Nathaniel had not even fully registered the word divorce when the door swung open with enough force to hit the wall.
Victoria rushed inside.
The cruel satisfaction I had seen on her face earlier—when she believed I was unconscious—was nowhere to be found. In its place was a picture of devastation so polished it might have fooled anyone who hadn’t heard her true voice. Her cheeks were blotchy from crying, and mascara had run down her face in dramatic black streaks.
It was a flawless act.
“Audrey!” she cried as she hurried to my bedside. “Oh God, Audrey, please—please listen to me!”
Before I could move away, she grabbed my hand. Her palm was clammy, her grip desperate.
“I never meant for this to happen,” she sobbed, her voice trembling at all the right moments. “You have to believe me. I love you like a sister. I would never intentionally hurt you or your baby. It was only soup. Maybe you had an allergic reaction, or maybe the herbs were bad—I don’t know. I’m so sorry.”
I lowered my gaze to the woman clutching me.
Just hours earlier, she had been ordering my husband to impregnate her while I lay motionless in the same room.
Now she wanted sympathy.
“Let go of me,” I said, every word tight with barely restrained anger.
“Audrey, please,” she begged, acting as though she hadn’t heard me. Then she slid down from the edge of the bed and dropped to her knees on the floor. Pressing her palms together as if in prayer, she bowed her head and continued pleading. “I’ll do anything. I’ll pay every hospital bill. I’ll go to church every day. Just please, tell David to stop. Don’t let them put me in jail. I won’t survive there.”
I yanked my hand away.
“You should have thought about prison before you poisoned me.”
My voice came out cold and sharp.
“You killed my son, Victoria. There is nothing you can say that will undo that. You’re going to prison, and I hope you spend the rest of your life there.”
“Audrey, enough.”
Nathaniel stepped forward so abruptly that both of us looked up.
I turned toward him, and what struck me most was not his anger.
It was the complete absence of concern for me.
He wasn’t looking at me like a husband worried about his grieving wife.
He was looking at Victoria like a man terrified of losing something precious.
“Look at her,” Nathaniel said, gesturing toward Victoria, who was still crying on the hospital floor. “She’s on her knees begging you. She’s humiliated herself in front of you. What more do you want?”
A laugh escaped me, but it sounded broken even to my own ears.
“What more do I want?”
I stared at him.
“She took a life, Nathaniel. Our child. The child we created together.”
“It was an accident!”
His voice exploded through the room, and the last of his patience vanished.
“Why are you being so vindictive?” he demanded. “She’s family. She’s been part of my life since we were five years old. I am not going to stand by and let you ruin her over a mistake.”
The words settled heavily between us.
I went still.
“So this is your choice.”
My voice had gone quiet, almost eerily calm.
“You’re choosing her.”
This time, I wasn’t asking.
Nathaniel clenched his jaw.
“No,” he said sharply. “I’m choosing common sense.”
He exhaled as if I were exhausting him.
“You’re emotional, Audrey. You’re grieving, and you’re not thinking clearly. First you ask for a divorce, then you file a criminal case against my best friend. This is absurd.”
He bent down, helped Victoria to her feet, and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
The gesture felt intimate.
Protective.
Instinctive.
When he looked at me again, his expression had gone completely cold.
“I’m taking Victoria home,” he said. “She shouldn’t stay here in this condition, and frankly, neither should you. We’ll talk again once you’ve calmed down and stopped this nonsense.”
My fingers tightened around the bedsheet.
“If you walk out that door with her,” I said quietly, “don’t bother coming back.”
Nathaniel did not hesitate.
Not even for a heartbeat.
“Then don’t wait for me.”
And just like that, he turned away.
He guided the woman who had murdered our child out of the room as though she were the injured party, leaving his wife alone behind him.
When the door shut, silence returned.
But this silence felt different.
Heavier.
It pressed down on my chest until breathing felt difficult.
I stared at the closed door as tears finally spilled over.
This time, I wasn’t crying only for my baby.
I was crying for the five years I had wasted believing in something that had never existed.
My thoughts drifted backward, pulled toward memories I suddenly saw with brutal clarity.
I remembered our wedding.
It had been extravagant, the kind of ceremony people talked about for months—not because of romance, but because it symbolized the union of two powerful families.
I remembered walking down the aisle toward Nathaniel.
He had looked striking in his tuxedo.
Elegant. Refined. Every inch the perfect groom.
But now that memory felt wrong.
He hadn’t smiled.
Not truly.
At the time, I had convinced myself it was nerves. Nathaniel had always been reserved, always controlled, and I assumed his lack of expression meant nothing.
Then I remembered something else.
The reception.
The whispers.
“Where’s Victoria?”
“Why isn’t she here?”
At the time, everyone gave the same explanation.
She was in Paris.
Studying art.
That was the story.
Now, the truth was obvious.
She hadn’t left to study.
She had left because she couldn’t bear watching Nathaniel marry another woman.
The realization settled over me with sickening clarity.
I had never been the woman he wanted.
I had only ever been the woman he needed.
Nathaniel and Victoria had grown up together. Everyone knew them as the golden pair—the couple people assumed would eventually marry.
But my family owned the logistics empire Nathaniel’s grandfather desperately needed.
So Victoria was sent away.
And I was brought in.
I had been a substitute.
A convenient solution.
God, I had been so naive.
I truly believed I could make him love me.
I thought love could be earned through devotion, patience, and sacrifice. I believed that if I became the perfect wife, hosted the perfect dinners, supported him in every way, and eventually gave him a son, he would choose me.
I thought five years of marriage had to mean something.
It meant nothing.
Every dinner.
Every vacation.
Every whispered I love you.
All of it had been an act.
He had only been waiting for the right time.
Waiting for the merger to be completed.
Waiting for the final documents to be signed.
Waiting until he no longer needed me.
Then he would throw me away and return to her.
Today, they had simply decided not to wait any longer.
A fresh wave of nausea rolled through me.
I wasn’t just mourning.
I felt humiliated.
I had not been a wife.
I had been a placeholder.
An obstacle standing between two people and the life they believed they deserved.
And they had tried to remove me permanently.
The shrill vibration of my phone against the bedside table snapped me out of my spiraling thoughts.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand, took a shaky breath, and reached for the phone without checking the caller ID.
“David?” I asked, my voice rough. “Did you file it?”
“Ms. Audrey?”
I frowned immediately.
That wasn’t David.
“Sarah?”
I pushed myself upright.
“Why are you calling from David’s phone? Where is he?”
Sarah sounded panicked.
“I… I didn’t know who else to call.”
Behind her, I could hear chaos—phones ringing nonstop, people shouting, footsteps rushing across a floor.
Something was terribly wrong.
My pulse spiked.
“What happened?” I asked, gripping the phone harder. “Is David okay?”
“The police are here,” Sarah whispered, and her voice broke.
My stomach dropped.
“The police?”
My hand tightened.
“What are you talking about?”
“They raided the office.”
I felt cold all over.
“What?”
“They arrested him, Ms. Audrey,” Sarah said, barely holding herself together. “They took Mr. David away in handcuffs about five minutes ago.”
My heart stopped.
“Why?”
Sarah sucked in a shaky breath.
“They said… they said he committed something illegal.”
