Chapter 2

The next morning, I decided to tell Duncan formally.

I was giving up this baby and divorcing him.

"Duncan, I want to talk to you about the baby."

Instead, Duncan crossed his arms and let out a cold laugh.

"Narelle was right. The second I took away your black card, you'd use the baby to threaten me."

Narelle shook her head and sighed.

"Because she knows that apart from her ability to give birth, she has nothing to offer you."

"Think carefully before you use the child to threaten Duncan ,plenty of women would love to give Duncan a child. If you won't, there's no shortage of others who will."

I looked at Duncan's utterly indifferent face.

I demanded,

"Duncan, is that what you think too? Have you forgotten how much I went through for this baby?"

Five years ago, the cheap abortion pills I bought online had nearly ruined my health.

During my recovery I still went out delivering food in the rain every day. It made getting pregnant again incredibly difficult.

For this baby.

I went through box after box of fertility injections.

The day we found out I was pregnant, Duncan held me and cried like a child.

In the middle of the night he'd take out the ultrasound report and look at it again and again.

His eyes flickered, and for a moment, it looked as if he wanted to say something.

But Narelle cut in, her expression disapproving.

"It's because you're in poor health. You shouldn't make Duncan pay for what your own body went through.”

"Since we're on the subject, let's settle it properly."

"Duncan, I'll send her a bill on your behalf."

I checked my phone. The pending charges were listed one by one:

More than a hundred fertility injections. More than sixty rounds of herbal medicine I'd taken to regulate my body.

Everything I had once done for this baby.

All of it had been reduced to a cold, emotionless bill: twenty-seven thousand.

I stared at him blankly, the disappointment spreading through me like ice.

"Duncan, you forgot, you cut off my card. I don't have that kind of money right now."

Narelle just scoffed.

"No money? Don't act like you don't have any. You've been married to Duncan this long, you must have saved plenty for yourself. Who's going to believe you don't have a secret stash?"

Duncan pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Narelle's right. Money is all you think about now. You'll even lie about something like this."

"I've given you so much, and now you won't pay half of a twenty-thousand-dollar bill."

I was about to argue back.

My phone rang.

It was my mom.

"Winona, Mom fainted last week. The doctor says I need heart surgery..."

I accidentally hit speakerphone.

Duncan froze for a moment, looking a little tense.

"Mom's sick?"

But Narelle suddenly burst out laughing, laughing so hard she could barely catch her breath.

"Oh my, Duncan, how can you be so easy to fool?"

"You cut off her card, so of course she has to come up with another way to get money from you."

"A sick mom is a gold-digger staple. Next step, she asks you to lend her money!"

The next second.

Mom said, timidly,

"It costs eighty thousand. Mom's managed to scrape together fifty thousand. Could you lend Mom thirty thousand...?"

Duncan's face turned cold instantly.

"Winona, if you're using Mom to trick me, I won't give you a single cent."

But thirty thousand wasn't even enough for him to order a bottle of wine.

Mom, on the other end, seemed to hear, and said in a flustered voice,

"Winona, what's wrong? It's fine. Mom doesn't have to have the surgery. You two are a young couple, and there are so many things you need to spend money on."

"Whatever you do, don't fight with Duncan over me, okay?"

Because she knew how poor Duncan and I used to be.

For the first three months of our marriage, every time I tried to spend money on my parents,

they refused every single time.

They didn't grasp that Duncan was already worth hundreds of millions.

They just didn't want to be a burden to us.

This was the first time Mom had ever asked for money.

A sharp pain stabbed through my heart, and I said quickly,

"Mom! What are you talking about! You can't skip the surgery just to save money!"

"I'll transfer you the rest."

After I hung up.

I finally couldn't hold it in, and a sob tore out of me.

"Duncan, when you were at your lowest, my mom lent you money, knitted you sweaters, loved you like her own son. How could you say something like that?"

Seeing me like this.

Duncan reached out and gently wiped the tears from my face, his voice finally softening.

"All right, Winona, stop crying. You're pregnant."

"It's just a few tens of thousands. As long as you don't lie to me and keep being my obedient wife, I'll give you an allowance."

But Narelle shook her head to stop him.

She held up her notebook and read aloud from the notes she'd already written.

"Winona is exploiting your sympathy, getting her way through deception."

"Uses tears and emotional blackmail at the slightest excuse. Credibility score: zero."

"My advice is not to encourage this behavior. Deception should be punished.”

Duncan looked at the notebook, its pages filled with one zero after another.

His eyes slowly hardened again.

"Winona, when did you get so scheming?"

All at once I no longer had the slightest desire to explain myself.

I nodded wearily.

Then I took a taxi to the hospital alone, and had the abortion.