Grace’s POV
After countless IVF attempts, I was finally eight months pregnant. But on the way home from a prenatal checkup, I got into a terrible car accident.
The contractions came fast and violent. Blood kept pouring out of me. The baby’s life inside my womb was hanging by a thread.
My best friend called Chris twenty-nine times. He didn’t answer a single call. Even the woman he had arranged beforehand to donate blood for me—the one with the same rare blood type—had disappeared as well.
On the operating table, as my whole body shook from the pain, I heard the doctor shouting angrily. “Didn’t I tell you? The mother has a rare blood type. Our hospital doesn’t have any blood in stock!” He continued. “Didn’t the family say they already found a volunteer donor? Where is she?”
My best friend’s voice trembled. “Neither of them is answering their phones. Nor replying to our messages.”
“Chris, where are you?” I whimpered as tears slipped from the corners of my eyes.
Suddenly, another brutal contraction twisted through my abdomen. The pain was so overwhelming my consciousness slowly faded into darkness.
Before my eyes closed shut, I looked toward the operating room door one last time. Chris still wasn’t there. In that moment, all hope inside me collapsed.
Everything went dark.
***
I woke up three days later and Chris still wasn’t there. Only my best friend sat beside my hospital bed, her eyes swollen and red.
My belly, once round and full, was now completely flat. A terrible feeling rose in my chest. I grabbed her arm, shaking. “My baby… survived, right?”
She stayed silent for a long time before finally speaking.
“It was a girl. But the moment she was taken out of your womb, her heartbeat was already gone,” she said, her voice hoarse.
“In the three days you were unconscious, Chris didn’t pay a single visit. We couldn’t even reach him.”
Hearing that my child had died, it felt like my heart was being torn apart. My eyes burned red with grief.
Chris and I had been married for many years without children. The doctor said he had a low sperm count. Because of that, we went through IVF again and again. Even though my body suffered endless pain, I never gave up.
When I finally conceived, I did everything in my power to keep her. I waited for her arrival with so much hope, only to lose her in the very last moment.
When I first found out I was pregnant, Chris was so excited that he didn’t sleep the entire night. Worried about me, he arranged for a woman with the same blood type as me—just in case something happened. But when my baby and I needed them the most, both of them disappeared.
My breathing grew tight as I picked up my phone and called Chris again. The call still didn’t go through. Cold despair filled my chest as a tear rolled down my cheek. With unbearable grief, I cremated my child.
I wanted Chris to see our baby one last time, before burying her. But I couldn’t reach him. I couldn’t reach the blood donor woman either. So I decided to go to the villa Chris had prepared for her, hoping I might get lucky and find him there. Carrying the small urn myself, I drove to the suburban villa.
When I arrived, the scene in front of me froze my body in place. Chris had Bonnie Callahan pressed against the railing of the terrace. They were kissing deeply. Reason screamed at me to turn around and leave, to pretend I'd never been here, but my body wouldn't listen.
“If I don’t go donate blood for Grace, will she hate me, Chris?” Bonnie asked softly.
“She has no right to hate you,” Chris replied coldly. “If she wants someone to hate, she should hate herself for thinking I actually loved her. My love for her was always just an act. I only married her so I could use the Donovans’ power to raise my status in my own family.”
Chris leaned close to Bonnie’s ear and whispered affectionately. “You are my first love. The only woman I truly love. I made you her so-called blood donor just so I’d have an excuse to see you often.” He smirked.
“And as for Grace… the reason she couldn’t get pregnant for seven years was because I bribed the doctors to make every IVF attempt fail. I even had fertility drugs mixed into her meals. This last IVF only succeeded because one of my men messed up.”
His words and the scene right before my eyes were like a thousand knives stabbing into my heart.
My throat felt heavy, like it was filled with lead. I couldn’t make a single sound.
Seven years. For seven whole years, he had been pretending to love me. And it was all just a stepping stone for his career. Before we got married, we were once in a car accident. Chris used his own body to shield me. He was seriously injured and almost became a vegetable.
When I was kidnapped by his enemies, he rushed alone into an abandoned factory and fought more than a dozen armed men just to save me. When he finally brought me out, his entire body was covered in wounds.
My parents and my brother had always strongly opposed our marriage. But Chris knelt outside our mansion for three days and nights in the freezing rain. At one point, he even fainted. Only then did my family finally agree.
After we got married, I couldn’t get pregnant for years.
When Chris was diagnosed with low sperm count, he looked devastated and full of guilt. He said he felt sorry that I had to endure his mother’s constant criticism.
I shook my head and comforted him, saying that it’s okay.
I was terrified of pain, but I didn’t want to disappoint the man I loved. So I chose IVF. I endured the injection after injection.
Seven years passed like that.
Even now, the rows of needle marks on my arms were still clearly visible. Every time the IVF failed, Chris looked even more heartbroken than I was. Whenever his mother scolded me for not being able to conceive, he would pull me into his arms and comfort me gently, saying stuff like—“It’s okay, Grace. Maybe the baby just isn’t meant to come yet. I believe we’ll make it next time.”
The day the hospital confirmed my pregnancy, the joy on his face made me feel like every bit of suffering had been worth it. But the intimate scene on the terrace right now was crushing my heart again and again.
Chris’s smile turned cold.
“Even her car accident was something I planned myself,” he said calmly. “All to get rid of the child in her womb that shouldn’t exist.”
“But this baby inside you,” he smiled to Bonnie, “will be the sole heir of Lowe family.”
Bonnie looked overjoyed. “I knew you loved me the most,” she giggled. She held his face and kissed his right cheek loudly.
“That’s your reward.”
My hands trembled violently.
I bit into my palm as hard as I could just to stop myself from screaming. The child I had been waiting for with all my heart—the little life that lost its heartbeat in that car accident—had been murdered by his own father.
All of it was just so he could give his inheritance to another woman’s child.
