My Stepsister Is Pregnant With My Fake Husband's Baby

I'd come back to my hometown for my father's birthday.

My stepsister hauled me up out of my chair and, right in front of all the relatives, jabbed a finger in my face and started laying into me.

Do you have any sense at all?

From now on, when I'm standing, you don't get to sit. When I'm sitting, you'd better know your place and stand behind me, rub my shoulders, and wait on me properly.

I stared at her, then anger snapped through me.

"Are you out of your mind? Why on earth would I wait on you?"

Ina rolled her eyes and tossed a pregnancy test report at me.

"Because I'm carrying your husband's first son. Probably his only son, too."

"So you'd better take good care of me while I'm pregnant. Do that, and I'll remember the favor and make sure there are leftovers on the table for you at home."

Around us the relatives were either stunned or settling in to watch the show.

My father and stepmother just looked away and told me to do what Ina said, or my life from here on out would be miserable.

But I'd already gone blank the moment Ina pulled out that report.

Not from anger, not from rage. From sheer curiosity.

How exactly had my stepsister gotten pregnant by a husband I'd invented to get everyone off my back about marriage?

...

I looked at the ultrasound printout sitting on the table in front of Ina Summers.

I'm not a doctor, but I could read it well enough. It clearly showed twelve weeks. And from what I knew, the odds were that the result was real.

I frowned.

"Stop this nonsense."

"I believe you're pregnant. But there's no way it's my husband's child"

I didn't get to finish.

Ina cut me off.

"It's no nonsense. This is your husband Dirk Gray's baby."

"You've been married more than two years and you've never once brought your Dirk home. That's because you were scared he'd fall for me, isn't it? I'm prettier than you."

As she spoke, she lightly stroked a belly that wasn't really showing yet.

"But hiding him got you nowhere. True love can't be hidden."

I stood there, frozen, not even sure where to begin explaining.

Except my frozen face made everyone think I'd been so furious I'd gone stupid.

Beside me, my stepmother, Paige Hughes, tucked Ina behind her, as if afraid I'd lose it and hurt her.

"Tania Summers, don't be upset."

"Honestly, Ina only wanted to test whether your husband was sincere about you at first. Who could've guessed the two of them would actually catch feelings and end up with a baby?"

"You mustn't do anything rash. This child is going to call you Mom one day too!"

Then Paige tugged at my father, Darren Summers, who'd been playing deaf and dumb at her side.

Darren was afraid of setting Paige off, so even though he didn't dare look at me, he hurried to speak up.

"Right, right."

"You've been married to the boy this long and won't have a child. What if he goes looking elsewhere?"

"Ina's doing you a favor here. Keep the good fortune in the family. So your mother and your sister are rightyou ought to look after Ina through her pregnancy and be properly grateful to her."

I found the whole thing laughable.

The relatives who'd come for the birthday dinner, though, couldn't stand to listen anymore.

Darren, you're being far too one-sided. Ina's gone way past the line here, and you won't even say a word?

Exactly. This isn't true love or fate. This is shameless. Back in the day, a woman would've been run out of town for this.

You just found out Tania's husband comes from money, so you sank your hooks into him, and now you're standing here pregnant, trying to force your way in. Don't dress it up as true love.

The relatives were brutal, but to Ina the words landed like compliments.

After all, her lifelong dream was to marry a rich man.

She'd worked hard for that dream. Took jobs at high-end hotels just so she could "accidentally" open the wrong door, or "accidentally" scratch the paint on someone's luxury car.

So instead of being angry, she actually smiled.

"Spare me the righteous act."

"You're only saying all this because you're sorry you didn't think of having your own daughter make her move first. You're mad I beat you to it!"

"In this world, people sneer at the poor, not at the gold diggers."

"The law's clear: a child born out of wedlock has inheritance rights. The money my son will inherit from Dirk is his by right!"

At this, Ina turned to look at me.

"Mom and Dad are right. You should be thanking me."

"Dirk's been furious for ages about you not giving him a child. If I weren't here, you'd be out on the street. At least with me around, you still get a roof over your head. Would anyone else do that for you?"

The relatives were so furious they couldn't speak, and that finally gave me my opening.

"When I said just now that there's no way you're carrying my husband's child, it wasn't because I'm confident, and it wasn't because I trust my husband. It's because my husband is someone I made up."

"Dirk Gray. I picked the name because it sounds like a gray area, a complete fabrication. Nothing real."

"He doesn't exist in this world at all, so how exactly did he get you pregnant?"

The whole room went dead silent.

Paige shrieked.

"Impossible! We've all met Dirk. How could he be fake?"

Darren was frowning too.

"Tania, this is too much. Is this really something to joke about?"

But I wasn't joking.

A few years back, a friend of Paige's had a son who took a liking to me.

The man was more than ten years older than me, barely had any schooling, and treated prison stints like a regular routine. There was no way I was marrying him.

Paige threw fits and threatened to die over it, trying to force me into it, while Darren just smoothed things over, even going so far as to say things like:

"He's done his time courtesy of the state. He's surely learned his lesson by now."

"You have to trust your mother. She'd never steer you wrong!"

I nearly choked on my anger back then. If he was such a great match, why didn't Paige introduce him to Ina?

I refused, again and again, furious about it, but Paige didn't care. She even sent the nephew over to my house, hoping he'd back me into a corner and force the issue.

I was sick of the whole thing, but my company and all its operations were here in town. I couldn't just pick up and leave.

And I couldn't stomach Darren coming to my office day after day, throwing fits.

So I invented a husband.

And to keep them from circling my money, I passed off everything I'd earned as my husband's assets. Which is how I ended up the kept bird who'd married into wealth.

But what I never imagined.

Was that even a made-up husband would catch Ina's eye.

Then again, this was exactly the kind of thing Ina would do. We were the same age, with no blood between us.

From the day she moved into my house, she treated me as her enemy. Everything I had, she had to fight me for. Everything I had, she had to take.

A husband.

Was no exception, of course. Least of all a "rich" one.

I laid the whole story out, exasperated.

"If someone really impersonated my husband and got you pregnant, what you should be doing right now is calling the police!"

When Ina finished listening, she frowned for a brief moment, then laughed even harder.

"My God. With a brain like that, to think I ever saw you as a rival."

"You think I can't tell whether Dirk's real or not?"

"You can't seriously think a few words from you will make me angry, make me feel like I've been conned, and send me running off to abort the baby? So you and Dirk can be together?"

I pressed a hand to my forehead and swallowed a laugh.

So those delusional lines from cheesy short dramas actually came from real life.

I couldn't be bothered to argue, so I just said it.

"Then call your Dirk right now and we'll settle this face to face!"

Ina snatched up her phone at once.

But she didn't dial.

"No. If I call him now, Dirk will think I doubted him. He'll think I didn't trust what he said, that all I care about is his money."

"Tania, you're so cruel!"

I had nothing to say to that.

I just picked up my bag and left.

"Fine."

"Then wait until the baby's born and come stake your claim."

"By then you can promote yourself straight from mistress to wife. You go be the proper Mrs. Dirk Gray to that imaginary husband, and I'll be the cast-off wife and stay out of your way!"

With that said, I gave none of them the chance to react and walked straight out of the private room, without even getting the chance to hand over the gift I'd brought for Darren.

It seemed someone in the room wanted to come after me.

But Darren wouldn't let anyone move.

He only said, "Let that ungrateful girl get as far away as she wants. As far as I'm concerned, I don't have a daughter like her!"

I let out a sigh.

They say a stepmother turns your father into a stepfather too, and that was exactly Darren. Ever since he married Paige, my own father had basically become my stepfather, Darren.

So I didn't look back. I went straight past the front desk and had the driver pull away. Since you don't have a daughter like me, you can foot that bill yourself, all hundred-plus thousand of it.

Just as I'd expected.

Within the hour, the calls and texts came one after another. I didn't pick up the calls, and the texts, though plenty, all said about the same thing.

They wanted money.

Of course I wasn't going to give them any.

I used to be a fool, hungry for the scraps of family love that barely existed.

I'd even told myself Darren just favored Ina a little, that deep down he still cared about me. But today made it clear that wasn't it at all. He'd stopped seeing me as his daughter a long time ago.

And on top of that, every single thing from all the years before was still vivid in my mind. One thing piled on another, and it only hardened my resolve to cut these people off for good.

So I blocked every one of their contacts and severed all ties.

Not only did I stop sending the driver over with things now and then, I also cut off the monthly allowance I'd been giving them.

I thought that would buy me some peace for a while.

But not even two months passed.

Ina dragged Darren and Paige along and made a whole scene barging into my company. The moment she got in, she started shouting.

"I'm here for Tania Summers!"

"I'm here for Tania Summers's husband!"

"If you don't come out, I'll bleed all over this floor right here!"

Ina hadn't brought any weapon, but the sight of her still rattled the employees at their desks, and they immediately moved to call the police.

Ina panicked.

"Anyone who dares call the police, I'll have you fired!"

"The baby in my belly is the owner of this company. Treating me like this, do you all not want your jobs anymore?"

The staff exchanged looks, unsure whether to call 911, call a psychiatric ward, or just sit back and watch. In the end it was my assistant who walked over.

"Ma'am, since you're pregnant, we don't want to call the police or have you thrown out."

"But you've clearly got the wrong company. Our boss, Ms. Summers, is a woman. There's no way she's the father of the baby you're carrying."

"So please leave!"

Darren clicked his tongue.

"What kind of nonsense is this?"

"This company belongs to my son-in-law, and Tania Summers is my daughter. Hand my daughter over, now. I need to speak with her!"

That was when the assistant finally placed him. The man making a scene was my own father.

Annoyed as I was, calling the police over this would have been a real hassle, and on top of that we were blood, so I had no choice but to come out and face them.

The moment they saw me,

Ina seemed to let out a breath.

"Tania, I didn't come here today to fight with you. We came for one thing only, and that's money!"

"You stopped giving us our allowance over a month ago, but I can't have my baby going without, so we went and took out some loans to get by!"

"Now the repayment's come due, so don't you dare play dead."

I shook my head, smiling.

I'd been wondering why I hadn't heard a word from them since my birthday. So this was the other way they'd found to support themselves.

I took Ina's statement and ran the numbers in my head. It came to nearly a million.

They certainly hadn't let themselves suffer.

But not one cent of this money was going to them. I'd earned every dollar the hard way, so why would I hand it to a pack of ungrateful leeches who'd never be satisfied?

Seeing that I had no intention of paying, Paige panicked.

"Ina got pregnant to help secure your position. You can't repay her like this!"

"If you won't give us the money now, don't come crying once the baby's born!"

Inwardly, I rolled my eyes.

"I've already told you, I'm single. I don't have a husband at all!"

"Tell you what, Ina. Right here, in front of every employee in my company, I'll make you a promise. The moment you bring my husband here, I'll divorce her on the spot and let you take my place!"

Ina didn't refuse.

"I regretted not slapping you last time."

"So this time I called him the second I got here. By my count, he should be arriving any minute now."

The words had barely left her mouth.

A man pushed through the crowd and made his way to Ina's side.

"Ina, are you and the baby all right?"

The moment Ina saw him,

she dropped the furious act in an instant, tears spilling down at once.

"Dirk, thank goodness you're here."

"You have no idea. If you'd come any later, that vicious witch Tania would have been the death of me and the baby."

"I know being with you was wrong, all of it my fault, every bit of it, but the baby is innocent!"

The man froze.

He shot a quick glance at me, then dropped his voice and demanded,

"Didn't you tell me Tania wasn't here? Why did you lie to me?"

Ina hadn't expected him to react like this. She forgot to even keep crying.

Paige couldn't stand to watch.

"Son, we had no choice."

"Ever since Tania found out about you and Ina, found out about the baby, she cut us off and stopped paying for everything."

"We only came here for the money because we had nowhere else to turn. You have to set things right for us."

Darren chimed in too.

"That's right, Tania's gone too far."

"Ina never tried to take anything from her. It's Tania whose heart is rotten. I'm in poor health these days, son, so go on and teach Tania a good lesson."

"Otherwise, once the baby comes, there's no telling what other tricks she'll pull."

Ina gave the man a light push.

The meaning was clear enough.

She wanted him to hit me.

"Dirk, she's the canary you keep. When the bird won't behave, it needs to be put in line!"

I didn't flinch, because by now I had a pretty good idea what this whole farce was about. Just as I'd thought, this man wouldn't dare lay a hand on me. He didn't even dare look me in the eye.

So I smiled.

"Dirk Gray, why don't you tell them. Am I some canary you keep?"

Dirk opened his mouth and couldn't get out a single word.

In the end his legs just gave out, and he dropped to his knees in front of me.

"I... I can explain."