Chapter 1 - The Confession Between Contractions
Nathan bent over the hospital bed just as the next contraction seized Evelyn Cross from the inside.
Cold sweat ran down her neck. She gripped the sheet with both hands and tried to breathe through the pain.
“Wait until after I give birth,” she said.
He did not wait.
“Evelyn, I’ve told you three lies. I need to come clean.”
She turned toward him, thinking he was about to confess another financial problem, another bill he had hidden, another “small stress” he had decided she didn’t need to know.
Instead he said, “When we did IVF, I switched your eggs with Diana’s. She has a heart condition and pregnancy was too risky, so I borrowed your womb.”
For a second the room vanished. There was only the monitor, the tightening in her abdomen, and the strange calm on his face.
Her palm cracked across his cheek before she could think.
“That baby belongs to Diana,” he said coldly, catching her wrist as another contraction bent her forward. “Not you.”
Pain folded her over. Nathan caught her and forced her back against the pillows.
“I only borrowed your womb.”
Evelyn clawed at his wrist, gasping. “You trapped me here to confess.”
He gripped the bed rail so hard his knuckles whitened.
“Deliver her child,” he said quietly, “then disappear.”
The sentence was so monstrous that it almost sounded rehearsed.
Then, just as suddenly, Evelyn went still. She slid one trembling finger beneath his wedding ring and pulled it away from his skin.
Nathan froze.
He wasn’t frightened because she had hit him.
He was frightened because she had stopped pleading.
At the door, a labor nurse paused, hearing the silence that had followed too much pain.
May you like
Evelyn looked at her husband and understood the question that would decide everything that came next.
How long had he been planning to remove her from her own child’s life?
