His Heir Was a Lie

I went to the hospital to get my IUD swapped outand found my husband in the prenatal wing, standing beside a girl whose belly was just beginning to show.

I opened my mouth, but he spoke first, perfectly calm:

Since you've seen it, I might as well come clean.

Lucinda's a college girl I've been keeping on the side. She's a month along.

"Relax. She's a sweet girlshe doesn't want your position, and she's not coming for your family."

"But I'm not letting my firstborn grow up a bastard."

I stood frozen over my IUD replacement form, my voice shaking beyond my control:

"So you're going to divorce me and marry her?"

He wiped the tears from my face, smiling as he spoke:

"What are you talking about? I told you when I married you, you'd be my only wife for the rest of my life. Besides, you're an orphan. Where would you even go without me?"

"I'm just sayingsince you can't have children, we adopt Lucinda's baby."

"Five years you've had that IUD in. Five years you wouldn't give me a child. So I found someone who would. Can you really blame me for wanting to carry on the family line?"

He tore the replacement form out of my hand, expression unchanged:

"One child is enough for me. Just have the IUD taken out."

"Be good. I promise, you'll still be the lady of this family. No one will ever rank above you."

I looked at him for a long time, then did as he wanted and changed the procedure from a replacement to a removal.

"Don't bother."

"Giles, I hope you never regret what you've decided today."

What he didn't know was that the IUD I'd worn for five years was the last shred of dignity I'd preserved for him, covering up his congenital infertility.

I woke seven days later.

Something low in my abdomen screamed with a pain I'd never felt beforeraw, gutted, *empty*.

I reached for it instinctively, but ice-cold handcuffs bit into my wrists and jerked me short.

Outside the door, Giles's calm voice carried through. He was on the phone.

"It's done. The uterus is out."

"Mm. For the adoption of Lucinda's child, it had to be done."

"Her? What's she going to do when she wakes up? She's an orphan. She can't exactly turn the world upside down."

Everything went white. Just a high-pitched buzz and nothing behind it.

My uterus gone?

How could he.

I fought the cuffs until they cutthrashing, wrenching, the metal biting deep enough to leave blood smeared across both wrists.

The door opened.

Giles walked in, saw the blood soaking the sheets, and didn't so much as frown.

He just undid the handcuffs, calm as ever, a thread of impatience in his voice.

"You heard?"

"My hands were tied. I promised Lucinda there'd only ever be one childhers and mine. Taking your uterus out solves that for good. Cleaner for everyone."

I stared at him, shaking from head to toe, unable to force out a single word.

Tears spilled down without stopping.

He reached out to wipe them away.

"What's the big deal? It's one organ. You never wanted to have children anyway."

I used every ounce of strength I had left to turn my face away.

"Don't touch me!"

"Giles Gilbert, you animal!"

I swung with everything in me and slapped him hard across the face.

That single slap drained almost everything I had.

My palm went numb, and the pain in my chest felt like it was splitting open.

His head snapped to the side, five red finger marks rising sharp against his skin.

He hadn't dodged. The flush spread fast.

He didn't lose his temper. He just caught my hand. "If hitting me helps, go ahead. Hit me all you want. But once you're done, that's enough."

I opened my mouth, about to speak.

A small figure burst through the doorway with a shriek.

A crack rang out, and a harder slap landed across my face.

I fell back onto the bed, ears ringing, vision going black.

Lucinda Lambert planted herself in front of Giles, tears spilling down her face in that perfect, practiced way.

"How could you hit him!"

"Do you have any idea he's been at your bedside for seven days and seven nights, waiting for you to wake up?"

"He's the father of my child. My man. What right do you have to hit him? What right do you have to treat him like something you can take your anger out on!"

Something soft and aching flickered in Giles's eyes, and he pulled her into his arms.

That look. I knew it too well.

He used to look at me like that.

When I nearly died of alcohol poisoning trying to ransom him back from his enemies.

When I knelt on the ground and smashed my forehead bloody to keep the debt collectors from taking him.

So the tenderness I'd traded my life for could be replaced, just like that, by a single tear from someone else.

I pushed myself upright, looked at the two of them wrapped around each other, and laughed at myself.

"So I'm supposed to thank him?"

"Thank him for ripping out my uterus for the sake of your baby, and nearly killing me on the operating table?"

Lucinda's tears came harder.

She shoved Giles away, snatched the fruit knife off the bedside table, and aimed it at her own slightly rounded belly.

"It's all my fault! I'm the one who hurt you! Let me pay for it!"

"I'll cut my baby and my uterus out right now and give them to you. Is that enough?"

"Lucy!"

Giles's face went white. He locked his arms around her and wrenched the knife free.

The blade sliced across his palm, blood streaming down his fingers.

He didn't even glance at it. He just lifted his head and looked at me with eyes so cold they were barely human.

"Beulah. Is this what you wanted? Are you satisfied now?"

He scooped up Lucinda, who had fainted from the shock, and walked out without looking back.

At the doorway he stopped. His voice held no warmth at all.

"I've been too good to you."

"Since you refuse to behave, then it's time you tasted some real hardship."

Two bodyguards in black came in, faces blank, and hauled me up by the arms.

They dragged me out of the room and dumped me on the freezing hospital corridor floor like I was garbage.

"CEO Gilbert's orders. Starting today, every privilege you had as Mrs. Gilbert is revoked."

"You're no longer entitled to this VIP room."

They took my phone. My wallet. They stripped the expensive hospital gown off my body and left me in nothing but the thinnest cotton slip underneath.

Penniless, post-op, standing in a dark hospital corridor in the middle of the night. Like a joke.

Giles came in person to pick me up.

Not to take me home.

To punish me.

He shoved me into the car and drove all the way out to his private woodland estate on the edge of the city.

The forest outside the windows was pitch black. The cold wind cut straight through me and I couldn't stop trembling.

The door opened and he pushed me out, hard.

"Kneel. Apologize to Lucy."

I looked at him. My eyes were dead.

"Never."

One word, and it lit the fuse on everything left of his rage.

He grabbed my hair and forced my face into the mud, then wrenched my head back so I had to look up at him.

"Beulah, you think you still get to make demands?"

He let go. Stepped back. Closed the car door.

"Stay here and think about what you've done."

"When you've come to your senses, you can walk yourself out."

The engine roared to life. The headlights swept across my face, white and bloodless.

I watched that light shrink, smaller and smaller, until it vanished into the endless dark.

Damp. Cold. And the waves of sharp pain from the wound in my belly.

I lay facedown in the freezing mud, staring in the direction the taillights had disappeared.

The last remnant of something inside me, the thing I'd once called love, finally went out for good.

I lay curled beneath a massive exposed root, cold sweat soaking through the thin hospital gown.

The wound across my abdomen screamed with every movement, each shift tearing it open all over again.

When I was little, the bullies at the orphanage used to lock me in a pitch-black closet. That fear never left me.

I couldn't breathe. My heart hammered so hard it felt like it would burst out of my throat.

Giles knew. He knew all of it. He used to carry me on his back even on dark roads so I wouldn't be afraid.

I laughedsuddenly, out of nowhereand the tears came while I was still laughing.

The man who once swore he'd spoil me for the rest of my life, who promised I'd never sufferthat man was dead. The years had killed him.

I couldn't stay here. There was one thing I still had to do.

I clenched my teeth, braced my elbows against the ground, and dragged myself forward inch by inch.

Dirt, gravel, snapped twigs. They carved bloody lines across my body, still raw from surgery.

I didn't know how long I crawled before I finally saw the edge of the woodland.

There was light.

I threw everything I had left into reaching it, but two tall figures stepped into my path.

Giles's bodyguards.

They looked down at me. Nothing but contempt and amusement in their eyes.

"Mrs. Gilbert, CEO Gilbert says if you won't apologize, you're never stepping out of these woods."

"Bathroom, sleepyou do it right here on the ground."

One of them delivered it without inflection.

"Honestly, Mrs. Gilbert, just apologize already. You know what kind of money CEO Gilbert's got? There's women lined up out the door waiting for him to keep them. You're an orphanlatching onto a man like him is more luck than you deserved in ten lifetimes. And you won't even give him a kid because you're scared it'll hurt"

"You won't do it, plenty of others will. You think CEO Gilbert really wants to hang around waiting on you? He hasn't divorced you yetthat's already more than you deserve. So what are you making a fuss about? Just sit there, be a rich wife, and shut up."

"Think it over. When you've come to your senses, call for us."

My fingers clawed into the mud.

Nails cracked from the force, blood mixing with dirt, the pain boring straight to the bone.

"Wait."

I lifted my head and forced sound through a throat so raw it barely obeyed.

"Tell Giles."

"I'll apologize."

"I'm going back for one thing. Once I have it, I'm gone."

"I will never set foot in the Gilbert house again."

The two guards exchanged a glance, then one of them made the call.

Before long, a blinding set of high beams sliced through the dark.

Giles had come himself.

He got out, walked over, and stood above me, looking down at the mud and filth covering every inch of me.

Something shifted behind his eyes, too fast for me to read.

Then it was gone, replaced by open mockery.

"Beulah. So your pride was worth exactly one night in the dark?"

"Could've spared yourself the trouble."

He reached down to haul me off the ground.

The instant his warm palm touched my frozen arm, my body betrayed me with a shiver, some old reflex left over from years of needing him.

But the next second, a violent wave of nausea surged up from my stomach.

I wrenched his hand away and collapsed forward, retching against the dirt.

Giles's expression turned ugly.

He grabbed me roughly off the ground, shoved me into the car.

Neither of us spoke on the drive back.

At the villa, Lucinda was draped across the sofa looking delicate and pampered, a servant attending to her every need.

The moment she saw me, a smile of pure satisfaction spread across her face.

Giles pushed me in front of her and clamped both hands down on my shoulders.

"Kneel."

Cold. Not a voicejust ice shaped into a word.

I didn't fight it.

My knees struck the cold marble floor with a dull, heavy crack.

The wound across my abdomen split wider with every breath, blood soaking through the thin fabric of my pants in a spreading stain.

I kept my head bowed like a puppet with nothing left inside, repeating the same hollow apologies on loop.

"I'm sorry."

"I shouldn't have made you angry."

"I shouldn't have hurt you."

Lucinda savored every second of my humiliation, ordering the servants around like she was showing off a new toy.

"Go get Mrs. Gilbert's favorite jewelry set. I want to try it on."

"And that limited-edition bag. I want that too."

Giles stood there, cold-eyed, and let it happen.

He thought he'd won.

He thought he'd snapped the last bone of my pride.

No one noticed that beneath my lowered lashes, my gaze was locked on the second-floor study.

Giles, you think this is the cage that breaks me. You just opened the door to your own hell.

He looked at meat the dead, hollow thing I'd becomeand something clawed at him, something he couldn't name. I was already slipping out of reach, and he could feel it.

After the apology, Giles had me confined to the master bedroom.

Lucinda paraded around the living room like she owned the place, bossing every servant in the villa.

I shut the door and sealed out every sound.

I needed to rest. I needed to wait for my chance.

It came the next night.

An emergency at the company pulled Giles out of the villa in the middle of the night.

The moment I was sure he was gone, I dragged myself out of bed.

Every step sent a dull blade of pain through my abdomen, the wound pulling open a little more with each one.

But I couldn't afford to care.

I made my way to the second-floor study.

Everything was exactly as I'd left it.

I moved the bookshelf panel aside with practiced hands, revealing the hidden compartment and the safe behind it.

The combination was our wedding anniversary.

How fitting.

At the very bottom of the safe, a brown paper envelope lay waiting.

My hands were shaking as I pulled out what was inside.

A medical report from five years ago.

Three lines, printed black on white, that could ruin him:

*Giles Gilbert congenital infertility no known cure.*

My trump card was finally back in my hands.

Five years collapsed in on me at once.

The day I first held that report, my whole body went numb. I couldn't fathom what it would do to a man like Gilesthat proud, that certain of himselfto learn the truth about his own body. I was terrified it would hollow him out, terrified his competitors would smell blood and use it to tear him apart. So I went to Rex Delgado, my closest friend and one of the top urologists in the country, and I begged him to bury the secret. Then I walked into a hospital alone and had an IUD put in, and I told everyoneGiles, his mother, the whole Gilbert familythat I was simply too afraid of the pain, that I didn't want children. For five years I swallowed every name they called methe barren wife, the hen that couldn't lay eggsand I carried the weight of the entire Gilbert family's contempt on my back without a word.

I thought I was protecting our love and his dignity.

Now I see it for what it wasone long, cruel joke.

I was about to leave the study when the door behind me opened.

Giles stood in the doorway, eyes dark and cold.

"What are you doing in my study this late?"

"Stealing trade secrets? Who are you running to for help?"

He closed the distance step by step, the pressure of him so suffocating I could barely breathe.

I forced myself to stay calm.

I pulled open the drawer and took out the only photograph we'd ever had together, then held it up in front of him and tore it apart, piece by slow piece.

I let the fragments fall at his feet, and when I spoke, my voice carried nothing at allno anger, no grief, not even the memory of love.

"To get back the last shred of my dignity."

"Don't worry, CEO Gilbert. Your money, your trade secretsI couldn't care less about any of it."

My answer clearly caught him off guard.

He looked into my hollow eyes, and something like panic flickered through him.

That panic made him angry.

He seized my wrist, shoved me down against the desk, and lowered his mouth toward mine.

I didn't struggle. I didn't respond.

I lay there like a corpse with no warmth left, and let him spend his rage on a body that gave him nothing back.

His kiss started violent, then slowly drained of any hunger at all.

In the end, he pushed me away in disgust and straightened his clothes.

"Beulah, that dead look on your face is revolting."

He turned and left, slamming the door behind him.

I braced myself against the desk and slowly straightened up.

Watching his silhouette disappear through the doorway, I smiled in the dark without making a sound.

Giles, you're wrong.

What you ripped out of me wasn't a useless uterus.

It was your only chance, in this lifetime, at a bloodline.

I was the only woman in this world who could ever bear a child for a man whose body would never produce one on its own.

And now, that chance was gone.

The Gilbert Group's thirtieth-anniversary gala was a grand affair.

Every notable family in the city was in attendance.

Giles wanted to legitimize Lucinda and the "firstborn" in her belly, so he ordered me to dress up and attend.

I chose a pure black couture gown.

The makeup artist said the dress was too somber, wrong for a celebration.

I smiled at my reflection.

A funeral, after all, calls for something dignified.

When I walked into the banquet hall, every pair of eyes in the room turned to me.

Some held sympathy. Some held pity. Most held the gleeful curiosity of spectators settling in for a show.

I didn't care.

I walked over to Giles, who had his arm around Lucinda and was introducing her to guests.

When he saw me, his brow creased, but he still pulled me to his side.

"This is my wife, Beulah."

That was all he gave methree words tossed out like an afterthought before he turned back to his guests.

The gala began.

Giles strode onto the stage in high spirits, holding Lucinda's hand.

He picked up the microphone, his voice carrying clear and strong across the hall.

"Thank you all for being here. On this special occasion, I have an important announcement to make."

He glanced down at Lucinda's belly with a look of deep affection.

"Everyone here knows my wife, Beulah. She's always been too afraid of the pain to have children." He let that land, then spread his hands with a generous smile. "And I've always been understanding about it."

"But the Gilbert family must have an heir."

He paused, letting a carefully measured look of regret settle over his face.

"So to fill that voidand to make sure the Gilbert name carries onI've decided to take the child Lucinda is carrying and raise it as my own. My one and only heir."

The room erupted.

Lucinda leaned into Giles, beaming so wide she could barely contain it, every line of her face broadcasting triumph.

Giles grabbed my hand and dragged me onto the stage.

The spotlight hit me, stabbing into my eyes.

"Bea, I know you've always been kindhearted."

"So go ahead. Tell everyone how grateful you are that Lucinda is giving the Gilbert family what you couldn't."

The cruelty was surgical.

He wanted me to stand here and confess my own "failure" out loudthen smile and thank the mistress who had stolen everything from me.

I looked out at the faces below the stage, the pity, the contempt, and I looked at Lucinda's face, drunk on her own victory.

I took the microphone from his hand.

The entire room went silent.

Everyone was waiting to watch me cave. Waiting for the dutiful wife to bow her head and keep the peace.

I cleared my throat. My voice came out terrifyingly calm.

"Grateful? Yes, actually."

"Because Ms. Lambert finally showed me how cheap five years of CEO Gilbert's devotion really were."

The color drained from Giles's face in an instant.

"Beulah, what the hell are you talking about!"

I didn't look at him.

I leaned into the microphone and spoke slowly.

"Distinguished guests, in honor of the Gilbert Group's thirtieth anniversary, I've prepared a special gift. For CEO Gilbert, and for all of you."

The moment the words left my mouth, the massive screen behind the stage flickered. The looping highlight reel of the Gilbert Group's achievements vanished.