My Husband Asked His Mistress to Steal Our Baby

The pregnancy test sat on the bathroom counter, two pink lines stark against white plastic. I pressed my palm against my stomach, feeling nothing yet but knowing everything had changed. Five years with Atticus, and now this—a baby. Our baby.

I tucked the test into my purse and practically ran the six blocks to our apartment in Brooklyn, my breath forming clouds in the October air. The brownstone we rented the top floor of wasn't much, but it was ours. I'd left behind the marble halls and crystal chandeliers of my parents' Upper East Side mansion for this cramped two-bedroom with its radiator that clanked at night. Left behind the Collins name, the fortune, the suffocating expectations. For love. For something real.

The apartment door stuck like always. I shouldered it open, already smiling, already imagining Atticus's face when I told him.

He sat at our kitchen table, head in his hands. Papers covered every surface—white envelopes with red stamps, official-looking documents, bank statements. The afternoon light through our single window made everything look washed out, colorless.

"Atticus?"

His head snapped up. His eyes were red-rimmed, his usually perfect hair disheveled. He looked at me like a drowning man watching the shore recede.

"Delilah." My name came out broken. "I didn't want you to find out like this."

The pregnancy test felt heavy in my purse. I moved toward him, my joy curdling into something cold. "Find out what?"

He gestured at the papers with a hand that shook. "I'm ruined. We're ruined."

I picked up the nearest envelope. Final Notice. Eviction Warning. Past Due. The words blurred together. "I don't understand. Your tech startup, you said it was doing well—"

"I lied." He stood abruptly, his chair scraping against the floor. "I've been lying for months. The company's bankrupt. I have debts—" His voice cracked. "Debts that will put me in prison, Delilah. I'll lose everything. We'll lose everything."

My fingers found the locket at my throat, the one with my parents' photo inside. They'd died three years ago, and I'd run from their legacy straight into Atticus's arms. He'd been my refuge, my proof that love existed outside of wealth and power.

"How much?" I whispered.

"Three million." He laughed, a desperate sound. "Might as well be three billion for people like us."

People like us. I'd worked so hard to become one of those people, to shed the Collins name and fortune like a snake shedding skin. The irony tasted like copper.

He crossed to me, taking my hands. His grip was too tight. "There's one way out. I didn't want to suggest it, but—" He paused, his thumb rubbing circles on my palm. "There's a couple. Wealthy. They can't have children of their own. They're looking for a surrogate."

The test in my purse seemed to pulse with heat.

"They'll pay three million dollars," he continued, his words coming faster now. "Enough to clear everything. Enough to start over. We'd be donating our baby to a loving home, Delilah. People who can give a child everything we can't."

The room tilted. "Our baby?"

"You're pregnant." It wasn't a question. His eyes dropped to my purse, and something flickered across his face too quickly for me to read. "I can always tell when something's different with you."

Two days. That's how long he gave me to decide, though it felt like two minutes stretched into an eternity. He brought home a lawyer—a thin man in an expensive suit who spread contracts across our table and explained terms in a voice smooth as oil. Gestational carrier. Parental rights. Irrevocable consent.

I spent the second night awake, clutching my mother's locket until the metal warmed in my palm. She'd been a Collins matriarch, powerful and untouchable. What would she think of me now, about to sign away her grandchild to save a man from debts I'd never seen coming?

But I loved him. That had to mean something.

The morning of the third day, Atticus set the contract in front of me. His hand covered mine, steady now, certain. "This saves us, Delilah. This saves our future."

I picked up the pen. My hand shook so badly the first signature was illegible. He guided my hand for the second, his fingers wrapped around mine, and I watched my name appear on the line—Delilah Collins Bishop, though the Collins part was crossed out, replaced with just my first name and his last.

The pen clattered to the table.

"There," Atticus said softly, gathering the papers. Something in his voice had changed, smoothed out, like he'd just completed a transaction. "All done."

I pressed my hand to my stomach and felt nothing but the weight of what I'd just surrendered.