My Best Friend Borrowed My Husband,So I Burned Their World Down

The day my best friend Rachel Matthews took my husband Julian Woodward away, she said to me,

"Just six months. Help me play a fake married couple so I can pull a bigger property buyout. My parents passed early. I've got no one else."

I have a soft heart. I signed.

Six months later, she sent me a message.

*Sis, I've decided I'm not giving your husband back.*

Below it was an ultrasound. Eighteen weeks.

I stared at that scan, then dug out something else.

An envelope she'd asked me to keep the year her mother was hospitalized.

Inside was a land title certificate.

That family land slated for demolition had already been bought out and paid—five years ago, in Rachel's name.

Four hundred seventy thousand dollars.

Rachel, your parents passed early. You're a pitiable thing.

But this scheme of yours—what year did it really begin?

……

"Julian, that eighteen-week ultrasound Rachel sent me—you'd better explain it."

I leaned back into the couch.

My fingers smoothed the five-year-old buyout certificate, slow and deliberate.

The edges of the paper had yellowed.

But the red seal stamped on it was still sharp and clear.

The line went quiet for two seconds.

Then Julian's voice came through, righteous as anything.

"Rachel's pregnant. The doctor says she's frail, that she can't take the slightest stress."

"Let's part on good terms. Be the bigger person. Just step aside."

A laugh forced its way out of me.

"Six months ago, who was the one on his knees begging me for a fake divorce?"

"And now you want me to be gracious and step aside, to make your poor little tragic couple whole?"

Julian got frantic, his voice climbing.

"Can you not be so selfish?"

"Rachel's parents passed early. I'm all she has to lean on!"

"You've got two good hands and a good job. You'll get by fine without me."

"But Rachel can't! Without me, how are she and the baby supposed to survive?"

I listened to that absurd logic.

A wave of nausea turned in my stomach.

"Julian, did a door slam your brain shut?"

The phone got snatched away by another hand.

Rachel's voice came through, pitched thin and sweet.

"Sis, I'm sorry. I really didn't mean for this to happen."

"Julian and I, we grew close over time. The baby was an accident."

"But I really can't be without him."

"Leave the marital home to us. Think of it as building good karma for the unborn baby."

"Don't worry, once my own land buyout comes through, I'll cut you a share. For sure."

"I'd never let you walk away with nothing!"

I looked at the certificate in my hand—four hundred seventy thousand, already paid.

My eyes went cold.

"Rachel, quite the plan you've worked out. Take the house I put the full down payment on, and raise you and another man's seed in it?"

Julian's tone turned vicious.

"If you dare make trouble, dare refuse to walk away with nothing, tomorrow I'll go back to your hometown and hang banners in your village!"

"I'll let every relative you've got know you were thrown out because you couldn't bear me a child!"

"Let's see where your parents put their faces then!"

Threatening me.

Using the family and the reputation I cared about most to threaten me.

The old me might have caved.

Might have swallowed it down for the sake of saving face.

But now, in an instant, I understood all of it.

This was no fake marriage to scam a buyout.

This was a meticulously planned scheme to strip me bare.

What they were after was the marital home—the one I'd spent five hard years paying off!

I cut clean through his shouting.

"I agree to walk away with nothing."

The line went silent at once.

Julian, it seemed, couldn't believe I'd agreed so readily.