Bought by Marriage

Chapter 8:

Natalia’s POV:

I slapped him without thinking, my whole body trembling so violently that even my fingertips went numb. Tears spilled down my cheeks, hot, desperate, uncontrolled. “Edward… are you even human anymore? How can you doubt your own father? How can you insult me insult our child like that?!”

His face darkened, shadows swallowing the room until everything felt suffocating, like the air itself had sunk to the bottom of hell. He grabbed my throat, not choking, but gripping hard enough to threaten, to let me feel the full cruelty in his palm. His fingers were cold like steel, but what truly suffocated me was his gaze, the gaze that accused me, denied me, destroyed everything I had ever offered him with my whole heart.

“You think he’s innocent? There’s nothing that man wouldn’t do.” His breath brushed my ear, hot like flame but carrying the icy rot of hatred. “And you… you dared hit me because of that child?”

His voice dropped, dark and final, like a sentence handed down:

“You’ll pay for this.”

In that moment, I no longer recognized the man in front of me. This wasn’t Edward, this was a soul consumed entirely by hatred.

He shoved me onto the sofa. A dull thud sounded nothing compared to the stabbing pain in my chest as I instinctively reached to shield my stomach. And I saw it clearly his eyes flicking down to my hand covering the tiny life not yet formed. For a moment… a flicker thin, fragile rippling across the storm in his gaze.

But it vanished instantly.

He bound my wrists, turned my back toward him, and the coldness of his touch scraped across me like he was tearing apart what little defenses I had left.

“Edward… please… don’t…”

My voice cracked like shattered glass, each word trembling so badly I barely recognized myself. Not because I feared for my own safety. Not because of the pain spreading from my neck down to my chest.

But because of my child.

The child who had not yet felt light already threatened by the man who fathered it.

“I’m begging you…” I clutched his wrist, my fingers icy and powerless. “Don’t hurt the baby… it’s innocent… please…”

My tears fell onto the back of his hand, hot, desperate like one more drop would reduce my heart to ashes.

But Edward did not waver.

His eyes darkened, sharp as a blade, with not a trace of mercy. His hatred ran so deep it strangled me so deep it was as if the baby’s very existence was a wound he wanted erased.

“Innocent?” he sneered, lips curling in a cold smile that made my skin crawl. “And what about me, Natalia? You made me into a man cheated on and you expect me to cherish that thing?”

“No!” I cried out. “I never... I would never...”

But my words were cut off as his grip tightened around my wrist.

And in the depths of his eyes, far, far beneath the rage, I thought I saw a tiny tremor, a minuscule c***k. But it vanished in an instant, swallowed whole by his hatred and the prejudice he’d carried for so long.

“Edward, please…” I whispered, my knees buckling, my entire body shaking with fear. “Don’t take my baby from me…”

But he looked at me like I was a stranger, one deserving punishment.

And in that moment, I realized I was willing to trade my life to protect this child. But the man in front of me no longer had reason, no longer had a heart, no longer resembled the husband I once loved.

Only hatred remained and the resolve to destroy everything that belonged to me.

Maybe it was maternal instinct that gave me strength I didn’t know I had. I broke free from him in that frantic second and staggered backward until my spine slammed against the cold wall. I curled into myself like a terrified creature cornered with nowhere left to run.

He approached step by step, his shadow swallowing me whole like the silhouette of a dark spirit carved entirely from rage.

“You think I’ll let you give birth to that abomination?”

His breath was as dangerous as the edge of a knife.

“Edward… you need to calm down. Whatever your father did, it’s in the past. Noah and your father suffered too. You can’t let hatred turn you into...”

“Hmph.”

He laughed, but it was the laughter of someone long fallen into the abyss.

“How many stories has that old man fed you? His list of ‘spectacular past deeds’ is longer than you think…”

The fire in Edward’s eyes burned brighter as he spoke of that past.

And I realized: his pain was deeper than any words could reach.

“Edward… you’re being ridiculous,” I whispered, my heart numb from the ache. “Even if you hate your father, you can’t possibly doubt this baby is...”

I stopped.

I couldn’t finish. I couldn’t fathom how he could treat his own child this way.

“So I should wait for you to give birth and then do a DNA test? Keep dreaming,” he growled.

Something inside me died when he said that.

I lifted my head, vision blurred with tears, my voice trembling yet determined:

“Edward, I’m begging you. Spare this child. If you can’t bear me… I’ll leave. Just... please... don’t be cruel to the baby.”

He froze. Just a little. I saw it.

A c***k in the mask he wore.

But then he grabbed me again, dragging me close, his voice like rusted steel scraping against my ear:

“Hmph… you can leave. I won’t stop you.”

My eyes widened, hope flickering like a fragile flame in the dark.

“You… you mean it? You’ll let me keep the baby?”

His gaze darkened, deep and bottomless like a void.

Edward lifted my chin, forcing me to meet his eyes as his lips brushed mine... light, sharp, possessive.

“Fine. Keep it.”

Then he whispered, velvet-dark, wrapping around my throat like a noose:

“If you’re willing to watch Roselight Enterprises burn to the ground.”

A sentence light as a feather.... yet its weight crushed everything inside me.

I looked at him, unable to recognize the man who once made my heart race with love.

Edward even sat down on the sofa as though this were a simple negotiation:

“Don’t forget your father ‘sold’ you to save his company. Now… make your choice.”

I looked back at the past six months of marriage, the nights waiting alone, the stitched-together hopes, the moments I convinced myself he might change.

I had been wrong so wrong it felt absurd. Only now, with my heart crushed beyond sensation, did I finally understand:

My love had never touched him Never slowed him. Never softened him, not even for one fleeting second.

Everything I gave hope, patience, faith was nothing but a monologue spoken to a dream of my own making. In his world, I had never existed. In mine… he was everything.

And that was the greatest tragedy of all.

When he laid me on the bed, my face went pale as if the blood had drained from my body. I held his hand grasping at the last thread of hope.

“Edward… do you truly have no heart left?” I asked through broken breaths, as if clinging to one final miracle.

He looked at me not like looking at a person, but at a fogged piece of glass that reflected nothing.

“You want to destroy your father’s life work?” His voice was metal rigid, unyielding.

I let out a laugh a brittle, fractured sound, so painful it felt foreign even to my own ears.

“Edward… can you say ‘I love you’ to me? Just once. Even if it’s a lie…”