Arielle's POV
"Arielle, do you know? I have a thousand ways to make the bastard in your womb disappear without a trace. I suggest you behave. If I'm feeling generous, I might even spare a glance at the child once it's born."
Chester's words stung, but I was no stranger to his cruelty.
Right at that moment, I thought about getting rid of the baby, freeing us both. But no matter what I did, punching my stomach, throwing myself from heights, and even deliberately tumbling down a flight of stairs, the child refused to let go.
Even his mistresses tried to hurt me more than once, but none of their efforts succeeded. Each time, I was left battered and bruised, but the baby remained unharmed.
The worst that happened was spotting blood for a few hours.
That's when Grace McKinsey, Chester's grandmother, threw a fit.
She called over a hundred doctors, terrified that something would happen to the baby. But in the end, the doctors all congratulated me, saying the child was incredibly strong.
At that moment, I suddenly felt at peace.
I let go of all the resentment I'd been holding onto. Even if Chester didn't love our child, I could still give the baby all the love I had.
I told myself, 'Fine, I'll just treat this as borrowing his seed.'
But who could've known that, after everything our daughter endured inside me, she would survive it all, only to die at Chester's hands?
Haunted by memories of my past life, I purged my social media and burned my diary, destroying every record of my love for him.
To protect my unborn child from further suffering, I chose not to involve her again in this situation.
Just as I was about to head out to buy some medicine, the doorbell rang.
This time, the McKinsey family arrived even faster than they had in my past life.
Besides, what must be faced can never be avoided.
But it wasn't Grace at the door like I had expected.
Instead, it was Chester's younger sister, Penelope.
Without a word, she raised her hand and slapped me across the face.
"Arielle, you ungrateful bitch! My brother pitied you and took you in, and this is how you repay him?"
I swallowed the blood in my mouth and looked at her, confusion clouding my mind.
"Penelope, are you sure you're not misunderstanding something?"
Before anything had happened between Chester and me, he had treated me well. So well, in fact, that Penelope had grown jealous of the attention he gave me, and from there, her hostility only grew.
Now, Penelope had the look of someone who had just seen a ghost, her eyes full of suspicion.
And I understood why. Ever since I realized my feelings for Chester, I had stopped calling him Mr. McKinsey and naturally stopped calling Penelope by any term of familial endearment, too.
Right then, Penelope snapped me back to reality.
Without saying a word, she threw a paparazzi photo in my face. It was the dreaded night with Chester, captured from the side, showing me collapsed on the ground.
"Unbelievable! Acting so ignorant won't save you, Arielle!"
Penelope jabbed her finger at the photo and even said, "Others might not recognize you in this picture, but I sure as hell won't mistake you! I'm warning you, Arielle. Get rid of those horrible thoughts of yours. Our family isn't a place you can latch onto. Even if you try to win my favor, I still won't let you marry into our family!"
Penelope was right. I couldn't rely on the McKinseys for support.
My father once saved Chester's life. But after my father died, Chester, who was seven years older, took me in and acted as my legal guardian. He looked after me for five years, even better than he looked after his own sister.
It was that difference in how he treated me that made me fall for him.
But because of our status gap, I always hid those feelings deep down.
If Chester hadn't been the one to push me down that night, I would have kept trying my best to be his obedient little ward.
I picked up the photo and looked at it before calmly denying everything.
"Penelope, the paparazzi are always full of crap. Are you really going to let them mess with your head like this?"
In my past life, I had left through the front door with Chester. The obscure marks on my body had been photographed clearly.
Chester, who was always so distant from women, had been caught breaking his vow of abstinence. That gave Grace, who was desperate for him to marry, the perfect excuse to pressure him into marrying me.
Unfortunately, Chester refused, no matter what.
It wasn't until I found out I was pregnant before starting university that Grace, desperate for a grandchild, finally pressured Chester into marrying me.
