I couldn’t —” “So she’s giving birth at the maternity center,” I finished for him. “Under my name.” He didn’t answer. “That way you can keep playing the devoted husband.” “After all — your wife, Nina Lockwood, really is pregnant.” “Everyone will think I’m the one who gave birth. Your illegitimate children will become legitimate heirs right under their noses.” He flinched, but he didn’t deny it. “You even prepared the cover-up for yourself ahead of time,” I said. “How thoughtful of you.” I could feel tears tracking down my cheeks now, hot. “Nina, I love you. From beginning to end, I’ve only ever loved you.” He knelt again and took my hands. “She was an accident. I feel nothing for her. I just—” “I couldn’t let a young girl terminate her pregnancy. It would damage her health. Once the babies are born, she’ll leave. I promise.” I looked at him. This man I’d married three years ago. This man I’d thought, with absolute conviction, I was going to grow old beside. “You can’t stand her having an abortion… so I should have one?” Something flickered across his face — too fast to name. And then, slowly, he fell silent. No more explanations. No more denials. No more talk of how much he loved me. He just knelt there at my feet, head bowed, and said absolutely nothing. And that silence — God — gutted me. Because that was the answer. The answer he’d walked into this room hoping I’d give him myself, so he wouldn’t have to be the one to say it out loud. He didn’t want my baby.
It hit me all at once, then went ice-cold. Slow, creeping ice that filled every space inside my ribs. “Nina.” When he finally lifted his head, his eyes were still wet with that same careful pain. But the words coming out of his mouth were colder than anything he’d said yet. “She’s been falling apart these last few weeks. Worried sick the babies won’t have a name. That they’ll grow up as nothing.” He paused. The sympathy in his eyes was so undisguised that for a second I couldn’t breathe. “Two nights ago, she slit her wrists with a kitchen knife. Luckily, the maid found her in time.” He dropped his eyes to the floor. “You’re healthy, Nina. You bounce back fast. And —” his voice dropped lower, almost gentle, “you’ve done this before. One more time — it’s not gonna matter.” I went lightheaded. The kind of lightheaded where your ears start ringing. “What,” I whispered, “did you just say.” He wouldn’t look at me. He kept his eyes fixed on a single point on the floor, like a man who’d already rehearsed this conversation in his head and knew meeting my eyes would ruin the whole performance. “She’s different,” he said. “She’s only twenty-three. It’s her first pregnancy. She’s alone in this city. No family, no one to lean on —” I opened my mouth, and no sound came out. “I know you feel hurt.” His grip on my hand tightened. “We — ” “We can have another one later, Nina. You bounce back so easily. You got pregnant just fine after the first miscarriage. You’ll get pregnant again after this. Everything will be fine.” He looked up at me then, and — God help me — there were actual tears glittering in his eyes. “Just — just do it for me,” he whispered. “Please. Just this once. For me.” I stared at him. Looked into those wet, beautiful, lying eyes. And I laughed. “Ethan.” My voice came out very soft. “Do you remember why I miscarried the first time?” He froze. “Because your mother decided I wasn’t good enough for you,” I said. “Because she cornered me at the top of the staircase to tell me so. Because she argued with me, and I fell down the stairs.” His face paled. “I was twenty-three then too,” I went on, in the same quiet, conversational voice. “It was my first pregnancy too. I was alone in this city too. I’d left my own town, my own parents, my own life — for you.” He started to say something. I didn’t let him. I kept going, my voice flat. “You don’t remember, do you?” “Nina, my mother didn’t mean to—” “I know.” I cut him off softly. “That’s why I forgave her. I believed her. She looked terrified afterward. Genuinely terrified.” I tilted my head. “She just didn’t expect that you’d be standing two feet behind me on those stairs, and you didn’t catch me.”
Ethan’s face went white. “Nina —” His voice rose, sharp with something like panic. “How can you say that? That was my first child too. Why would I ever have let you fall on purpose?” I looked down at his hand. The hand still gripping mine. The hand that, three years ago, hadn’t caught me. The same hand that was now holding mine — and asking me, very tenderly, to lose another one. “So.” I drew my hand, slowly, out of his. My voice was very quiet now. “Your mother shoving me. You not catching me. Our baby dying.” “That was all just an accident.” “Yes,” he said, almost desperate. “Yes. It was an accident. Nobody wanted it to happen.” “Then tell me.” I held his eyes. “Is this one an accident, too?” He didn’t answer. This is for the baby he wants me to kill. “Her getting pregnant is an accident. You asking me to abort our baby is an accident.” “Tell me something, Ethan. Why is it that every Lockwood accident always happens to me?” The color came rushing back into his face in a furious red wave. The room was silent for a long time. For a long moment, I thought he wouldn’t speak again at all. Then, in a voice cracking at the edges, he said: “Nina. What the hell am I supposed to do?” He looked up. His eyes were bloodshot, raw, like he hadn’t slept in days. “There’s you on one side. Her on the other. And two babies.” “What the hell am I supposed to do?” I looked at him. “What are you supposed to do?” My voice was deadly quiet. “I’m the one asking what I am supposed to do.” And then, because I couldn’t hold it in for one more second, I broke. “She’s young. First pregnancy. Bad for her body. So she gets to walk away unscathed — and I deserve to suffer?” I was shaking. “She gets a Presidential Suite and twins and a future. And I get the operating table. Is that the math, Ethan?” “That’s not what I meant —” “Then what did you mean?” He didn’t answer. I looked at this face I had looked at across a pillow for three years, and suddenly it felt foreign. “Ethan.” My voice came out so quiet, it didn’t even sound like me. “Do you know what that’s called?” His lips moved, but nothing came out. “It’s called murder,” I said, slow and even. “You’re asking me to kill my own baby with my own hands.” “So I can raise your bastards.” “Nina —” I didn’t think about it. I didn’t decide. I raised my hand and slapped him across the face as hard as I could. The crack of it rang through the apartment. His head snapped sideways. He didn’t move. He just stayed frozen there, half-kneeling on the carpet at my feet, one hand drifting up to cover his cheek. My palm was numb. My chest was worse. “That slap,” I said, “was for the baby in my stomach.” I stood up. I didn’t shake. I didn’t cry. “Ethan. You are the one who didn’t want him.” I looked down at him and took a breath. “I want a divorce.”
He covered his cheek with one hand. And — somehow, impossibly — there was hurt in his eyes. “Hit me again if you want. I deserve it.” “But don’t you ever say the word divorce to me. Not ever.” “I told you. I never planned to be unfaithful. There is nothing wrong with our marriage —” His phone rang in the middle of the sentence. He froze. His eyes flickered down to the screen, and I watched him weigh it for a few seconds. He stood up and walked off to take the call. When he came back, his face had rearranged itself into something carefully apologetic. “Something urgent has come up at the office. I have to go in.” I looked at him. I didn’t say a word. “Just — calm down for tonight, all right, sweetheart? We’ll talk properly when I’m back.” He took a step toward the door. Then, of course, he turned around. “In her condition,” he said, not quite meeting my eyes, “out of basic responsibility, I have to keep an eye on her too.” “She’s close to her due date. These next few weeks I won’t be able to get away. And you — you, alone in this big house, hugely pregnant, no one to look after you — how miserable would that be?” “Better to do it now, while it’s still early. You’d suffer less, too.” “Once her babies are born, we’ll bring them home. We’ll put them under your name. You’d still be Mrs. Lockwood. They’d have a place in the family.” “Nothing between us would have to change.” He looked at me, walked out without looking back. The apartment went still. I sat there for a long time, looking at the door. Then I laughed. He made it sound so reasonable. *She was about to give birth, so he had no time to take care of me. I would be alone, carrying my belly, with no one by my side.* So why not just end it first? The night outside the window was deep and black. I just sat there, one hand on my stomach, and let the hours bleed into each other. I didn’t cry. I was past that. I had nothing left to give this man — not even my tears. By the time the doorbell rang, the sky outside was already pale. I crossed the apartment on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else, and opened the door. My mother-in-law stood there, with Bridget — Calder’s new wife — at her side. “Oh, Nina, honey. You look terrible. Have you eaten anything at all?” Bridget stepped inside first and grabbed both my hands. I tried to pull back. She held on. “Mom got the call last night and didn’t sleep a wink, sweetheart. She had me drag her out here before sunrise to come see how you were holding up.” Mrs. Lockwood walked past her. She settled onto my couch like she owned it. That slow, unhurried grace — I used to think it was elegance. Now I knew more. I sat. “Mom knows you’re hurting, dear.” She took my hand. Her rings were cold against my fingers. “I’ll have a serious talk with Ethan, I promise you. But Nina — you have to be reasonable too.” “That girl is carrying twins. That’s two lives.” I looked at her kind, lined face. I listened to every word coming out of her mouth — reasonable, decent, two lives. “Mother.” My voice came out raw, hoarser than I’d expected. “Are you saying the same thing as Ethan, then?” “Are you telling me to abort my baby?” Her expression didn’t change. Not by a flicker. Not by a millimeter. “They’re all my grandchildren. Of course it breaks my heart to lose any of them. But that girl is threatening to take her own life, Nina.” “One wrong move and we’d lose her and the twins — three lives, all at once.” She patted my hand, the way you’d humor a child. “That’s not how Lockwoods handle things, dear. It’s beneath us.” Beneath us. So forcing me to abort my own baby — that wasn’t beneath them, was it? I pulled my hand back. I stood up. “I can’t do it,” I said. My voice was very quiet, and very steady. “This is my child. I’m three months along. He has a heartbeat.” “I am not aborting him.”
Mrs. Lockwood’s face darkened. Beside me, Bridget let out a long, theatrical sigh, walked over, and slipped her arm through mine. “Nina, sweetheart, why are you being so stubborn?” She pressed me gently back down onto the couch. “Sit. Take relax. Let me say something to you, woman to woman.” I let myself be pushed back into the cushions. She kept hold of my hand, leaning in close, lowering her voice the way she did at parties. “Nina, sweetheart, you know what I do for a living. I deal with all kinds of people, every single day. And let me tell you — sometimes in life, you can’t just live for your pride.” “You have to play the long game.” Her voice dropped. “This whole mess? Yes. It’s Ethan’s fault. Nobody’s saying it isn’t. But think about it, honey. If you blow this up — what happens to his name? His reputation? The family’s reputation?” “And in the end, who pays the price?” “You do, Nina.” She squeezed my hand. “A woman has to learn to think about the bigger picture.” The bigger picture. I almost laughed in her face. Once upon a time, to get herself into this family, Bridget had deliberately befriended me. Used me to slip something into Ethan’s older brother Calder’s drink at a party. Used me and walked out of that night with her wanted marriage in her pocket. And now here she was. “Bridget.” I kept my voice perfectly level. “So what do you think I should do.” She paused for a second. Then she smiled. “I think you should listen to Mom, sweetheart. She’s been around the block a few more times than you have. She wouldn’t lead you wrong.” Mrs. Lockwood nodded. The kindly mask slid back over her face as easily as a glove. “As long as you behave, dear, I’ll make sure the Lockwoods continue to treat you. Every bit of respect that’s owed to you — you’ll keep. Down to the last cent.” I looked at her. “And what about my baby?” “Why can’t you listen, child?” Her voice dropped, and the warmth went out of it like someone had flipped a switch. “You’re not having a child.” She let the words sit for a second. “Your accounts have all been frozen. If you see reason, you’ll still have good life of this family. If not —” She paused, and her eyes — those soft, grandmotherly eyes — went cold. “The Lockwoods are not a family someone like you can afford to offend.” I bit my lip and said nothing. They didn’t bother trying to persuade me further. They stood up, smoothed out their coats, and let themselves out. The house went silent again. I picked up my phone and checked my banking app. I had trusted him completely. Now, besides the supplementary card he gave me, even my own private accounts were useless. My hands trembled. Every card I owned was dead in my hands. I was sitting there staring at the screen when footsteps sounded outside the door.
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