Chapter 1Bleeding Out At My Own Wedding

I had just come off a grueling fourteen-hour night shift when Harrison’s new girl dropped to her knees right in front of my locker, sobbing as if her heart had been ripped out.

"Please, Natalie. Please," she begged, her voice echoing in the sterile hospital corridor. "Let me keep this baby. Harrison says he'll only listen to you."

She grabbed at the hem of my scrubs. "I'll be so good, I swear. I won't ever try to take your place. I'm only nineteen. I'm terrified of getting an abortion. You're a doctor, you're supposed to save lives—please, just accept me."

Right as she hit the peak of her hysterical pleading, Harrison rounded the corner. He looked breathless, frantic.

He looked at me, his eyes heavy with performative guilt. "Cheating was my mistake. I own that. So whether this baby stays or goes... I'm leaving the decision entirely in your hands."

In my past life, this exact scene had shattered me. I had been too much of an idealist back then, clinging to the naive belief of a soulmate, of one true love. The betrayal of the man I had slept beside and loved fiercely for five years destroyed me.

Back then, I chose a clean break. I walked away, refusing to ever see him again.

And that decision taught me the brutal, unforgiving nature of reality.

She, the mistress, used her child to claw her way up. She lived a life bathed in luxury and unimaginable wealth. Meanwhile, I worked myself to the bone. I practically lived in the operating room, but even after collapsing from sheer exhaustion, I still hadn't scraped together enough to pay off my mother's crushing medical debts.

It forced me to agree with the cynical old saying: In the end, love is just a losing game.

So, in this life, I looked at Harrison and said, "Get rid of the baby. And our wedding will proceed as planned."

........

* * *

I watched the tension physically drain from his shoulders. He exhaled a sharp breath, shocked by my sheer magnanimity, and even more shocked that I still wanted to marry him.

"I'm so glad you could see reason," he murmured.

I offered him a faint, practiced smile.

It wasn't that I had seen reason. I had seen the absolute core of how the world worked. You can survive perfectly fine without love. You cannot survive without money.

Harrison took a tentative step toward me, testing the waters. His arm slipped naturally around my waist, pulling me gently against his chest. But beneath the warmth in his eyes, there was a calculating scrutiny.

"Will you be the one to do her D&C?" he asked softly. "I wouldn't trust any other doctor with it."

I didn't hesitate for a fraction of a second. The corners of my mouth tipped upward. "Of course. Leave her to me."

A flicker of genuine surprise crossed his face. For a second, he looked at me like he didn't know me at all. "She's young. She's scared of the pain," he added. "Be gentle."

I gave him a look designed to reassure. "We use anesthesia. She won't feel a thing."

Mia panicked. She began to weep with an earth-shattering despair, her fingers digging into the fabric of my pants. "No! Please, I'm begging you! I'm only nineteen, I can't do this!"

"I'll sign a contract!" she cried out. "I'll stay in the shadows forever, I swear! Just please, Natalie, this is my first baby. Please give him a chance to live!"

I looked down at the girl trembling on the linoleum floor.

I had to hand it to her. In my past life, this girl had been infinitely smarter than me. She leveraged her pregnancy, gave birth to a son, and inherited the entire Prescott family empire. She lived out her days glowing in the spotlight.

Harrison and I had a child once, too. But because I suffered from a severe emotional purity complex, because the thought of his betrayal made my skin crawl, I marched into a clinic and aborted my baby without looking back.

Two different choices. Her child became a billionaire heir. Mine ended up as medical waste.

Love really does make a woman stupid.

I forced my voice to tremble, looking up at Harrison with wide, victimized eyes. "I've compromised so much already, and she’s still pushing me. Is she trying to stress me out so badly that I lose my own baby?"

I deliberately placed a protective hand over my perfectly flat stomach.

Harrison froze. For a second, his brain short-circuited. Then, pure, unadulterated joy exploded across his face. He grabbed me by the waist and spun me around right there in the hallway.

"I'm going to be a dad? I'm going to be a dad!"

Since our very first year together, he had talked endlessly about wanting a family with me. In my previous life, fueled by pride and stubbornness, I had kept the pregnancy a secret. I firmly believed that if I cut out the toxic waste from my life, I would carve out a beautiful future for myself.

It turned out to be the most fatal miscalculation of my life.