My Husband Got Rid of Our Baby to Find his Mistress

It all started when, days before our wedding, I refused Damian's outrageous demand to let his sacred first love replace me as the bride for a month. Devastated, she fled to the highway and died in a gruesome crash. That same night, Damian pinned me against the wall, his fingers digging into my throat. "I already agreed to marry you. Was her one damn wish too much for you?" To avenge her, he hired a stand-in to torture me relentlessly. He killed my unborn child with a single kick. He framed my father for fraud, leaving him to die behind bars. The shock sent my mother into cardiac arrest, straight to the ICU. Then, when I begged him to sign the hospital forms, I found him moaning into that fake's neck, their bodies glued together. "Damian, I'm carrying your child now. How long must I keep playing dead?" Damian's breath was ragged. "Not yet. Let her bleed a little longer, or she'll never learn. That half-dead mother of hers still dangles by my money." His sacred first love was alive. My "atonement"? Just their twisted game. My child. My parents. Pawns in their cruelty. I waited until dawn, stumbling to the hospital with the unsigned forms, only to learn my mother had slit her wrists hours earlier. Her last words shattered me. "Kate... I refuse to be your chains." The morgue's sterile stench choked me as I touched her, lifeless and waxen. I clawed at her hand, once so warm, now frozen. "She did it at 9 PM. We called, but you didn't answer. Take it easy now—stress harms the baby." My lips moved soundlessly. At 9 PM, Damian had locked me in the freezer as punishment. The scene outside his office flashed behind my eyes—bile rose in my throat. My knees buckled. God, I ached to hate him, but even that fury had drained away. Only when they handed me her ashes in a tiny box did the scream tear from my lungs. Trembling, I dialed a long-buried number. "Please... get me out of Stonehaven." The reply crackled through the receiver. "We've been waiting for this call. Kate! You finally called us! We've booked your flight and are sending someone to pick you up right away." When I got home, Damian was pruning flowerbeds with Eva Green. The whole damn yard was packed with peach trees—the one thing I'm deathly allergic to. I walked up and thrust the divorce papers at him. "Damian, we..." The words barely left my lips when a stinging slap knocked me flat. "Kate, you dare show your face here?" He spat the words like poison. "After I made you atone, you put rats in Eva's room?" Blood pooled in my mouth, iron-bitter. "I didn't..." "Ah!" Eva shrieked, kicking over my mother's ashes with a flick of her skirt. "First rats, now poison—what's next, Kate? A knife to my throat?" Ashes sprayed everywhere, blending into the filthy ground. I howled and threw myself forward, only for a boot to crash into my ribs. Pain blazed so hard I couldn't gasp. "Kate, you never learn!" Damian roared. The urn crashed into my head; light burst behind my eyes as blood poured down my face. "Mom... Mom..." Choking on sobs, I clawed my way to the ashes, scrambling to save even a handful of her.