The day I was due, my husband ordered the nurses to inject me with labor-delaying drugs for the third time.

Drenched in sweat, I begged him.

"Please, we can't wait any longer. The doctor said if we keep delaying, the baby's life will be in danger..."

Antony Gilbert's tone was ice-cold.

"I promised Betty that she would be the one to give me my firstborn."

"Only the eldest son of the Gilbert family is entitled to inherit the family's assets. Your child was conceived in wedlock. I'll take care of him his whole life."

"It's just a two-hour delay. He can handle that much."

Two hours later, my unborn child suffocated to death inside my womb.

Meanwhile, Antony was cradling the son Betty Henson had just delivered, the three of them together like a perfect little family.

When he learned my baby was gone, all he did was furrow his brow slightly. His voice softened a fraction.

"Take care of yourself. You can always have another one."

He held out a check.

"Ten million dollars. Consider it compensation."

I didn't move. I didn't take it.

What he didn't know was that there wouldn't be another one.

The child Antony had killed with his own hands was the only one he would ever have.

……

Seeing me motionless, still staring blankly out the window, Antony sighed and placed the check on the nightstand beside the hospital bed.

"Think it over."

"It's just a child. But I promise you, you're still Mrs. Gilbert."

I still said nothing.

Antony turned to leave. "If you don't want to talk, then get some rest."

I knew where he was going. The room next door.

To see the woman he'd always loved. Betty Henson. The one who'd just given birth.

We'd both just been through labor. My face was white as a corpse. Hers carried a delicate flush beneath her porcelain skin.

"Antony, come look at our son."

In that moment, Betty's gaze drifted toward me, triumphant and taunting. Her eyes said it all.

Lauren Fisher, you lost.

I tried to twist my lips into a bitter smile but found I didn't even have the strength for that.

It wasn't until something warm soaked through the sheets that I slowly looked down. A spreading pool of red.

"Nurse..."

My voice was barely a whisper.

Then I heard a nurse's panicked scream. "Doctor! Get in here! She's hemorrhaging!"

Maybe it was the drugs still working through my system.

My consciousness grew heavier and heavier.

Through the chaos of shouting voices, I felt myself being wheeled back into the emergency room.

"Mrs. Gilbert, stay with us! You can't fall asleep!"

But my eyelids were so heavy.

I drifted off into a haze and fell into a dream.

A nightmare.

I dreamed of the day of the delivery. Antony ordering the nurses to inject me again and again with labor-delaying drugs.

I lay collapsed on the delivery table, every ounce of strength wrung from my body, cold sweat soaking through the pad beneath me.

Hair plastered to my ashen face.

Every contraction felt like a dull blade twisting through my organs.

The nurse's face crumpled with guilt as she pleaded.

"Mr. Gilbert, we really can't give her any more."

"The dosage is already past the limit. If we keep going, it will cause serious harm to both the mother and the baby..."

The doctor administering the injection had gone pale too. He took a deep breath and turned to Antony.

"Mr. Gilbert, she's fully dilated. The fetal heart rate is dropping. If we inject another dose, the baby will suffocate. These are two lives we're talking about!"

Antony stood in the doorway of the delivery room, his thin lips pressed into a hard line. Three quiet words fell from his mouth.

"Keep going."

I used every last shred of strength to grab hold of him, desperate, pleading.

"This child is your own flesh and blood. The doctor said if we wait two more hours, he won't survive..."

I had been married to Antony for three years. Three years of being the dutiful Mrs. Gilbert, keeping my place, never making a fuss.

Even when I knew his heart had always belonged to Betty, I swallowed it in silence.

All I wanted was to bring this baby into the world.

I lowered myself as far as a person could go. For this child, I was willing to give up everything.

"Please... just let me deliver this baby. I'll hand everything else over to Betty!"

Antony looked down at me, his gaze cold and remote.

"As if it's yours to hand over."

"Everything Betty wants, I'll give her myself."

"I made her a promise. Only she would bear my firstborn."

His tone was flat, but every word cut like a blade.

"The eldest son of the Gilbert family inherits everything. Your child was conceived in wedlock. I'll give him the best life, provide for him for as long as he lives."

"It's only a two-hour delay. That small inconvenience is something my son can handle."

Handle?

That was a living, breathing life!

A tiny being who had spent ten months inside me, kicking me every day, responding to my voice.

My whole body shook with sobs. Pain and despair crashed over me like a tide, dragging me under.

The doctors and nurses watched me. Their eyes brimmed with sympathy, but not one of them dared defy Antony's orders.

The cold needle pierced my skin again.

The fluid crept into my veins. The contractions intensified violently, yet somehow I couldn't feel them anymore.

I stared at the ceiling with hollow eyes.

And I felt the movement inside me fade. Little by little.

From frantic thrashing, to feeble squirming, to nothing at all.

"No fetal heartbeat!"

The doctor's voice trembled. "The baby... there are no vital signs!"

In that moment, something inside me died too.

I couldn't tell if it was real or a dream. Voices swirled around me, urgent and frantic.

"Where's the family? Who here is Lauren Fisher's next of kin?"

"The patient is critical. She needs emergency surgery. We need a family member to sign the consent form!"

No one answered. No echo came back.

A young nurse nearby spoke up.

"I recognize her. Isn't she Mrs. Gilbert? Her husband is Antony Gilbert. He just went home to make bird's nest soup for the woman in Room 7."

Then, in the middle of all that chaos—

A calm, measured voice cut through.

"I'll sign."

The air went still.

The doctor looked up, confused. "And you are? What's your relation to the patient?"

"I'm her... older brother."

The paperwork was handled quickly after that.

I was wheeled back into the operating room for another emergency procedure.

But even after surgery, the doctors' faces remained grim.

"The patient's will to live is dangerously weak. The surgical outcome is far from ideal."

"Whether she wakes up depends entirely on her."

I knew.

I was the one who didn't want to live anymore.

But just as the last flicker of fight drained out of me, a man's voice reached me from somewhere above.

"Lauren Fisher. Are you really going to die like this? Quietly? Like a coward?"

"The people who killed you, who killed your child, are still out there. Living their lives without a care in the world."

"They'd be happy if you died. Happy you got out of the way. Is that really what you want? To give them exactly what they're hoping for?"

No.

I would not die like this.

I would avenge my child.

A nurse's startled cry rang out beside me.

"We have a pulse!"

"This is nothing short of a miracle."

I didn't know how much time had passed before I gradually regained consciousness.

My eyes fluttered open to a haze of doctors and nurses scrambling around me. There was no man anywhere in sight.

If fate had decided to give me back this life, then I would live it well. I stayed in the hospital and focused on recovering.

A full week passed.

Antony never came to see me, but every detail of my care was arranged impeccably. The housekeeper and the private nurse attended to my every need without missing a beat.

Every few days, I caught the nurses whispering excitedly when they thought I couldn't hear.

"That woman in VIP Room 7, Betty Henson? She really lucked out, having a husband like that."

"Please. She's not the wife. The one in Room 6 is the real Mrs. Gilbert. Haven't you heard? Betty's just his first love."

"He made his wife delay her delivery so his first love could give birth to the firstborn son. The whole hospital's been buzzing about it."

"If you ask me, marrying into money isn't all it's cracked up to be. End up with a man like that and you've got one foot in the grave."

"All the money in the world doesn't matter if you're not alive to spend it."

They noticed me lying there, expression calm, listening to every word.

The two young nurses cleared their throats, grabbed their medicine trays, and hurried out.

Through it all, I felt nothing. As if the baby who had died moments after being born wasn't mine at all.

Betty did come by once, baby in her arms, to gloat.

"Oh, sweetie, I never imagined your little one would have such a short life."

"And here I thought, since we were both pregnant at the same time and due on the same day, our boys could grow up together like brothers."

She cooed at me with that saccharine sympathy of hers.

"Oh, you probably don't know yet, do you? Antony already named my son. Michael Gilbert."

My head snapped up.

Michael.

There had been a time when Antony and I were happy together.

Back when the love between us still felt real, he had made me a promise.

"Michael. What do you think of that name?"

"When we have a child someday, boy or girl, we'll name them Michael."

I had been naive enough to believe that Antony and I would be happy forever.

Then his first love finalized her divorce abroad and came crawling back, destitute and desperate.

Antony lost himself completely. His entire heart latched onto her like a man possessed.

That was when I finally understood. All those countless times he had held me close and whispered "Lauren"... he had been saying "Betty."

Faced with Betty's taunting and her smug little show, my expression didn't change. I gave her one word.

"Congratulations."

The smile froze on her face.

Two weeks later, I was finally discharged. The first thing I did was go back to the Gilbert house.

Antony glanced up at me, utterly indifferent.

"I knew you'd come back."

"It's been over two weeks. You should be done being angry by now."

He bent down and tossed a check at my feet.

"This month's allowance."

"Buy whatever you want. Spend it however you like."

I didn't pick it up. My voice was flat.

"You already gave me one."

Antony raised an eyebrow.

"Last time was compensation for the baby. This one is for your living expenses."

A bitter smile tugged at my lips. "How generous of you, Mr. Gilbert."

It was always the same.

Whenever Antony knew he had wronged me, he threw a check at the problem.

Betty called him once while I was sick with a fever, and he shoved me out of his car on the freeway overpass. I walked three miles in bare feet until they were raw and blistered.

He gave me a check for a hundred thousand dollars.

I took the fall for Betty's crime, and the people who came for her dragged me away and beat me instead.

He gave me a check for five hundred thousand.