Chapter 4

Now, after everything, I hated Lily for destroying my marriage.

I hated Ethan even more for giving in to temptation and cheating.

And I hated myself too.

I should have divorced him the first time I saw them crossing those lines!

Maybe then I wouldn’t have endured months of misery.

Maybe I wouldn’t have lost my baby.

I cut off all contact with the outside world and gave myself seven days to process everything.

Just as I’d expected, the moment I turned my phone back on, my lawyer called.

Ethan was refusing to sign the divorce papers and demanding to see me one more time.

He’d certainly sent plenty of messages and made plenty of calls.

It almost felt like the beginning again, when he’d cherished me.

My heart still gave an involuntary ache when I remembered those days.

But beyond that, I felt nothing.

So I could agree to meet him without fear.

Even if he got on his knees and begged, I wouldn’t soften again.

I arranged to meet him at the restaurant where we’d officially become a couple.

Not because I was sentimental. Our relationship had begun there.

I wanted it to end there too!

No beautiful memories left untouched. No room for fantasies.

But the moment I sent him the address, Lily’s messages started pouring in.

Only then did I realize she’d spent the past seven days sending me intimate pictures of herself and Ethan.

When I hadn’t replied, she’d assumed she’d broken me.

She’d even seemed smug about it.

But the second I resurfaced, she lost her composure.

“You’re not thinking about getting back together with Ethan, are you? He’s been sleeping in my room every night.”

Above the message was a photo of her chest covered in marks.

“He’s worried I’ll have a difficult delivery. He’s been finding all kinds of ways to help stretch me out.”

I was afraid her next message would be a nude.

I had no desire to see that, so I put my phone facedown on the table.

A moment later, someone sat across from me.

It was Vanessa Parker, a former business partner more than a decade older than me.

She’d moved away years ago. I hadn’t seen her since.

She glanced at the divorce agreement beside my hand and smiled. “Getting divorced all of a sudden? Did you finally find out your husband already has a wife?”

We hadn’t seen each other in years, yet she knew Ethan had another woman.

It didn’t take much to put it together. “You knew?”

“Before you did, apparently,” Vanessa said. “Although back then you were so swept off your feet, you wouldn’t have listened to a warning.”

“Remember when that man harassed you at a business dinner and you ended up offending Mr. Harris? Your company was practically bankrupt, then suddenly came back from the dead.”

I nodded. Years ago, that incident had moved me beyond words.

I’d been certain Ethan was the only man I’d ever marry.

But listening to Vanessa now, I suddenly wondered whether there had been a scheme behind it.

Had even the way he’d treated me back then—

Had all of it been a lie?

“Afterward, he arranged another dinner and brought a woman,” Vanessa said. “He sent her to bed with several of the men there.”

“I was working with Harris at the time. I overheard him mention that, in bed, she’d said she and Ethan had exchanged wedding vows years earlier. The men thought there was something wrong with her.”

“She was pretty enough. An older man eventually set her up as his mistress.”

“But you’re awfully late finding out. That old man’s been dead for over a year.”

Over a year?

But Lily was only seven months pregnant.

Whose baby could she have conceived in that time?

I remembered Ethan holding her so tenderly, his hand resting protectively on her belly.

I was so furious I laughed.

No wonder he didn’t care about my baby.

No wonder my miscarriage mattered less than a little whimper from Lily.

He already had another child on the way!