Wrecking My Cheating Husband

For three years, my husband swapped my vitamins for birth control and stood there every night to watch me swallow them.

All so I'd never carry his child.

I found out on a Tuesday, the same afternoon he told me another woman was.

Sienna's pregnant. Roman didn't look up from his phone. She moves in this week. I expect you to take care of her.

I stared at him. Three years of marriage, and I couldn't find one word to put in my mouth.

He read the silence wrong. His mouth curled. "What. You can't give me a child, but no other woman's allowed to either?"

That was when they started.

The comments. Scrolling up out of nowhere, hanging in the air beside his beautiful face, and somehow only I could see them.

Commenter: [not him being a whole villain and STILL the most romantic man alive]

Commenter: [every night he switches her vitamins for the pill and watches her take it so she can't get pregnant. that's not toxic that's DEDICATION]

Commenter: [he only lets the other girl in his bed bc he loves our girl too much to share her attention. free him]

Something in my chest went very quiet.

Not broken. Quiet. The way a room goes quiet right before you start counting what's gone missing.

Every night. The vitamins. His hand steady on the glass of water he passed me.

Three years of doctors. Three years of my body failing a test it was never allowed to pass.

He knew. He'd always known. He was the reason.

I looked at this cold, unbothered man I'd called my husband, and I did not cry.

I did the math.

Three years. And I was going to make him pay it back, down to the last cent, with interest.

Chapter 1

The comments didn't stop. They never did.

Commenter: [ok but if SHE got pregnant she'd wreck her whole body and he'd have to go without touching her for a year. he's basically saving them both]

Commenter: [a baby with the other girl is honestly perfect. he gets an heir, our girl keeps her figure, everybody wins]

Commenter: [if she insists on getting pregnant and he strays later that's on HER for ruining his happiness tbh]

Commenter: [she should be GRATEFUL he trusts her to raise his kid. name one more generous man. i'll wait]

Generous.

I almost laughed.

They had it backwards, every last one of them, and they said it with their whole chest. He'd handed me a lie with a glass of water every night for three years, and the verdict from the cheap seats was that I should say thank you.

I'd love to tell you I screamed. Threw something. Gave the man the scene he'd earned.

I didn't.

Because this wasn't the beginning. It only felt like it.

The beginning was three months into our marriage, the first time his mother looked at my stomach like it owed her something.

Chapter 2

We'd been married a year when she said it to my face.

Roman's mother looked at me the way you look at a stain on something expensive.

"A year. And nothing." Her lip curled. "Are you defective? A woman who can't give this family an heir is no use to anyone. You'd be worth more to us dead."

I opened my mouth. I don't know what I meant to say.

I never got the chance, because Roman stepped in front of me.

"Mother." His voice dropped, quiet and edged. "Say it again. See what happens."

The room went still.

Then, lower, almost bored: "For all you know, the problem's me."

She hit him. Twice, hard, across the arm.

"Don't you dare. You're an Ashford. Ashford men don't have problems. If this family has no heir, the fault is hers, not yours. It always is."

I remember being stunned that he'd shielded me at all.

I should have paid attention to how easily he lied to do it.

The next day there was a family lunch. Every branch of the Ashfords, a hundred years of old money packed into one long room.

His mother waited until every chair was full.

"See? I told you my son was perfect."

Then she threw his medical report in my face.

The edge of the paper caught my cheek. A thin line of sting, and when I touched it my fingers came away red.

Nobody moved to help me. They just looked.

"His results are flawless," she went on, sweet as vinegar. "Which makes the broken one you. What's buried in there, hm? How many men wore you out before my son got the leftovers?"

Heat crawled up my face. Around the table, aunts and uncles studied me like a debt no one wanted to claim.

"Secondhand," one of them murmured. "He let his boy marry used goods."

"Enough of that." One of the older relatives waved a hand as if she were being generous. "The boy's married now. No sense turning him into a divorc. Medicine fixes anything these days. Do IVF. Have her give you ten grandsons to make up for the trouble. And if that fails, well. There's always divorce."

"IVF." His mother's mouth pinched. "A lab baby? That isn't real Ashford blood. Watered down, bought by the vial. No. Better to end it clean and start over with a girl who can"

"Are you finished?"

The whole table turned.

Roman hadn't raised his voice. He didn't need to. He was barely thirty, and every gray head in that room shrank an inch.

"I don't care how many men she knew before me." His gaze moved down the table, unhurried. "Her husband is me now. That's the only name that matters."

A pause, cold enough to frost the glasses.

"We can live without a child. We cannot live without my wife. And my wife is Sabine." The corner of his mouth lifted, and there was nothing warm in it. "Divorce? Over my dead body."

He took my hand. His palm was dry and huge and certain, and he walked me out of that room while his mother wailed something at our backs and not one relative dared follow.

Ours was a merger, not a love match. Two families, one contract. I'd walked in expecting cool manners and separate lives, and I'd have called that a good marriage.

Instead he put himself between me and his mother, again and again, and made me feel chosen.

So I swallowed it. All of it. The way she looked at me. The things she made me do. I told myself I was keeping him out of the crossfire.

I told myself I'd married the right man.

He let me believe it for three more years.

Chapter 3

I've been afraid of anything bitter since I was a child.

His mother made me choke down two years of it anyway. Treatments no real doctor would put his name to. Injections that left my arms mottled for weeks. Every fringe cure money could buy, and money could buy a lot of them.

When the treatments didn't take, she moved on to punishment.

The worst was the day she drove me out to the Ashford estate, to the long stone path that climbs to the old family hall, where a hundred years of dead Ashfords look down from their portraits.

She wanted me on my knees. All the way up. Begging the founders of her family to forgive me for the crime of not breeding.

I turned to leave.

She had my parents on the phone before I reached the car.

And my parents took her side. My own.

"She's only doing this for your good," my father said. "Do you have any idea what it cost her to get you in front of that family? Kneel. Show them some gratitude."

"Don't be difficult, Sabine. This marriage is the best thing that ever happened to us. You throw it away over a baby that just hasn't come yet, and where does that leave your mother and me?"

"If they send you back like a returned package, we won't be able to show our faces anywhere. Do you understand what you'd be doing to this family?"

I have never been so alone as I was in that parking lot, a phone against my ear.

So I knelt.

I went up that path the way she wanted it. Down, and up. Down, and up. My knees stopped feeling like mine somewhere in the middle.

The stone opened the skin on my forehead. It split, and a warm thread of blood started down my face, and I kept going.

Then it began to rain.

Fat, heavy drops that found every open place on me. Rain in a raw wound is salt. The broken skin over my knees went white and soft and started to come apart, the splits widening every time I moved.

I was still down on the stone, swaying, when Roman came. Like a savior. Like the answer to a prayer I hadn't made.

He tore into his mother in front of everyone, lifted me off the ground with his own hands, and carried me out.

I spent that night in a hospital bed under a fever that nearly took me.

My knees have ached in the rain ever since.

I used to think about that day and love him for it.

Now I think about it and my hands want to be around his throat. Because every second of it leads back to him. The treatments, the kneeling, the fever, the three years. He built the maze, then walked in as the man who would carry me out of it.

Divorce wouldn't touch him. A signature, a number he'd never feel. That isn't revenge. That's a Tuesday.

But I already knew I wasn't going to stop at divorce.

I saw her for the first time a week later, at a gala I had no interest in attending.

Roman brought her himself. Walked her in on his arm in front of everyone who mattered, the small swell of her belly on display, Sienna leaning into him like she'd been poured there.

Anyone who didn't know better would have called them a devoted couple.

I almost laughed.

And across the room, watching me watch them, stood the one person who had hated me since we were girls.

Regina.

Chapter 4

Regina crossed the room in four-inch heels, and I heard the "oh no" a full second before the wine arrived.

She stumbled. Beautifully. Her glass tipped, and a wash of red went down the front of my pale dress and bloomed there like a bruise.

"Sorry, Sabine." She pressed a hand to her mouth, not an ounce of it real. "I didn't do that on purpose. You won't hold it against me, will you?"

She wasn't finished. They never are.

"If anything, I'm doing you a favor. Giving you an exit." Her voice went syrupy and cruel. "Let's be honest, you're not much use as it is. A woman who can't give her husband a baby is a hen that won't lay. What's the point of keeping her?"

A couple of her friends drifted over to watch.

"And you really can't fault Roman. You can't give him a child. You can hardly stop another woman from doing it for him. I hear she's his first love, you know. Years married to you, nothing. She walks back into his life and she's already carrying his baby." Regina tilted her head, delighted. "That's what real love looks like. If I were you I'd have stepped aside long ago and spared myself the humiliation."

She patted my wine-soaked shoulder like she was tucking me in.

"Think of the stain as a gift. Now you can go home early instead of standing here embarrassing yourself. No need to thank me."

Then she laughed into her hand, and the little circle around her laughed too, every one of them pointing at me like I was the joke of the night.

I opened my mouth.

The comments got there first.

Commenter: [he is NOT ignoring her on purpose bestie!! he's waiting for the right moment]

I turned my head, just slightly, and found Roman. Watching. He'd watched all of it, the wine and the laughing and every second in between, and his face hadn't moved.

Commenter: [he's gonna let these women dig their own graves and THEN step in and wreck them for her. iconic behavior]

Commenter: [and then she'll be so moved she'll love him even more. it's called strategy]

Commenter: [every second he stands there letting her get bullied is agony for him. my poor king]

Commenter: [pls don't misunderstand him and the other girl!! he's loved our girl since high school, he only got with the other one after he thought our girl was seeing someone else]

Commenter: [when he's with the other woman his heart is 100% our girl. always has been. he's dated around but he never MEANT a single one]

There it was.

I looked at the man standing twenty feet away, hands in his pockets, watching me drip wine onto the marble.

He'd loved me the entire time. He'd simply loved me with his heart, and let the rest of him go wherever it pleased.

What a man. Sleeps through half the city, keeps his soul spotless. A real triumph of engineering.

Chapter 5

I was still standing there dripping when a shadow fell over me.

Tall. Unhurried. The kind of man a room rearranges itself around without being asked.

He didn't look at me. He looked at Regina, and his voice came out low and lazy and pitched to carry.

"Regina, darling. Is that you?" He tilted his head, studying her like a menu. "God, a few days and you've aged a decade. Skin's gone, too. That foundation isn't hiding the breakouts, sweetheart, and I swear you've lost an inch of height. You didn't look like this the other night."

Regina blinked. "The other"

"When Preston walked you into the Grandcourt and booked a room." He clicked his tongue. "You were glowing then. Now? Whole different face. Did you have work done? Give me the name of the clinic. I want to make sure nobody I know goes near it."

Regina's face ran through about four colors.

I stepped in, right on cue. "Oh, you sweet fool. That wasn't her you saw at the Grandcourt." I gave him wide, helpful eyes. "That was her husband's mistress."

"No." He pressed a hand to his chest, scandalized. "Not really."

I patted Regina's shoulder and borrowed her voice, that same singsong pity she'd handed me ten minutes ago. "Honestly, I understand Preston. The other one's younger. Prettier. Better figure. Who picks a tired old wife with a face like last week's when he could have something fresh?" I leaned in, gentle as a knife. "If I were you, I'd step aside and let the young thing have him. Save yourself the humiliation."

Regina shook. "You"

I lifted a fresh glass off a passing tray.

And on my way past her, wouldn't you know it, my hand just slipped.

Red went down the front of her white dress in one long ugly streak, some of it soaking through and running down her bare calf.

I blinked at her, all innocence. "Oh no. I didn't do that on purpose. You won't be upset, will you? When you spilled on me just now, I wasn't upset at all."

"AAAH!"

Regina shrieked, spun, and went hunting for her husband, who was across the room grinning down at his phone at whatever the other woman had just sent him.

She reached him in four strides and raked her nails clean down his face.

The