CEO's secret bride

Pregnant and broken

Chapter 2

Ivy's POV

My mind was a swirling mess, like an out-of-control storm I couldn’t escape. I couldn’t recognize my body anymore. Every inch of me felt foreign, disconnected. The blood—sticky and cold—dripped down my legs, staining everything it touched. It felt like the entire world was watching, judging, whispering about me. I was exposed, broken. I didn’t know where I was going or why I kept moving.

I kept walking, aimless, Then I saw it—an alley with a restroom sign. I rushed towards it, my breath shallow, my heart racing. I locked the door behind me the moment I stepped inside, as if the bathroom could offer me any kind of protection from the storm inside my mind.

I fumbled with the sink, my hands shaking as I washed my clothes under the cold water. The blood wouldn’t come out. No matter how hard I scrubbed, no matter how much I begged the water to be kind, the stains remained. The red seemed to mock me, a permanent reminder of the choices I couldn’t undo.

Tears blurred my vision, and I wiped them away quickly, as if that would somehow make it stop. But they kept coming, falling, not from the bloodstains but from the aching emptiness inside. Why did I do this? Why did I think running away could solve anything? I couldn’t fix this, couldn’t undo what was done.

When I finally stood back, I looked at my reflection in the cracked mirror. The girl staring back at me wasn’t the same one I had known. She was a stranger—a broken version of the person I used to be. Her eyes were hollow, her face pale, the lines of stress and fear carving deeper than I had ever noticed. She didn’t belong to this world, or any world, for that matter.

I let out a shaky breath and straightened my back, even though every muscle in my body screamed in protest. My clothes were cleaner, but they felt heavy, soaked with something far worse than the blood. They felt like a burden, like they carried my mistakes for me.

With one last glance at the mirror, I walked out of the restroom, my heart still thudding in my chest.

When I reached the door of the house, I saw her—my stepmother. She stood there in the doorway, her eyes narrowing as she scanned me up and down. Her gaze was cold, calculating, like always. I could feel her judgment before she even spoke.

“Where have you been?” she demanded, her voice slicing through the air like a knife. It wasn’t concern or even curiosity. It was control. She wanted answers, and she wanted them now.

“I’m tired, I just want to sleep,” I muttered, my voice hoarse from the tears I hadn’t realized I’d been holding back. I didn’t want to talk to her, didn’t want to explain myself.

“No,” she snapped, her tone turning sharper. “You’re not going anywhere until you tell me where you’ve been. You don’t get to run off and act like everything’s fine.” Her eyes flashed with anger, but there was something else there—something darker. “Tell me, Ivy. Where were you?”

I swallowed, the weight of her gaze pressing on me, suffocating me. I couldn’t meet her eyes. My heart was hammering in my chest, each beat louder than the last. I needed to get away from her, but there was nowhere to go. I was trapped.

“I... I needed to clear my head,” I said, the words barely making sense. But she didn’t care about my reasons. She never did.

“Oh, now you need to clean your head?” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “You think you’re so smart, don’t you? You really think you can just run away from your problems? Well, let me tell you something, Ivy. It’s time to face them. Are you going to accept the marriage, or are you leaving this house?” Her tone was as hard as stone.

I stood there, rooted to the spot, my mind spinning. I couldn’t think. It was like my brain had shut down, refusing to process anything. What was I supposed to do? Where could I go? My entire life felt like it was falling apart, and I had no control over any of it.

“I... I’ll get married to him,” I said quietly, my voice breaking as the words left my mouth. I couldn’t even look at her. The weight of what I’d just agreed to crushed me. The thought of marrying someone I didn’t love, someone I didn’t even want, felt like a death sentence. But what choice did I have? I didn’t have the strength to fight anymore.

A twisted smile curled on her lips, the look in her eyes almost victorious. “Good,” she said, her voice too pleased, too satisfied. “In two weeks, you’ll meet your husband. His family is rich. This will be good for us. You’ll see.” Her words echoed in my head, a constant reminder of how little I meant to her.

Two weeks. That was all I had left before I’d become a wife to a stranger, before I’d be trapped in a life I didn’t want. I couldn’t escape this. I didn’t even have the energy to fight back anymore.

“Go to your room and rest,” she said, her voice almost too cheery. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

I nodded numbly, too tired to argue, too broken to care. I walked to my room, when I closed the door behind me, I collapsed onto the bed, my body trembling. The tears came then, pouring out of me like a broken dam. I grabbed the photo of my dad from the nightstand and held it close to my chest. The weight of my grief crushed me. “I miss you, Dad,” I whispered through the sobs. He should have been here. He should have been the one to fix this. But he wasn’t, and I was alone in this nightmare.

The next two weeks felt like an eternity. My stepmother’s excitement about the wedding grew with each passing day. She couldn’t stop talking about the plans, the clothes, how much money the family had. I didn’t care about any of it. I couldn’t care. It was all just noise to me, drowning out my thoughts.

But the nausea was getting worse. Something wasn’t right. My body felt off, like I was constantly on the edge of something terrible. I tried to ignore it, but deep down, I knew. I knew something was wrong.

Every day, my stepmother would shove new things in my face. “Look, Ivy. This is from your in-laws. Aren’t you lucky?” she would say, her voice dripping with excitement. But all I could feel was a deep sense of dread. I wasn’t lucky. I was trapped.

One morning, everything went black. The last thing I remembered was my body giving out beneath me, my mind racing in a panic.

I woke up in a hospital bed, the sterile scent of the room filling my nose. Machines beeped around me.

Then I saw her—my stepmother’s angry face, glaring at me with a fury I didn’t deserve. “What the heck, Ivy?” she shouted. “How did you get pregnant?”

Pregnant? The word hung in the air like a death sentence.

Pregnant.

My breath caught in my throat. “Pregnant?” I whispered, my mouth dry. I couldn’t process what she was saying. “Who did you say... pregnant?”

Her face twisted with frustration. “You. How the heck did you let this happen?”

My heart pounded in my chest. The room spun around me. How? How was this even possible?

And just like that, the world around me stopped.

What the hell was I going to do now?