Married Seven Years, He Used My Number for His Mistress's Prenatal File

Nigel Delgado and I loved each other with a kind of madness. The whole circle knew our story, the tale of two people, a lunatic and an obsessive.

Some woman asked him for his number, so I smashed his phone.

A stranger sent me flowers, and he gripped my throat and told me I would have only one man for the rest of my life, and that man was him.

We slapped each other, we cut each other, and in the end we still walked down the aisle.

On our seventh wedding anniversary, I sat clutching a fresh pregnancy test result, waiting for Nigel to come home.

By the next morning, he still hadn't shown up.

Instead, the call that came in was from the hospital, the obstetrics department.

"Am I speaking with a family member of Mr. Nigel Delgado?"

"Would you mind coming down to obstetrics when you have a moment? Mr. Delgado came in yesterday with his partner to register for prenatal care and left her maternity handbook here. The family contact number from his earlier physical is yours, so please remember to come pick it up."

My fingers tightened hard around the test result.

I didn't cry. I didn't call Nigel to demand an explanation.

I shoved the result into the back of a drawer, then sent a message to my lawyer:

"Pull together all of Nigel's private transfer records from the past year and send them to me."

How interesting.

He set up a prenatal file for his mistress and filled in my phone number.

Then I'd better make sure the cleanup is done properly.

I grabbed my car keys and headed out.

My best friend's call came through, her voice frantic.

"Alma Pruitt, Nigel taking his mistress in to register a prenatal file is all over the circle! Do you know how far along she is? Twelve weeks! Three whole months!"

"He was so insanely in love with you back then. I never would've guessed a man like that would cheat too. You really do live and learn. Men are all the same after all!"

I started the car. The wipers dragged across the glass.

"Just found out."

"Go tear that woman's face off right now! A slut like that needs to be taught a lesson!"

I pressed the gas, my voice level.

"Tear her up? That's letting her off too easy."

She went quiet a beat.

"Then what are you going to do?"

"Seven years ago I could pull him back from the gates of death. Now I can send him straight down to the deepest pit of hell."

When I got to the hospital, the nurse handed the things over, still chattering.

"Mr. Delgado called specifically to tell us he and his partner would come get it themselves. How come it's you instead?"

I took the bag and said nothing.

I opened to the first page.

Name: Paige Fox.

Twelve weeks pregnant.

Family signature: Nigel Delgado.

Relationship: Spouse.

My fingertip traced those two words, and I let out a short laugh.

Twelve weeks.

Count the days, and that landed exactly three months back, the month he knelt in front of me, slapped his own face, and swore up and down that there was nothing between them.

I put the things away and turned to leave.

I'd barely reached the hospital entrance when I walked straight into Nigel.

He was holding a black umbrella, Paige pressed close against his side.

The girl wore a white dress, one hand cradling her belly, like a white lotus that would shatter at a touch.

The moment she saw me, Paige panicked and shrank behind him.

Nigel froze too, his brow snapping into a knot.

"What are you doing here?"

I lifted the things in my hand, my tone flat.

"Picking up what you and your partner left behind. The hospital's very considerate, even knew to call the family member."

Paige went white in an instant and tugged at Nigel's sleeve.

"Nigel, I'm sorry, it's all my fault for being careless..."

Nigel shielded her behind him, a naked warning in his eyes.

"We'll talk about this at home. Don't make a scene here."

I smiled.

"When you were cheating, setting up a prenatal file for your mistress and writing down my phone number, you didn't feel like it was making a scene?"

People were drifting over now, gathering to watch.

Nigel's face darkened. He reached out and clamped my wrist.

"You're coming with me. Don't lose your mind out here!"

I shook his hand off and stepped back.

"Don't touch me. You're filthy."

The rain came down harder, and the three of us stood frozen at the hospital entrance.

Paige's tears came on cue.

"Please don't be angry at Nigel over this. It's all my fault. I wanted to get rid of it, but Nigel wouldn't let me..."

"I know I had no right to come between you two, but I couldn't stop my own heart..."

As she spoke, she swayed, as if she might faint in the next second.

Nigel reached out at once and caught her against him.

"It's not your fault. Don't cry, you'll upset the baby."

Then he turned and glared at me.

"Look at yourself right now. Bitter, mean. You're acting like a shrew."

"Paige is gentle and sensible. She's more of a woman than you'll ever be."

Something drove into my chest like a dull blade.

Seven years ago, at this same hospital.

He'd been in a car accident. Ruptured spleen, massive internal bleeding.

His parents thought his business was nothing but losses, and refused to cover even the surgery fees.

I was the one who sold the house my parents left me and scraped together the thirty thousand for the operation.

I kept watch outside the ICU for seven days and seven nights, never letting myself close my eyes.

When he woke, he gripped my hand and said,

"If I, Nigel Delgado, ever wrong you in this life, may I be struck down."

I sniffed and pushed the feeling back down.

"Back when your business failed and they cornered you in that alley, I picked up a knife and scared them off for you. Where was all this 'you're not a woman' talk then?"

Something flickered in his eyes, close to panic, and then he hardened again.

"I haven't forgotten any of that. But this is different."

"Paige is carrying my child. I can't just abandon her."

I nodded and let out a laugh.

"Fine. Go ahead, take care of her."

"Tomorrow morning, nine o'clock, the company conference room. We're getting divorced."

"The shares, the assets, we'll settle it all, line by line."

With that, I threw the things in my hand at him and turned to leave.

Behind me came Paige's crying.

"Please don't divorce Nigel. I'll leave, that's all..."

Nigel's voice came edged with fury.

"Alma! You just try filing for divorce! I've told you before, in this life I'll be a widower before I'll be divorced!"

I didn't look back.

I poured it all out to my best friend for most of the night, and it was already one in the morning by the time I got home.

The living room light was on.

Nigel sat on the couch, reeking of liquor, his tie yanked crooked.

"You're really going to push this all the way to divorce?"

I took off my coat and dropped it in the laundry basket.

"What else? Stay here and be a stepmother to you and your mistress's kid?"

He shot to his feet, crossed to me, and gripped my shoulders hard.

"Alma, I'll say this one last time. I'll figure something out about the child, but there will be no divorce."

"The position of Mrs. Delgado is yours forever. No one can take it from you."

I laughed out loud.

"Watching you cozy up to another woman, watching her kid call you Daddy. This Mrs. Delgado title is just for show."

He stared at me, and in his eyes was that obsession I knew too well.

For seven years, he'd always been like this.

Once he decided something was his, he'd never let go, even if it rotted in his hands.

"Can't you just settle down? Turn a blind eye and life goes on. We got through so much worse before, so why can't you stand it now?"

I lifted my left hand and showed him the pale brown scar on the back of it.

"I put up with it for half a year. Now she's even pregnant, so how much longer am I supposed to endure? Until she walks right in and lords it over me?"

"How I got this scar, I won't forget until the day I die."

That day was the company gala.

Paige had been with the firm less than a month when she deliberately tore up a contract worth ten million dollars.

Then she turned around and, in tears, told Nigel it was because she envied me, that she'd destroyed the contract in a fit of anger.

Nigel didn't ask me a single question.

In front of the entire company, hundreds of people, he pointed at my face and called me vicious.

I was so furious I raised my hand and slapped him.

He froze for two seconds, then slapped me back.

The blow landed hard, and my lip split open at once.

Paige came over pretending to help me up, but her hand shoved me, hard.

I lost my footing and fell backward, my hand coming down right on a utility knife lying on the table.

The blade sliced open Paige's arm, and blood welled up instantly.

She screamed, collapsed into Nigel's arms, and wept like a wilting flower.

Nigel's eyes went red. He grabbed the cigarette still burning in his hand and pressed it into the back of mine.

The hiss cut clearly through the silent office.

Flesh scorched, and the pain left me shaking all over.

He stared at me and warned me, word by word:

"You lay another finger on her, and I'll ruin you."

That night, I sat on the couch until morning.

The blister on the back of my hand had burst, oozing pus, the pain boring straight to the bone.

He didn't come home.

The next day, he knelt in front of me and apologized.

His eyes rimmed red, slapping himself again and again.

He said he'd acted on impulse, said I was the only one in his heart.

I didn't believe him, so he held a knife to his own wrist.

He pressed down slightly, and blood beaded up along the cut in an instant.

I thought of how he'd sworn to me seven years ago, lying half-dead in that hospital bed.

And in the end, I softened again.

Thinking back on it now, it's almost laughable.

A soft heart, given to the wrong person, is just a knife you drive into yourself.

Nigel's gaze fell on the back of my hand, and his voice went a little softer:

"I was wrong that day. I already apologized to you. And you cut Paige too, so we're even."

I could have laughed in his face.

"Even?"

"She started it, she pushed me first. Mine was an accident. And you? You did it on purpose."

He frowned, impatient, and reached out to touch my face.

"It's all in the past. Stop clinging to it."

"Paige is pregnant now. She can't handle any stress. Stop giving her trouble from now on. Just be a proper Mrs. Delgado. Would that be so bad?"

I turned my head away from his hand, sick to my stomach.

"And if I insist on giving her trouble?"

His eyes cooled, degree by degree, until he was that cruel man again.

"Alma, don't push me. You know what I'm capable of."

Of course I knew.

He'd built everything from nothing, ruthless, capable of anything.

Before, all that ruthlessness had been aimed at outsiders.

Now it was all pointed at me.

I didn't argue with him anymore. I turned, went into the bedroom, and locked the door behind me.

I rested my hand lightly on my stomach.

There was a small life in there.

I'd meant to surprise him with it on our seventh anniversary.

Now it looked more like a nightmare.

I took out my phone and messaged my lawyer:

"Dig up everything on Paige Fox. And find out exactly how much money Nigel has transferred to her these past six months, how much property he's bought her. Don't miss a single item."

After sending it, I deleted every message that had anything to do with my prenatal checkups.

This child, no one could be allowed to know.

The next morning, I arrived at the conference room right on time.

Nigel was already there, the pressure coming off him frightening.

Paige sat beside him.

Her face pale, the picture of someone too frail to stand.

When she saw me come in, she called out timidly:

"Alma."

I ignored her and tossed a stack of documents onto the table.

"Divorce agreement, plus the plan for dividing the shares. Take a look."

"I hold forty percent of the original stock. The company's appreciated over these years, so by market value, either you pay me in cash or I sell off my shares."

Nigel flipped through two pages, then slammed the documents down. Papers scattered across the floor.

"You really have to take it this far?"

I pulled out a chair and sat down.

"I built this company with you from nothing, went through all the bloodshed of the business world at your side, and now you get another woman pregnant and expect me to walk away with nothing?"

"There's no such thing as that."

Paige's eyes reddened. She stood and bowed to me.

"Alma, it's all my fault. Don't blame Nigel. I can get rid of the baby. I'll leave right away. Please, don't divorce him..."

As she spoke, she started to sway again, looking like she might faint at any second.

Nigel reached out to steady her, and when he turned to me, all that was left in his eyes was ice.

"You won't be satisfied until she's dead?"

I let out a scoff and leaned back in my chair.

"I didn't force her into anything. She chose her own path, and those were her own words."

He got Paige settled, then walked over to me.

"I've said it before. Nigel Delgado doesn't get divorced in this life. He only gets widowed."

"You want to walk out of this home? Only over my dead body."

The words had barely left his mouth when his phone buzzed.

It was a call from a business partner.

He frowned and answered.

Before he left, he shot me a vicious glare.

"You stay put. Touch her once and I won't let it go."

The door closed, and it was just me and Paige left in the conference room.

The woman who'd looked too frail to stand a moment ago dropped the act instantly.

"Alma, you made a bet and you lost. Stop wasting your energy."

I said nothing.

She leaned in closer and murmured:

"You're too domineering. You have to win at everything. What man can stand that? Whatever you did for him seven years ago wore off a long time ago."

"You think he won't divorce you because he loves you? It's because you're capable. You can help him run the company, you can be his free business partner."

"But the softness, the comfort, only I can give him that."

She stroked her stomach, her smile turning smugger.

"Once this baby is born, the position of Mrs. Delgado will be mine sooner or later."

"You? You can just hold on to your empty title and wither into a worn-out old wife."

Seven years of surviving life and death together, and in her mouth it was worth nothing.

I shot to my feet and slapped her across the face.

"You don't get to lecture me!"

Her head snapped to the side, blood beading at the corner of her mouth.

She twisted her lips at me in something like a smile.

Then her body tilted, and she fell straight backward.

A heavy thud.

The back of her head cracked against the conference table.

Almost in the same instant, the door swung open.

Nigel, back from his call.

One look at Paige on the floor, and at my hand still hanging in the air.

The air froze solid.

He rushed over and gathered Paige up.

When he looked at me again, the fury in his eyes could have burned me to ash.

"Alma, have you lost your mind!"

"I told you not to touch her! Do you not understand plain words!"

I watched him rage, and I laughed.

"She threw herself at me to get hit. You'd believe that, wouldn't you?"

His chest heaved.

"Do you take me for a fool? Six months ago you already stabbed her once, and now you want to kill two lives at once. Alma, you've disappointed me too much!"

Paige reached up and grabbed his collar, her voice faint.

"Nigel, don't blame her. She just loves you too much..."

"Don't talk!"

Nigel snapped down at her, and even the scolding couldn't hide how much it hurt him.

"This is love? She's trying to drive me into the ground!"

"Alma, seven years, and you can't lower your head even once? You have to fight me over every single thing, turn our life into chaos before you're satisfied?"

I looked at him and only found it absurd.

"When the debt collectors were blocking our door, I was the one who charged them with a bottle in my hand. When the company was about to fold, I was the one who went client to client begging them to stay."

"Now that your life is good, you find me not gentle enough. Why don't you ask yourself, if I didn't have this backbone, where would today's good life come from?"

He stalled for a moment, then the anger surged back up.

"That's a separate matter. What we're talking about now is Paige!"

"She's carrying my child. Can't you just bear with it a little?"

I laughed until tears came.

"There's no such word as 'bear it' in my dictionary."

"This divorce, I'm getting it."

"You wouldn't dare!"

He growled low and locked his hand around my wrist.

"I'll say it one more time. There will be no divorce. Today you're going to apologize to Paige!"

"I won't."

"If anyone's apologizing, it's her apologizing to me. Apologizing for the scar on the back of my hand"

I didn't finish. He threw my arm off.

I stumbled back several steps, my forehead slamming into the file cabinet.

Pain exploded.

Warm blood ran down my neck.

My vision blacked out, and I nearly dropped to the floor.

My lower belly started to ache, faint and deep.

He saw the blood on my face and panicked for an instant.

He started toward me.

Then Paige cried out in pain behind him.

"Nigel... my stomach hurts so much..."

He pulled his hand back at once, and his eyes went cold again.

"You brought this on yourself."

"Sit here and think about what you've done. Whenever you come to your senses, whenever you apologize to Paige, I'll come home."

With that, he scooped Paige up, turned, and walked out.

His footsteps faded away.

The huge conference room, and only me left in it.

The blood was still running, the dragging pain in my belly coming in waves, each one stronger than the last.

But I, Alma Pruitt, have never once in my life been the type to take it lying down.

He should have understood that seven years ago.

I lifted a hand and wiped the blood away, took a deep breath, and forced the pain down.

Opened the door and walked straight for the elevator.

Down in the underground parking garage, I spotted Nigel's Maybach from a distance.

He was easing Paige carefully into the passenger seat, bending down to buckle her seatbelt.

I turned and walked to my own car.

Pulled the door open, got in, started the engine.

My chest felt like something had been ripped open in it, cold wind howling straight through the hole.

If nobody wanted to live decently anymore.

Then nobody was going to live well.

The second the dashboard lit up, I floored the gas.

The car shot out like an arrow.

The Maybach had just pulled out of its spot.

I wrenched the wheel, aiming my front end at his rear.

"BANG!"

A deafening crash.

The impact rocked the whole car.

Paige screamed, her forehead striking the center console.

I gripped the wheel, a cold smile pulling at my mouth.

The next second the Maybach door was kicked open.

Nigel came striding over and slammed a fist against my window.

"Get out here!"

I unbuckled and pushed my door open.

"What? Aching for her already?"

"The way you shield her makes me sick."

"You're insane!"

He seized my hair and shoved my face against the cracked window.

"She's still pregnant. Are you trying to kill someone!"

The glass shattered on contact.

Sharp shards sprayed across my face.

The skin on my cheeks split open in several places, blood blurring my vision at once.

I didn't cry out. I only laughed harder.

"She's carrying your seed. Mine isn't?"

Nigel went rigid.

The hand in my hair loosened.

"What did you say?"

I didn't answer.

From over there came Paige's sobbing.

"Nigel... I'm bleeding... my stomach hurts so much... will the baby be okay..."

Nigel didn't spare me another glance. He turned and ran back.

Yanked her door open, saw the blood between her legs.

The Maybach tore out of the garage like something possessed, straight for the hospital.

I leaned against the cold body of my car and slowly slid down to the ground.

Blood ran down the inside of my legs, spreading in a wide stain beneath me.

A tearing pain came from my lower belly.

Shaking, I dug out my phone.

Dialed 911, gave the address.

Then I pulled up my lawyer's number and called.

"File every appeal. Submit all the materials."

"I want them ruined. Every bit of them disgraced."

The voice on the other end answered at once.

"Understood. I'll set it up right away."

I hung up and threw the phone aside.

The sound of the ambulance came closer, from far to near.

The blood on my face had dried, but the wounds still ached down to the bone.

Seven years ago, I waited outside the ICU doors, praying for him to live.

Seven years later, I sat in a parking garage, praying for him to fall into hell.

How ironic.

The siren cut off. Footsteps came running this way.

I slowly closed my eyes, and lost consciousness completely.