Chapter 2

I was shaking with rage. "In your dreams!"

"This is my child. You don't get to decide whether he lives or dies!"

"Bertram, you'll pay for this!"

At that moment, Rose let out a sharp scream, her foot slipped, and she pitched toward me.

Before I could react, May shoved me hard and screamed, "You vicious woman, how dare you push Rose!"

"If anything happens to the baby in her belly, I'll have your life!"

My legs were already numb from kneeling, and the shove sent me tipping backward.

My lower back slammed against the cold stone steps, and a tearing pain ripped through my belly.

I curled up on the ground and reached for the hem of Bertram's pants, my voice trembling with pain. "It hurts, my baby!"

"Bertram, save the baby, save our baby..."

He only stepped back, pulling his hand away from me in disgust, then turned and lifted Rose, who was pretending to be shaken.

"Don't make a scene at the door. It's bad luck."

That was all he said before he carried Rose inside the mansion.

As my mind blurred, I thought I heard the security guards cry out, someone calling for an ambulance.

...

When I woke, I was in an old public hospital out in the suburbs.

The smell of antiseptic stung my nose. I was alone in the room, an IV needle taped to the back of my hand, my belly empty and aching until it went numb.

A nurse came in to change the IV bag, saw that I was awake, and sighed. "You're finally awake."

"When they brought you in, you were hemorrhaging. We almost lost you."

"We couldn't save the baby. The guard who brought you already left. Where's your family? Why has no one come to look after you?"

Family?

My husband, my mother-in-law, both of them were probably fussing over Rose right now.

The door swung open.

Bertram walked in frowning, as if the air in here were filthy.

He tossed a document onto the nightstand and said coldly, "This is the divorce agreement. Take a look."

"The house and the car are my premarital property. You leave with nothing."

"For the sake of what we had, I'll give you twenty thousand for your recovery. Sign it and I'll have finance wire it to you."

I looked at him as if seeing this man for the first time.

"Bertram, our baby is gone."

"He was five months along. You feel nothing at all?"

He said impatiently, "I never planned on keeping it anyway. What's there to feel?"

"Rose said she doesn't want to become a stepmother the moment she walks in the door."

"Vera, be smart and sign. Don't make me send my lawyers. By then you won't get twenty thousand. You won't get a cent."

I stared at him and forced down the grief and fury. "When you married me, what was it really for?"

He gave a contemptuous laugh. "If you hadn't been a match back then, if you hadn't been willing to give me a kidney, do you think you'd ever have made it through the Gilbert family's door?"

Three years ago, he told me he'd been diagnosed with kidney failure, late-stage, and I was the only match.

He knelt in front of me and cried, said he didn't want to die, said he wanted to spend his whole life with me.

I hid it from my adoptive father and quietly went to the hospital to have a kidney removed for him.

I spent most of a year recovering afterward. My body was never the same, and he still held me and said he'd be good to me forever.

So he had never loved me.

So all this time it had been my own foolish, one-sided love.

Bertram sneered. "You didn't actually think I married you because I loved you, did you?"

"A kidney for a ticket to being Mrs. Gilbert. You came out ahead."

"Sign it now. I don't have time to waste on you here."

Three years of tender days flashed through my mind like a film.

So all that gentleness, all those vows, had been an act.

I was a joke, nothing but a tool that supplied a kidney.

I said through gritted teeth, "Bertram, you'll regret this."

He laughed with contempt. "Regret?"

"Vera, you have nothing now. Your father's factory is about to go bankrupt. You can't even pay your own hospital bill."

"What do you have to fight me with? I've been generous, and this is how you repay me?"

"You have three days. Sign the divorce papers."

"Or I'll have the court summons delivered right to your father's bedside. Let's see whether he can survive the shock."

With that, he turned and left, the door slamming shut behind him.

I lay on the cold hospital bed, tears streaming down.

The baby gone, the marriage gone, my father's factory gone. I'd even given him a kidney, and this was what it bought me.

What was the point of living?

In that moment, I wanted to end this wretched life of mine.

Just as I gave up on everything and moved to jump from the window, the door opened again.

A group of bodyguards in black suits walked in, led by an old man with graying hair.

The moment he saw me, his eyes went red, and his voice broke. "Miss... this old servant has finally found you!"