Chapter 2Raising My Husbands Mistresss Son

Callie’s face went deathly pale. She started trembling, her voice a frantic whisper.

“I’m so sorry, Professor. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come. I’ll go, I’ll go...”

She looked at Benedict with those watery, terrified eyes, playing the victim to perfection before turning to bolt out the door. Benedict reached out as if to catch her, but she was already gone.

The next thing I felt was a searing pain across my face.

The slap was so hard my head snapped to the side. My ears rang with a high-pitched drone, and the world went blurry.

“Michelle, why are you so small? So cruel?” Benedict hissed. “She was your student! Have you no heart?”

Before I could find my voice, the front door slammed shut. The draft of cold air that followed felt like it cut right through my chest. My cheek burned, the heat of his palm blossoming into a red handprint.

I stood in the silence, holding a bag of ice to my face, staring at the floor. Toby’s toys were scattered everywhere. There was a drawing he’d made—a family portrait. I looked closer and realized he had meticulously used scissors to cut my figure out of the paper, leaving only a jagged hole next to his father.

I looked up at our wedding photo hanging in the hallway. I wondered if things would have been different if I hadn't been the one to "save" Callie all those years ago.

I remembered the first time I saw her. She was a delivery girl, soaked to the bone in a rainstorm, her scooter having clipped my car’s side mirror. She was barely twenty, wearing thin, faded clothes, looking fragile and sickly. When I realized she attended the university where I taught, I saw a spark in her. I made an exception. I took her under my wing.

Benedict had been the one to encourage it.

“Michelle, she has nothing,” he’d said back then. “No parents, no money. Let’s help her. It’s the right thing to do.”

I paid her tuition. I gave her my connections. I shared my research. I loved her like the younger sister I never had. And then, on our second anniversary, I walked into my darkened office to find her wrapped in my husband's arms.

The shock had been so total it felt like a physical explosion in my brain. I didn't listen to his excuses. I didn't listen to her pleas. I posted the truth. I watched her get expelled. I watched Benedict’s company stocks plummet.

But then... he cried. He told me I was pregnant. He told me our baby needed a father. He sent her away and promised a new life.

I stayed because I was invested. I stayed because of the "sunk cost" of my own heart.

But as the sun began to peek through the curtains the next morning, I realized I had been the only one living in reality. Benedict had never let her go.

I pulled out my phone and dialed my lawyer.

“That divorce settlement from five years ago?” I asked, my voice cold and clear. “I want to move forward. But add one clause: I want full custody of my son.”