For His Mistress He Ruined My Father, So I Bought Him Out

In the third year of my marriage, five months pregnant, I knelt at the front gate of the Gilbert mansion and begged my mother-in-law to show mercy and spare my adoptive father's little factory, which was on the brink of bankruptcy.

She laughed and called me ungrateful, said the bastard in my belly wasn't fit to carry the Gilbert name.

I looked to Bertram Gilbert, pleading.

He was gently adjusting the scarf around my sister Rose Fox's neck. And to my face he said, "Get rid of the child in your belly."

"Rose is the one I'm going to spend my life with."

I lost my baby. And in the same moment I stumbled onto the truth they'd hidden for three years.

The kidney I'd donated to Bertram all those years ago had actually been transplanted into Rose.

Even the flawless jade bangle, the only thing my adoptive mother had left me, was sitting on Rose's wrist.

And just as I'd given up on everything, people from the Henson family, the wealthiest family in the country, came knocking, saying I was the sole heiress the Hensons had been searching for over twenty-three years?

May Lawrence looked down at me with open disdain, sneering. "Vera Henson Fox, who exactly is this show for?"

"Do you want everyone walking past to say the Gilberts mistreat their daughter-in-law?"

"You should take a good look at yourself. If you hadn't shamelessly thrown yourself at my son back then, a woman like you wouldn't even be fit to work as a maid in this family."

I gritted my teeth, my five-month belly heavy in front of me, my voice raw as I begged, "Mom, please, I'm begging you."

"My dad's factory just needs one last payment to stay afloat. Can't you get Bertram to release the order he's holding back?"

"That factory is my dad's whole life."

May Lawrence gave a cold laugh. "His life's work is no concern of this family."

"A run-down plant that's about to go under. If it folds, it folds."

"And let me warn you. Rose is pregnant and hasn't been feeling well lately. Don't you dare stand at my gate wailing like it's a funeral. If you upset the baby in her belly, I'll make you pay for it."

The words had barely left her mouth when the front door opened and Rose came out.

She walked over, bent down in front of me, and reached out as if to help me up.

"Sis, get up, come on. The ground's so cold, you'll hurt the baby."

"Auntie just has a quick temper. Deep down she still cares about you."

"Just apologize to her, and"

I flung her hand off and stared at the slight swell of her stomach, my teeth clenched. "Rose. The core bid documents from Dad's factory. You stole them and handed them to Bertram, didn't you?"

"Last month you said you wanted to learn the procurement process, and you got the whole file from Dad. Right after that they lost their biggest client. That was you, wasn't it!"

Rose's eyes reddened instantly, her whole face crumpling with hurt. "Sis, how can you think that of me?"

"How could I ever hurt Dad? How can you slander me like"

I cut her off, my voice rising. "Nobody but you had access to Dad's financial statements and client lists."

"Rose, taking my husband, fine. But why would you destroy Dad's life's work?"

That was when Bertram came out of the house.

He frowned, his face full of impatience as he snapped at me. "Vera Fox, are you done making a scene?"

"I told Rose to take the bid. And I'm the one who took the client."

"The Fox factory is behind on technology and a mess to run. It was going under sooner or later. Me taking it over lets your adoptive father save some face."

I stared at him, shaking all over, unable to believe it. "Bertram, that's my father, the man who raised me. How can you do this to him?"

He said it casually. "So what?"

"Rose has bad morning sickness lately. She's been in a low mood."

"Your adoptive father calls you every day and stresses you out, so you go around with a long face, and it makes Rose uncomfortable to see."

I was so angry my belly began to cramp. "So for her comfort, you'd destroy my dad's entire life's work?"

"Bertram, how can your heart be this cruel!"

Rose leaned into Bertram's arms and sobbed, forcing the fragile act. "Bertram, it's all my fault."

"It's only right that Sis hates me. Maybe I should just go, so I don't come between you two."

Bertram comforted her gently. "Don't talk nonsense. You're not the one who should be leaving."

He turned his head toward me and spoke coldly. "Vera Fox, I'll say this one last time. Get rid of the child."

"Rose is the one I'm going to spend my life with, and she's carrying my child too. I won't have my child born with a bastard's name."

"Sign the divorce papers and I'll give you a hundred thousand. That's more than enough to keep you and that adoptive father of yours fed for the rest of your lives."

I was shaking with rage. "In your dreams!"

"This is my child. You don't get to decide whether he lives or dies!"

"Bertram, you'll pay for this!"

At that moment, Rose let out a sharp scream, her foot slipped, and she pitched toward me.

Before I could react, May shoved me hard and screamed, "You vicious woman, how dare you push Rose!"

"If anything happens to the baby in her belly, I'll have your life!"

My legs were already numb from kneeling, and the shove sent me tipping backward.

My lower back slammed against the cold stone steps, and a tearing pain ripped through my belly.

I curled up on the ground and reached for the hem of Bertram's pants, my voice trembling with pain. "It hurts, my baby!"

"Bertram, save the baby, save our baby..."

He only stepped back, pulling his hand away from me in disgust, then turned and lifted Rose, who was pretending to be shaken.

"Don't make a scene at the door. It's bad luck."

That was all he said before he carried Rose inside the mansion.

As my mind blurred, I thought I heard the security guards cry out, someone calling for an ambulance.

...

When I woke, I was in an old public hospital out in the suburbs.

The smell of antiseptic stung my nose. I was alone in the room, an IV needle taped to the back of my hand, my belly empty and aching until it went numb.

A nurse came in to change the IV bag, saw that I was awake, and sighed. "You're finally awake."

"When they brought you in, you were hemorrhaging. We almost lost you."

"We couldn't save the baby. The guard who brought you already left. Where's your family? Why has no one come to look after you?"

Family?

My husband, my mother-in-law, both of them were probably fussing over Rose right now.

The door swung open.

Bertram walked in frowning, as if the air in here were filthy.

He tossed a document onto the nightstand and said coldly, "This is the divorce agreement. Take a look."

"The house and the car are my premarital property. You leave with nothing."

"For the sake of what we had, I'll give you twenty thousand for your recovery. Sign it and I'll have finance wire it to you."

I looked at him as if seeing this man for the first time.

"Bertram, our baby is gone."

"He was five months along. You feel nothing at all?"

He said impatiently, "I never planned on keeping it anyway. What's there to feel?"

"Rose said she doesn't want to become a stepmother the moment she walks in the door."

"Vera, be smart and sign. Don't make me send my lawyers. By then you won't get twenty thousand. You won't get a cent."

I stared at him and forced down the grief and fury. "When you married me, what was it really for?"

He gave a contemptuous laugh. "If you hadn't been a match back then, if you hadn't been willing to give me a kidney, do you think you'd ever have made it through the Gilbert family's door?"

Three years ago, he told me he'd been diagnosed with kidney failure, late-stage, and I was the only match.

He knelt in front of me and cried, said he didn't want to die, said he wanted to spend his whole life with me.

I hid it from my adoptive father and quietly went to the hospital to have a kidney removed for him.

I spent most of a year recovering afterward. My body was never the same, and he still held me and said he'd be good to me forever.

So he had never loved me.

So all this time it had been my own foolish, one-sided love.

Bertram sneered. "You didn't actually think I married you because I loved you, did you?"

"A kidney for a ticket to being Mrs. Gilbert. You came out ahead."

"Sign it now. I don't have time to waste on you here."

Three years of tender days flashed through my mind like a film.

So all that gentleness, all those vows, had been an act.

I was a joke, nothing but a tool that supplied a kidney.

I said through gritted teeth, "Bertram, you'll regret this."

He laughed with contempt. "Regret?"

"Vera, you have nothing now. Your father's factory is about to go bankrupt. You can't even pay your own hospital bill."

"What do you have to fight me with? I've been generous, and this is how you repay me?"

"You have three days. Sign the divorce papers."

"Or I'll have the court summons delivered right to your father's bedside. Let's see whether he can survive the shock."

With that, he turned and left, the door slamming shut behind him.

I lay on the cold hospital bed, tears streaming down.

The baby gone, the marriage gone, my father's factory gone. I'd even given him a kidney, and this was what it bought me.

What was the point of living?

In that moment, I wanted to end this wretched life of mine.

Just as I gave up on everything and moved to jump from the window, the door opened again.

A group of bodyguards in black suits walked in, led by an old man with graying hair.

The moment he saw me, his eyes went red, and his voice broke. "Miss... this old servant has finally found you!"

I froze for a second, then asked without thinking, "Who are you people?"

The old man spoke respectfully. "My name is Joshua James. I'm the butler of the Henson Group."

"We've searched for you for twenty-three years. Today we've finally found you."

I was still lost. "The Henson Group?"

"I don't know any Henson family. Are you sure you haven't got the wrong person?"

Joshua took out a photo of my birth parents when they were young. Looking at it, I could see that my mother and I had looked exactly alike at that age.

But what mattered most was this: Joshua had already found me days ago.

He had followed me to the hospital for my prenatal checkup, and while I wasn't looking, he'd plucked a few strands of my hair and run a paternity test.

"Miss Henson, this is the DNA report. Your blood match with the chairman is 99.99 percent."

"On the back of your neck, on the left side, isn't there a small, faint-red mole?"

A shock went through me, and my hand went to the back of my neck.

That mole was tiny and hidden. No one but me knew it was there.

My eyes stung, and my voice shook. "My birth parents. Where are they now?"

Joshua's face turned bitter. "The moment madam gave birth to you, someone stole you away."

"She searched for you for years, wore herself down, and passed away ten years ago."

"The chairman never stopped looking for you all these years. His health is poor now, and he lives at a private care facility. When he heard we'd found you, he was so overcome he couldn't sleep all night. He sent me ahead to bring you home."

The tears fell without my permission. So I wasn't a child no one wanted.

Joshua looked at me with aching sympathy. "Miss Henson, all these years, you've suffered."

"We learned you married Bertram Gilbert of the Gilbert Group, and that you donated a kidney to him. We pulled the surgical records from back then, and we found something."

Uneasiness rose in me for no clear reason. I asked, "Found what?"

Joshua's expression darkened. "The kidney you donated back then was never transplanted into Bertram Gilbert at all."

"That private hospital is owned by the Henson Group. We went through every surgical file."

"After your kidney was removed, it was wheeled into another operating room that same day and transplanted into a woman named Rose Fox."

"Bertram Gilbert's kidney function was normal the whole time. He never had kidney failure at all."

My eyes went wide, and for a long moment I couldn't take it in.

My voice trembled. "That's impossible!"

"He showed me the diagnosis back then, and the doctor told me..."

Joshua handed me a stack of documents and said in a low voice, "All of it was fake."

"These are the surgical records from that time, Rose Fox's kidney-failure medical file, and the transfer records between Bertram Gilbert and the hospital director."

"Rose Fox was in the late stage of kidney failure back then and desperately needed a donor. You happened to be a match."

"So Bertram Gilbert made up the lie that he was sick, and tricked you into donating your kidney."

I looked at the surgical record in my hands. The recipient's name was written there plainly: Rose Fox.

So it had been a scam from the very start.

The day Bertram Gilbert knelt in front of me, crying and begging me to save him, what he was really thinking about was how to carve my kidney out for the woman he loved.

Like a fool, I had loved him with everything in me for three years.

My child was gone. My kidney was gone. My adoptive father's factory...

All of it destroyed in their hands.

This debt, I would make them pay back a thousand times over.

The next week I spent recovering at the hospital while going through the files Joshua had brought me on the Gilberts.

The Gilbert Group looked impressive from the outside, but it had been hollow for a long time.

In the few years since Bertram took over, his investments had lost a great deal of money, and he'd been keeping the company afloat by robbing one account to fill another.

The West End project was their last lifeline. If they failed to land it, the cash flow could snap at any moment.

Friday night, the Platinum Grand Hotel blazed with light.

Inside the ballroom, glasses clinked and drinks flowed.

Champagne in hand, I spotted Rose in the crowd almost at once.

She wore a white evening gown, holding a glass and chatting with a few of the wives. On her left wrist, that clear jade bangle stood out sharply.

Every so often she lifted her hand, showing off the bangle on purpose, soaking up the envious looks around her.

"Rose, that bangle of yours is gorgeous. That's top-grade jade, isn't it? Must have cost a fortune," one of the wives asked, smiling.

Rose pressed her lips into a smile and stroked the bangle with a coy little air. "It's a love token from Bertram. He said it's an antique passed down from way back. I don't really know how much it cost."

"He's so thoughtful. He knows I like this kind of thing, so he bid on it specially just for me."

Another wife said enviously, "Oh my, Mr. Gilbert really is good to you."

Rose answered, her whole face sweet, "Of course. Bertram says one day I'll be helping him run the Gilbert Group right alongside him!"

She was still talking when she caught sight of me standing in the doorway, and the smile froze on her face.

She'd probably assumed I was still lying in a hospital out in the suburbs. She never imagined I'd turn up at a top-tier gala like this.

Bertram saw me too, and his brow drew together at once.

He came striding over, his face ugly, and lowered his voice. "Vera, what are you doing here?"

"Who let you in? Get out, now. Don't stand here embarrassing yourself."

"Mr. Gilbert," I said coldly, "is this gala being thrown by your family? You're allowed to come but I'm not?"

His face darkened. "I'm warning you. Don't make a scene here."

"Everyone here tonight is somebody important. If you dare cause trouble, I'll make sure you regret it."

I gave a cold smile. "I'd love to see exactly how Mr. Gilbert plans to make me regret it."

Just then Rose came over too.

She put on a gentle face. "Sis, why are you here? Are you out of money?"

"If you're short on cash, all you have to do is say so. There's no need to come to a place like this. It would be awful if someone took you for a con artist."

I narrowed my eyes at her wrist and said, my voice cold, "That bangle on your wrist is quite pretty."

"Only, do you know there are two words carved on the inside of it? 'Autumn Clear.' That happens to be our adoptive mother's name."

"Mom gave me that bangle on her deathbed. And you're standing here saying Bertram bought it for you. Isn't that a little shameless?"

Rose went pale in an instant, and her hand slid instinctively behind her back. "What are you talking about?"

"This was a gift from Bertram. Why would someone else's name be carved on it?"

I said it clearly, for the room to hear. "Then why don't you take it off and check?"

"If there's nothing, I'll apologize on the spot. If there is, then in front of everyone you return the bangle to me and apologize. How about that?"

Hearing the commotion, people gathered around, watching us with curiosity.

Rose was flustered, clutching the bangle tightly, not daring to take it off.

Of course she knew there was writing on the inside. She'd just thought no one knew, and never dreamed I'd bring it up in front of a crowd.

Rose put on her frail, pitiful look. "Sis, why would you slander me like this?"

Bertram stepped in front of her at once and snapped at me, "Vera, haven't you made enough of a scene?"

I smiled coldly. "This bangle is my adoptive mother's keepsake. She handed it to me before she died. Rose stole what was mine. So who exactly is the one being shameful here?"

Rose panicked. "Who are you calling a thief?"

"This was a gift from Bertram. That makes it mine!"

I took out my phone, pulled up an image, and held it up for everyone to see. "This is a photo of me wearing the bangle on my wedding day. It was taken three years ago."

"You told Bertram he recently bid on this bangle and gave it to you. So tell me, how is it that the one I was wearing three years ago and the one on your wrist look exactly the same?"

The crowd immediately broke into whispers.

"So it was stolen?"

"She looks like such an innocent young thing. How could she do something like that?"

"What's going on with Mr. Gilbert? He gives a love token and it turns out to be stolen?"

Rose grew more panicked, looking to Bertram for help.

Bertram hadn't expected me to produce a photo either, and for a moment he had nothing to say.

At that moment, the host of the gala stepped up onto the stage and said with a smile, "Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we are honored to have with us the young heiress of the Henson Group."

"And now, please welcome Miss Vera Henson of the Henson Group to say a few words to us."

The spotlight swung onto me in an instant.

The whole room fell silent, every gaze fixed on me.

Bertram and Rose looked even more stunned, staring at me in a daze.