He Gave My Ambulance to the Fake Heiress While I Was in Labor

### Chapter 1

On my due date, with a dull ache spreading through my belly, I was about to lie down on the ambulance stretcher when my husband dragged me to the curb and hailed me a ride-share instead.

"You've just got a stomachache. It doesn't mean the baby's coming today. Maya Abbott's finally getting her chance to experience 'being a mother.' Let her go first."

I stared at him, unable to believe it.

Austin Yates didn't even furrow his brow.

"You know Maya's uterine wall is thin. She may never be able to carry a child her whole life."

"I already promised her. I'd see her through the whole experience of having a baby."

I felt warm liquid running down the inside of my thigh. When I spoke, my voice had gone hoarse. "Austin, my water just broke!"

He sighed and looked at me the way you'd scold a child who didn't know any better.

"Don't scare yourself. This is Maya's one wish. You're her older sister. Would it kill you to let her have it? Once she's done, there's plenty of time for you to deliver."

Then he tossed down ten dollars of cab fare and lifted the fake heiress, Maya, into the ambulance.

I watched the ambulance scream off into the distance, and then a contraction hit and I doubled over from the pain.

I got lost at six, and my parents took in Maya, two years younger than me. Ten years later, the Fox family found me and brought me back, but the real daughter never once got treated as well as the fake one.

The biggest, sunniest room? My mother said Maya was delicate and had me give it up to her.

My brother's luxury cars, worth millions? Because Maya got carsick, the front passenger seat was always hers, and only hers.

The day of my engagement banquet happened to be her birthday, and my fiancé skipped the entire thing to keep her company.

And now, with a single "trouble conceiving," even as I was half dead from the pain, I was supposed to hand over my chance to "have a baby" to her first.

The ride-share driver ran three red lights getting me to the hospital. A nurse rushed me into the delivery room, glancing around, confused.

"Ma'am, where's the baby's father?"

What surfaced in my mind was Austin, gently stroking Maya's fake pregnant belly. I answered calmly.

"He just died."

A secondhand father like that, my child doesn't need.

...

The fluorescent light overhead went even paler in that instant, and the nurse froze.

Then she gave me a look full of pity. "Your husband is surely watching over you and the baby from heaven."

The contractions sharpened, and I screamed and clenched fistfuls of the sheet.

Through the pain, what rose up before me was the day I confirmed I was pregnant, Austin with his eyes gone red, holding me and crying with joy. The scene was still vivid.

When the painkiller went in, my whole body was shaking, and I couldn't tell if it was the cold or the pain.

I walked through the gates of death, and only then did I bring my daughter into the world.

Weak beyond words, I was moved into a hospital room, where the voices of other patients' families drifted in from the hallway.

"Did you hear? The CEO of Yates Group pulled every OB specialist in the hospital away to give his girlfriend a 'birth experience.' He even hired postpartum care and a nutritionist. He's spoiling her more than if she were actually having a baby!"

"Mr. Yates really is a good boyfriend. Other men should take notes."

The hand feeding my daughter went still.

The voices kept seeping in, finding every crack.

"Right? Yesterday I saw a pregnant woman come in on a ride-share, all by herself. There was only an intern doctor left for her. She screamed a whole day and night before the baby came. Isn't that pitiful?"

No wonder the doctor who delivered me had been so clumsy, botching the instruments until I was hemorrhaging below, slipping in and out of consciousness.

So it turned out it was only because he'd pulled all the doctors away and given them to Maya.

My vision blurred, and I wiped the tears away as fast as they came.

I looked down at my daughter curled against me, rubbed her soft little cheek, and something inside me settled into a decision.

I picked up the phone by my pillow, about to make a call.

A message from Austin popped up, relentless as a death summons.

"Don't rush to have the baby. Maya's still going through her 'difficult labor.'"

"If you deliver too early, the OB doctors won't be able to keep up, and it'll ruin Maya's experience."

"Oh, and don't tell anyone you're my wife. If people find out Maya isn't my girlfriend, her reputation will be destroyed."

Staring at these absurd words, I laughed until the tears came.

He really had outdone himself.

For Maya, he could actually bring himself to say "don't rush to have the baby."

He wanted me to accommodate her difficult-labor experience, her emotional pacing, her precious reputation.

But when he handed her my quota of anesthetic, he never once thought about whether I'd have a hard labor, whether I'd be in pain.

When he worried about her being talked about, he never once thought his own child would be called a "bastard."

Austin, take your time seeing her through the birth.

I won't be joining you.

I opened my contacts and dialed my lawyer friend.

"Zoey , I want a divorce. Please help me prepare the papers."