Chapter 1Sterilized After Your Betrayal

I stumbled across a shared folder titled “Honeymoon” on my wife’s laptop. For a fleeting, beautiful moment, I thought she was finally making good on a promise she’d deferred for five years.

I clicked into it, my heart light with anticipation, only to find a spreadsheet that looked nothing like the one we’d drafted together.

The departure date fell right in the middle of a business trip I’d already scheduled, so I pushed it back two days. I noticed she’d picked Antarctica; I changed it to Iceland, remembering that she’d once mentioned wanting to see the Aurora Borealis, which wouldn’t be visible in the south this time of year. Then, thinking of the budget we were trying to save for the baby we were planning, I downgraded the first-class flights to business.

Suddenly, a cursor flickered on the screen. Another user had entered the document.

With surgical precision, they reverted every single one of my changes. Then, a comment popped up in the sidebar:

“Mommy, we said Antarctica. If we change it, Daddy will be sad!”

I froze. A prank? A virus? A neighbor’s kid who’d somehow linked accounts?

I didn’t hear Claire walk up behind me. Her voice was terrifyingly level when she spoke.

“He’s the son of my foster brother, Bennett. Next time, Nigel. I promise, next time I’ll take you on a honeymoon.”

* * *

Claire said it with the casual indifference of someone mentioning the weather.

She had a son. With Bennett.

My jaw tightened, a ghost of a smile twitching on my lips. “It’s not April Fools’, Claire. What kind of joke is this?”

I prayed for it to be a joke. A cruel, tasteless one, but a joke nonetheless.

Instead, Claire picked up her phone right in front of me and hit a contact.

“Hey, sweetie. No, that was just an accident. Someone touched the computer who shouldn't have. I promised we’re going to see the penguins, didn’t I? Mommy never breaks her promises.”

The softness in her eyes—a maternal glow I had hungered to see directed at a child of our own—felt like a hallucination.

She hung up and turned the screen toward me, showing the traveler list for the “Honeymoon” trip: Claire Steward, Bennett Steward, and a five-year-old named Jamie.

“Honestly, keeping this from you for five years has been exhausting,” she said, leaning against the desk. “Maybe it’s better this way. Now you know.”

She reached into her bag and tossed a document onto the desk. A marriage certificate.

“We’re a family. Legally.”

The room seemed to tilt. The oxygen left my lungs. “A… family?”

I thought back to the beginning. My internship at her firm, the whirlwind romance, the quiet ceremony we had five years ago, the domestic life we’d built. Every meal, every shared secret, every night in each other's arms.

I wasn't even her husband. Not in the eyes of the law.

Claire nodded, her expression bored. “At our engagement party, I had too much to drink. I thought Bennett was you. I was pregnant with his child when we ‘married.’ I had to take responsibility for him, Nigel. I had to give Jamie a legitimate home.”

“But… the baby you had,” I stammered, my mind racing back to that sterile hospital room five years ago. “The doctors said he died. Minutes after he was born.”

She stepped closer, placing a hand on my chest. “Don’t worry about the logistics. In my heart, you’re my husband. That’s how we’ve lived all this time, hasn't it? Nothing has to change.”

How we’ve lived.

The pieces began to click into place, a mosaic of betrayal. The nights I’d spent in the ER after a car accident while she was “working late.” The times I’d waited at home with a candlelit dinner for an anniversary she forgot. She wasn't at the office. She was with them. With her real family.

I looked at the flight confirmation I’d printed out just an hour ago—the one I’d intended as a surprise. I felt a laugh bubble up in my throat, bitter and sharp.

“You know, this was the last time,” I whispered. “The last time I was going to ask you to choose me.”

Before I could finish, her phone chimed. The caller ID read Husband, punctuated by a heart emoji.

Claire walked toward the hallway, answering with a voice so honeyed it made my skin crawl. Bennett’s voice bled through the speaker—intimate, demanding, familiar.

I stood there in the silence of our—her—house, my hands shaking so hard I had to shove them into my pockets. That was when my phone buzzed. A friend request on Instagram from a private account: Bennett_Steward.