Goodbye Ex Husband - The Real Heiress Has Returned

Chapter 2

The sterile white fluorescent lights of the emergency hospital bay felt like physical blows against Seraphina’s throbbing temples. The air smelled of disinfectant and copper, a scent that would remain burned into her memory for the rest of her life.

Two nurses had rushed her through the double doors, one gripping her arm, the other shouting numbers and vitals down the hallway. She remembered flashes: a gurney, cold hands lifting her onto it, a bright light swinging overhead, someone asking her name and she couldn’t seem to answer because her mouth had forgotten how to form words.

“We’re losing fetal heart tones,” a voice said somewhere above her, clipped and urgent. “Get her into surgery now.”

“Please,” Seraphina had whispered, clutching the sleeve of a passing nurse. “Please save my baby. Please, I’m begging you.”

The nurse, a young woman with tired eyes and kind hands, squeezed her fingers once. “We’re doing everything we can, sweetheart. Just breathe for us.”

Time became meaningless after that. There was only the sting of a needle, the hiss of oxygen, and the terrible, echoing silence when the monitors around her seemed to go quiet.

When she woke again, the doctor was standing over her bed with a clipboard pressed against his chest, his expression already arranged into the careful, practiced shape of bad news.

“Mrs. Lloyd,” he said gently, and something in the way he said her married name made her stomach drop before he even continued. “I’m so sorry. You didn’t make it in time. The trauma to your body, combined with the extreme spike in stress hormones, it was simply too much. We did everything we could, but your body couldn’t hold the pregnancy. You’ve suffered a complete miscarriage.”

Seraphina lay on the narrow hospital bed, staring blankly at the acoustic ceiling tiles above. She didn’t weep. She didn’t scream. She didn’t even blink.

“Mrs. Lloyd,” the doctor said again, softer this time, crouching slightly so he was level with her eyes. “Is there someone I can call for you? Your husband, perhaps?”

“No,” Seraphina said, and her own voice sounded like it belonged to a stranger. “There’s no one to call.”

The doctor hesitated, clearly uncomfortable with the flatness of her tone, but he nodded and stepped back to let the nurse finish checking her vitals.

“How far along was I?” Seraphina asked quietly, staring at the ceiling instead of at him.

“Nine weeks,” he answered. “I’m truly sorry. If it offers any comfort, this was in no way something you caused. Sometimes the body simply can’t sustain the strain it’s put under.”

She hadn’t even had the chance to tell Sebastian that she was carrying his child. Not that the news would have altered the trajectory of tonight. If anything, he likely would have accused her of lying to trap him, or brushed it off as another inconvenient interruption to his booming corporate empire and his precious secretary’s life.

The betrayal of her cheating husband and the hollow, agonizing emptiness in her womb burned away whatever fragile, obedient woman had existed inside her over the last three years.

Three years of playing small. Three years of erasing her fiery spirit, locking away her intellect, abandoning her own wealthy family, and swallowing her pride just to play the role of the docile, supportive housewife for a man who didn’t even notice when she changed her hair. Three years of absolute devotion had bought her nothing but a ruined dress, a shattered heart, and a dead child.

“Mrs. Lloyd,” the nurse said carefully, adjusting the blanket over Seraphina’s legs, “you should rest. Your body has been through a great deal tonight.”

“I don’t want to rest,” Seraphina said, sitting up despite the ache pulling through her abdomen. “I want to go home.”

“You really should stay for observation, at least until morning—”

“I said I want to go home.” Her voice was quiet, but there was a new edge in it, something the nurse hadn’t heard from her before, and it made the young woman pause and simply nod.

When the nurse gently told her she could sign herself out against medical advice if she insisted, Seraphina stood up on shaky legs, declined the wheelchair, and walked out into the cool morning air, one hand braced against the wall the entire way to the exit.

Returning to the Lloyd villa, she felt no attachment to the marble floors or the grand crystal chandeliers. Tears were reserved for those who still held onto hope, and Seraphina was completely out of hope. In its place, something far colder and far more dangerous had taken root.

She walked straight past the untouched anniversary cake sitting on the dining table, its candles long melted into shapeless puddles of wax, entered Sebastian’s dark, oak-paneled study, and went straight to his master desk. Opening the top drawer, she retrieved the crisp stack of divorce papers he had brandished at her four months ago during an argument, the ones he had waved in her face as a warning whenever she dared to ask why he stayed out late with Vivienne.

She remembered that argument clearly. “You want a divorce so badly, Seraphina? Fine. Here. I’ll even have it drawn up for you. But you’d be a fool to sign it. You have nothing without me.”

She had cried that night. She would never cry over those words again.

Without a second of hesitation, Seraphina picked up an ink pen and signed her full, official name across the bottom line with vicious, uncompromising finality: Seraphina Frost.

She unclasped the modest, one-carat diamond ring from her left hand, a dull, mass-produced band he had instructed his assistant to buy for their rushed, private wedding, and dropped it onto the wood desk. Then, picking up a heavy brass paperweight, she walked over to their framed wedding portrait on the wall and smashed the glass to splinters.

The sound of shattering glass echoed through the empty mansion, ringing out like a victory bell. Taking a silver lighter from his cigar box, she set the corner of the photograph ablaze. She stood in silence, watching the image of Sebastian’s indifferent face and her own timid, forced smile curl, blacken, and turn to ash.

Her phone began to buzz in her coat pocket, Sebastian’s caller ID illuminated the screen. She let it ring until it went dead. He was three hours too late.

Instead, Seraphina pulled up her contacts, bypassed the restricted list, and dialed a number she hadn’t dared to touch since the day she turned her back on her real life to marry Sebastian.

The line rang once. Twice. Then a deep, gruff voice answered, sharp and alert.

“Hello?”

“Brother,” Seraphina whispered, her voice cracking just enough to betray the raw emotion she had been holding back for hours.

There was a sudden, violent clatter of movement on the other end of the line, followed by the heavy sound of a chair being shoved backward.

“Seraphina?!” Cassian Jefferson’s voice exploded through the speaker, frantic and laced with absolute disbelief. “Is that really you? Where the hell have you been? Do you have any idea what we’ve—do you know Roman had three separate investigators looking for you for the last two years? Where are you right now?”

“I’m sorry, Cassian,” she cut in softly, squeezing her eyes shut. “I was a fool.”

“You weren’t a fool, you were in love, there’s a difference,” Cassian said, his voice tight. “What happened? Your voice sounds wrong. Seraphina, talk to me.”

“I lost the baby,” she whispered, and for the first time all night, her voice finally broke. “I didn’t even get to tell him I was pregnant. And I don’t think it would have mattered if I had.”

There was a long, heavy silence on the line, the sound of a man forcing himself to breathe evenly before he spoke again.

“Tell me where you are right now,” Cassian commanded, his tone shifting from shock to absolute, protective rage. “Send me your coordinates. I’m bringing a team.”

“No need,” a second, heavier voice echoed behind her before Seraphina could answer.

She turned around slowly. Standing in the broken doorway of the study was a towering, broad-shouldered man clad in a dark, bespoke charcoal suit. Behind him, a convoy of sleek black Maybachs idled outside the villa gates, their headlights cutting through the dawn mist.

It was Roman Frost, her biological older brother, the current head of the global Frost Conglomerate, and a man whose very name made international markets tremble. His dark eyes were cold, filled with a lethal, quiet fury as he took in the sight of her torn dress, her pale face, and the burning picture on the desk.

“How did you find me?” Seraphina asked, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand before he could see the tear that had escaped.

“I never stopped looking,” Roman said simply. “Every hospital in this city has standing orders to alert my private line the instant a Frost bloodline patient is admitted. I got the call the moment you walked through those emergency doors, little sister. I just couldn’t get there in time to stop what happened.”

Something in his voice, quiet and stripped of all its usual command, nearly undid her composure completely.

“So,” Roman murmured, stepping into the room and pulling her gently but firmly into an unbreakable embrace. “You finally remember you have a family, little sister.”

“I’m sorry,” she said into his chest, her voice muffled and small. “I’m so sorry, Roman. I should have called you the moment things went wrong. I was ashamed.”

“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” Roman said, his hand resting heavy and warm against the back of her head. “The only person in this house who should feel shame is a man who is about to learn exactly what it costs to break a Frost’s heart.”

As Seraphina buried her face in her brother’s chest, the last remnants of her broken life burned to the ground behind them.