### Chapter 3
“I didn't drug her. Check the security footage……”
Cold sweat soaked through my back. My voice came out weak, shaking, begging Otto to get me out of the basement, but he cut me off cold.
“Shut up!”
Finding the truth would have been effortless. But every word out of Wendy's mouth, he chose to believe without question.
He loved her. Loved her past the point of caring what was true.
A bitter laugh died somewhere behind my ribs. Otto lifted his chin, and the bodyguards moved in. Fists and boots came down like a storm.
Before the pain swallowed me whole, the last thing I heard was the dull crack of my own bones.
When I opened my eyes again, all I saw was the dead-white ceiling of a hospital room.
Otto sat beside the bed, peeling an apple with slow, unhurried strokes. His tone was flat, threaded with warning.
“The baby's fine. Lucky you. Don't touch Wendy again, unless you haven't learned your lesson.”
I said nothing.
Two years ago, when the cheating started and the hitting followed, I had left him.
After the remarriage, he decided I'd suffered enough on my own to never leave again, so he stopped holding back entirely.
But all I was doing was enduring to the end, so he could pay back every last thing a hundred times over.
Otto's gaze caught the bruising on my face, the dark purple spreading along my arms. Something flickered in his eyes, barely there. He started to speak, but his phone rang.
The moment he saw the screen, a smile curved his lips. When he answered, his voice went impossibly soft.
“……The baby kicked? Don't move. I've arranged the best medical team. They're already on the way.”
That tenderness. Otto had given it to me once.
He'd lost his mother young. After he was brought into the Delgado household, all he ever faced was cruelty.
His older half-brother was the worst of it, always inventing new ways to break him.
One time, the brother's men cornered Otto in a back alley and beat him half to death. I happened to pass by, called the police, and pulled him out. After that, I became the only light in his world.
Later, his brother retaliated by having me kidnapped.
Otto stormed into that pitch-black warehouse alone, let the clubs land on his own body, and carried me out on his back.
In the hospital, he gripped my hand so tight nothing could have pried it loose, murmuring over and over：
“Don't be scared, Zara. I'd die before I let anything happen to you.”
Later, he took control of the Delgado Group.
The first thing he did was throw me the most extravagant wedding Harbor City had ever seen. Everyone said I was the luckiest woman alive.
We became the couple the whole city envied, the sweethearts who'd survived everything together. The press said our story was better than a fairy tale.
Too bad fairy tales are lies. On our wedding night, he was already in our bed with someone else.
And why did it have to be Wendy?
My heart felt like it was being sawed apart with a dull blade.
Wendy had once been a rich man's daughter too. A car accident killed her entire family; her inheritance was stolen, and she was dumped in an orphanage where she was bullied relentlessly.
After we met, I visited her constantly, brought her pretty dresses, carried birthday cakes to her door, begged Otto to pay for her schooling.
I smiled and told her：“Everything I have, I'll split with you.”
Half my snacks, half my fun……
I just forgot to say: not the man I loved.
The memories twisted through me like a knife, and I forced the tears back before they could fall.
Otto stood, gave me one disinterested glance. “If you're fine, I'm leaving. Wendy needs me.”
He didn't come back once during the three days I was hospitalized.
Wendy's social media, though, updated in real time with their love on full display：
He lit sky lanterns at an auction just to make her laugh, then bid on Marie Antoinette's necklace.
He spent hundreds of millions on a private island, all to give her a wedding that would eclipse the one he'd given me.
My phone buzzed. Otto's assistant had sent over a long string of expense receipts.
I saved every black-and-white charge slip, one by one, then called the assistant. “Two million. It's in your account.”
Almost instantly, the phone vibrated again.
Wendy had sent a photo, dripping with the same old malice. It was a picture of a tombstone. My unborn child's tombstone.
“Ten years ago someone stabbed you, and you lost the baby. Your womb was destroyed. Want to know the truth?”
