Drowned by My Husband, Reborn as an Heiress

After I got pregnant, I stumbled across a post online.

What's the wildest thing you've done after breaking up with your ex?

I spotted a familiar profile picture and tapped into the comments without thinking.

Hehe, I've got a good one for this.

My ex is my brother-in-law now. The night before his wedding to my sister, he came to me for one last goodbye round. We went so hard he missed the ceremony.

The memory dragged me back three years, kicking and screaming.

On our wedding day, Reginald Gilbert had told me, apologetic and rushed, that a client needed him on a flight to Paris that very morning.

He'd spent six months grinding on that deal. Revised the proposal a thousand times over.

I couldn't bear to watch all that work go up in smoke, so I held it together and played the part of a bride at a wedding for one.

That little episode was still a punchline at certain dinner tables to this day.

But now I knew the truth. That day, he'd been with that illegitimate brat, giving her a farewell roll in the sheets.

I laughed until tears ran down my face, then turned around and went straight back to the hospital for an abortion.

My love would not be stained. I refused to allow it.

Ten minutes ago, I'd been overjoyed about this little life inside me.

He would have had a father and mother who loved him more than anything. He would have had a happy, complete family.

But now, after reading that top-voted comment a hundred times over, my heart felt like it was being shredded alive by a serrated knife.

Tears streaked down my cheeks. The nurse stared at me in disbelief.

"Mrs. Gilbert, are you sure you want to terminate this pregnancy?"

"You spent two full years at our clinic trying to conceive. The medications, the injections, more than anyone could count. This baby was a miracle."

I ran my hand over my still-flat belly, and despite everything, part of me scrambled to make excuses for Reginald.

So many people used the same profile picture. So many people had similar stories. Could I have been wrong? Could it have been someone else?

Instead of torturing myself with suspicion, why not just call Reginald and ask him directly?

The next second, a familiar ringtone went off behind me.

I turned, stiff as a board, and saw Reginald Gilbert carefully guiding Pat Winfield by the arm.

Pat's belly was swollen high and round. Five months along, at least.

My mind went blank. I watched Reginald glance at his screen and decline my call.

Then my phone chimed with a message.

His tone was warm, tender.

"Hey babe, miss me?"

"I'm wrapping up the last bit of work and then I'll be home. I'm dying to know what surprise you have for me."

Acid churned up from my stomach. Through a blur of tears, I followed Reginald down the corridor.

He pulled out Pat's previous prenatal records like he'd done it a dozen times, then gently helped her lie down on the exam table.

I could not reconcile the man in front of me, so tender and attentive to this illegitimate woman, with the Reginald in my memory, the one who'd stood shoulder to shoulder with me and curled his lip in disgust at the mere mention of her name.

He knew what Pat Winfield had done. He knew she'd shoved my mother down a staircase when my mother was seven months pregnant.

She'd deliberately refused to call an ambulance, watching with cold eyes as my mother lay in a pool of blood until she stopped moving.

And she got exactly what she wanted. Her mistress mother was finally promoted to wife, stepping right into the place my mother had left behind.

They threw me out of the house. They forbade my father from spending a single dollar on my mother's burial.

It was Reginald who emptied two years of his tuition savings so my mother could finally rest in peace.

Every moment of his past kindness was seared into my memory.

But now I truly couldn't tell whether any of it had been real, or if Reginald had been acting the whole time.

I couldn't look anymore. I drifted back to the operating room like a ghost.

The young nurse had seen it too. She'd seen Reginald walk in with another woman for a prenatal checkup.

She looked at me with pity.

I forced the corners of my mouth up into something resembling a smile, and signed the consent form.

"I don't want to wait. I'll pay extra. I want this baby gone today."

And Reginald? I didn't want him anymore either.

The cold surgical instrument pierced my body, and I flinched, fingers twisting into the bedsheet.

Through the haze, I could hear Pat's smug laughter drifting in from somewhere nearby.

"Reggie, I wasn't planning on keeping this baby."

"But your wife's belly never seems to grow, and honestly, I worry for you."

"She was throwing herself at boys back in middle school. Who knows if she's already too damaged to carry?"

Reginald said nothing in my defense. Not a single word.

He let out a soft "Mm," and with that one syllable, shattered ten years of trust.

I watched my child dissolve into a pool of blood, tears sliding down past my temples.

"Could you send me a copy of that video?"

When I got home, rose petals were scattered across the floor.

The kitchen was already prepped with ingredients, every dish one of Reginald's favorites.

Expressionless, I swept the washed vegetables and cleaned shrimp straight into the trash.

The rose petals on the floor were swept away like garbage.

The blue balloons filling every corner of the room, I popped them one by one.

What had been a warm, loving home now looked like a landfill.

The door swung open. Reginald took in the wreckage, freezing for a split second.

Then his eyes landed on my swollen, red-rimmed eyes. He dropped his briefcase and pulled me into his arms, patting my back gently.

"Sweetheart, who upset you?"

I remembered the day Pat had waltzed into our house. I'd been crying, demanding to know why my father had betrayed my mother.

Pat had shielded my father, her face twisted and ugly as she screamed that my mother was the other woman.

She said her mother had met my father first. Her mother was his first love.

She said my mother had used money to manipulate him, that he'd only married her out of obligation to the family.

I'd lunged at Pat, wanting to tear her lying mouth apart, but she'd grabbed me by the hair and slapped me across the face. Twice.

My ears were still ringing when Reginald appeared.

He pried Pat's fingers loose, shoved her hard to the ground, and his voice came out like a blade.

"Touch a single hair on her head again, and I'll kill you."

Back then, I thought he was a godsend. I didn't notice the tangled knot of love and hatred in his eyes when he looked at Pat.

I was so stupid.

I pushed Reginald away, my lips twisting into a bitter smile.

"The surprise is ruined."

He stroked my hair gently, pulling out his phone to call his assistant, ordering a cake and flowers delivered as fast as possible.

"If the surprise is ruined, I'll make you a new one."

I stared at him, my throat dry and raw.

"You can redo a surprise. But what about trust? Once trust is shattered, can it ever be put back together?"

Reginald frowned, clearly not understanding what I meant.

He guided me to the couch and was about to ask what was really going on when his phone buzzed. Two short vibrations.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the contact name on the screen.

Star.

When Reginald first confessed his feelings for me, he'd told me I was his favorite star in a sea of people.

The nausea I'd been holding back surged up all at once. I bolted to the bathroom and retched violently over the sink.

Reginald followed, carefully rubbing my back.

"Did you eat something bad?"

"Come on, I'll take you to the hospital right now."

He moved to scoop me up in his arms.

I stepped out of his reach and reminded him his phone was ringing.

He glanced at the screen and hesitated before declining the call.

His hand rose to my forehead, and his frown deepened.

But the moment he turned to find medicine, the phone rang again.

The third time.

Reginald pulled it out, looked at me with an apologetic expression.

"Sorry, something came up at the office. I need to head back and deal with it."

He barely finished the sentence before he was gone, vanishing from my sight.

I screamed until my throat was raw, smashing everything in the house that had anything to do with Reginald Gilbert. Every photo frame, every gift, every last trace of himshattered to pieces.

Once the storm inside me had quieted to something I could breathe through, I hailed a cab to the cemetery. I wanted to say goodbye to my mother.

But when I arrived, the grounds were filled with children's laughter.

My heart nearly hammered out of my chest.

I grabbed the groundskeeper by the arm, my voice cracking into a raw, unhinged scream.

"This is supposed to be a cemetery! Where's my mother? Where is my mother's grave?"

The groundskeeper wrenched free of my grip with a look of disgust.

I lost my balance and hit the ground hard, the coarse gravel tearing the skin off my palms.

But I couldn't feel it. I scrambled back to my feet, forcing myself to stay calm.

"When did this become a children's home?"

"Where were the graves relocated to?"

The groundskeeper jerked his chin toward the bulletin board by the entrance, irritation plain on his face.

I ran toward it, but my feet stopped dead, as if nails had been driven through my soles.

The bulletin board displayed a photo of Reginald and Pat Winfield.

They were smiling. Sweetly.

The description read that Reginald had established this children's home on Pat's behalf, to build good karma in her name.

Before demolishing the cemetery, families had been notified by phone to collect their loved ones' ashes.

My whole body shook. I stepped backward, shaking my head.

No one had called me. So where was my mother? Where was she now?

Tears fell to the ground in helpless streaks. I dialed Reginald's number with trembling fingers.

The call connected almost immediately.

I couldn't hold back the anguish. My voice tore out of me.

"Reginald, what did you do with my mother? Who gave you the right to take her ashes without asking me?"

Silence on the other end.

My heart thrashed wildly, a lost fledgling beating its wings in the dark.

"Say something! Just give me back my mother's ashes, and I'll sign the divorce papers. I'll step aside. You can have Pat. Just give her back to me."

The silence stretched so long that every wall I had left was about to crumble. Then, finally, the speaker crackled with the rustle of fabric.

Reginald's voice came through, dripping with tenderness.

"Why are you still awake? Is the little one giving you trouble again?"

"Just wait till he's born. I'll set him straight."

Then came Pat's voice, soft and fragile as spun glass.

"Reggie, do you think if my sister finds out her mother's ashes are gone, she'll blame me? I dreamed last night that she came at me with a knife..."

Reginald answered without a second's hesitation.

"I'll never give her the chance to hurt you."

"Her mother had it coming. She should never have tried to break up Mildred Dickerson and your father."

The taste of blood flooded my mouth. I screameda ragged, shredded sound ripped from somewhere deep inside me.

I snatched up a loose brick from the ground and slammed it into the bulletin board until it splintered apart.

Glass shards exploded outward, slicing across the backs of my hands, cutting into my face.

In a jagged shard still clinging to the frame, I caught a glimpse of my own reflection. Chalk-white. Barely human.

Pat had made sure my mother couldn't rest even in death.

And the man who had promised to protect me for the rest of my life had chosen to stand on her side. Her accomplice.

The children in the yard had gone silent.

They stared at me the way you'd stare at a monster.

I tried to stand, but my legs buckled and I fell again, this time into the broken glass.

The groundskeeper screamed that I was insane and called the police.

They took me to the station and told me to call a family member to post bail.

I sank onto the cold metal bench, a dull ache pulling low in my abdomen.

"There's no one. I don't have family anymore."

Seven full days passed. Reginald never called. Not once.

I saw him on the television in the detention center.

Paparazzi had caught him taking Pat to a hot spring resort.

The man who had sworn he would only ever love me lunged at the photographer, knocking the camera away, shielding Pat like she was something precious and irreplaceable.

The paparazzi hadn't captured Pat's face, so Reginald issued a public statement to clear the air.

No other woman. He just didn't want his wife exposed to the spotlight.

Then what about me? What was I, exactly?

The officer sat me down for a lecture.

He told me Reginald and Pat were benefactors to those orphans. They were doing a good thing.

I shouldn't have gone to extremes and smashed the signboard. I should've been learning from them instead.

Something inside my chest died in that moment.

Reginald's words kept echoing in my ears.

"Her mother deserved what she got..."

The day I walked out of the police station after seven days of detention, the first thing I did was contact a divorce lawyer.

Back when Reginald wanted to put my mind at ease, he'd made me the largest shareholder of his company. Every property, every car under his name was registered to me.

I didn't go home. I checked into a hotel as far from Reginald as I could find.

Ten days of radio silence before he finally remembered I existed.

He called. I didn't pick up.

Then came a barrage of voice messages.

"Babe, I've been putting together a surprise for you for ten whole days. Still mad at me?"

"I have to go on a business trip for a couple weeks. Don't worry about me. I'll bring you back something nice."

I opened Pat's social media.

There she was in a skimpy bikini, lounging on a beach, soaking up the sun.

A pair of large, broad hands made a cameo in the frame.

Those same hands had held me tight when I woke screaming from nightmares. Those hands had covered my ears when my father berated me. Those hands had shielded me from the wind and rain the night Pat and her mother threw me out of the house.

Now those hands were gently rubbing oil into Pat's skin.

A bitter smirk twisted my lips. I couldn't breathe.

I wanted to ask Reginald if he felt proud of himself, watching me play the fool while the two of them made a joke of me behind my back.

Tears soaked into the pillow. I sobbed until I couldn't make a sound.

The next day, an email arrived in my inbox. Explicit photos.

Reginald, his gaze tender and adoring, pressing his lips to a woman's pregnant belly.

I deleted the email. Blocked the address.

My heart, already long dead and shattered, gave one faint, needling throb.

On the third day, Reginald called in a panic.

"Honey, you're type O, right? A friend of mine got hurt. Could you draw some blood and send it over? Please?"

Just moments earlier, Pat had posted an update.

She'd nicked her finger picking up seashells.

A scratch so shallow it hadn't even bled.

But the day of my abortion, blood had pooled across the hospital floor beneath my bed.

A sudden, bone-deep exhaustion washed over me. I stared at the notification that had just popped up from Reginald's biggest business rival.

"Name your price. I want all of Gilbert's shares and properties."

I agreed.

Reginald took my silence as hesitation and pressed harder.

"It's just a tiny bit of blood. It's nothing."

"Beulah, can you really stand by and watch her die?"

My throat tightened. When I spoke, my voice was raw, heavy with an exhaustion that wouldn't lift.

"Reginald. How long were you planning to hide this from me? Until Pat's baby was born? Or until her child grew up and did exactly what she did, marched up to my face, called me the homewrecker, and shoved me down the stairs?"

Dead silence on the other end.

Reginald's voice shook. He stammered.

"Beulah, what are you talking about?"

I didn't have the energy to keep up the charade. I hit send on the video of my abortion.

"You wanted to know what the surprise was? Here. Let me tell you."