Chapter 1I Birthed His Secret Wife’s Baby

I rolled up my sleeve, the motion as thoughtless and routine as breathing, waiting for the cold swipe of the alcohol pad. But instead of the nurse’s gentle touch, Drew’s hand clamped down hard over my forearm.

The first day of every month. For over a year, this had been our ritual. This was the day I sat in a pristine leather chair and let them draw my blood—the rare antibodies in my plasma supposedly keeping his chronically ill younger sister alive.

He didn't look at me. His voice was a flat, clinical drone that felt almost deliberately cruel. He told me that the woman whose life I had been sustaining month after month wasn’t his sister at all.

She was his ex-wife.

"Her autoimmune flare-ups have stabilized," he said, casually adjusting his cuffs. "She’s fully recovered. We don’t need your plasma anymore."

I stared down at the crook of my elbow. The skin there was a constellation of tiny, faded purple dots—a roadmap of my devotion. A violent tremor started in my hands and quickly took over my entire body.

"How could you?" The words tore out of my throat, raw and agonizing. "You knew I was pregnant during half those donations! You knew the risk—one wrong move, one drop in my pressure, and it could have killed the baby!"

I was screaming now, but Drew’s face remained a mask of flawless, terrifying indifference. If anything, the look he gave me was laced with pity.

"I was fully aware of the risks, Jolie," he said softly. "But you see, the embryo the clinic implanted... it was created using my sperm and Cheryl’s egg. You were just carrying our child."

* * *

"What?"

The word hung in the air, impossibly fragile. A high-pitched ringing erupted in my ears.

Drew pulled a silver lighter from his pocket and lit a cigarette. He looked annoyed, but beneath that annoyance was a sickening sense of entitlement.

"Cheryl has a fragile constitution. Carrying a child to term would have destroyed her body. Why else do you think I married you?" He exhaled a plume of smoke, looking at me through the gray haze. "But it worked out. The boy is healthy, and her illness is in remission. If you want a divorce now, I won't contest it."

He let out a long breath, as if a massive weight had been lifted from his tailored shoulders. He looked at my face—which must have been the color of chalk—and actually offered a light, breezy chuckle.

"You have no idea the toll this took on me. Every time I was with you, it felt like I was having an affair. Like I was betraying her." He paused, his eyes darkening with a twisted sort of loyalty. "I never even slept with you without getting her permission first."

The ringing in my ears escalated into a deafening roar. Fragments of our marriage—the tender late-night whispers, the tangled sheets, the vows we took—crashed through my mind, broken and bleeding. My lips trembled, but I couldn't form a single syllable.

As if reading the devastation in my eyes, Drew let out a low, dark laugh.

"Last night, when we were in bed? She was on the phone. Listening. It made her so furious she was practically screaming, calling you a whore." He shook his head, sounding almost disappointed in me. "But you were so far gone, so desperate for it, you didn't even notice the phone on the nightstand."

The sheer humiliation of it, the absolute violation, surged up from my stomach and exploded behind my eyes. I lunged forward and slapped him across the face with every ounce of strength I had.

"You monster!"

Drew ran his tongue over his teeth, tasting the inside of his cheek. He didn't look angry. He just looked thoroughly, unapologetically rotten.

"I'll admit, it was a shitty thing to do. I originally planned to keep you in the dark forever. But yesterday, Cheryl saw Toby call you 'Mommy.' She broke down. She cried for hours." He sighed, running a hand through his perfectly styled hair. "It broke my heart. I can't let her suffer like that."

He stared right at me, and in that split second, I knew exactly what he was going to say. My body instinctively scrambled backward, pressing hard against the back of the chair.

"Don't you even think about it," I gasped, terror wrapping around my throat.

Drew lunged, grabbing my wrists. He looked at my tears as if they were a puzzle he couldn't quite solve. "Jolie, be rational. You are not his biological mother. If we take him back now, you’ll get over it eventually. It won't hurt as much as you think."

"I raised him for three years!" I shrieked, the tears spilling over, hot and pathetic and desperate. "A thousand days and nights! Do you know he’s allergic to mangoes? Do you know he ends up in the ER every spring with croup? Do you have any fucking idea that I nearly bled to death on the delivery table having him?!"

For a fraction of a second, Drew’s expression went completely blank.

I let out a broken, hysterical laugh. I remembered it now. He wasn’t there when I gave birth.

I had been hemorrhaging. The doctors were shouting, the alarms were blaring, and I was crying so hard I couldn't breathe, begging the nurses to call my husband. I just wanted him to hold my hand.

When they finally got him on the phone, his voice was like ice.

“I told you, I’m closing a massive acquisition today. Women give birth every second of the day, Jolie. Stop acting like a spoiled brat.”

But right before the line went dead, I had heard it. A woman’s soft, melodic giggle in the background. Pleased. Mocking.

I had convinced myself it was a hallucination brought on by the blood loss. But it was Cheryl.

I sobbed, my chest heaving uncontrollably. Drew watched me, and for a fleeting moment, a flicker of genuine pity crossed his eyes. He opened his mouth, perhaps to offer some hollow comfort, but his cell phone buzzed.

He answered it. Cheryl’s voice bled through the speaker, sharp and furious, like a wife catching her husband in a cheap motel.

"Why aren't you answering my texts?! You're screwing that bitch right now, aren't you? Don't think I don't know how much you love that slut's body!"

Drew smiled. It was a helpless, entirely devoted smile.

"Baby, don't be mad. I'm not doing anything. I promised you I'd handle it, didn't I? Have I ever let you down?"

"Then how are you going to handle it? I want her to get on her knees and apologize to me!"

He poured all his attention into the phone, soothing her, validating her. He didn't even bother taking it off speakerphone. He didn't care that I was sitting two feet away, listening to them discuss how to dispose of me as if I were the mistress who had overstayed her welcome.

My stomach cramped so violently I thought I might throw up. I couldn't listen to another word. Face ashen, I turned and stumbled toward the door.