My Husband’s Bedmate Hurt My Daughter Chapter 02

My Husband’s Bedmate Hurt My Daughter Chapter 02

Elodie stared up at me, her little face full of fear.

I stroked her messy hair gently.

“Don’t be afraid, my love. No matter what went down, Mommy is always on your side.”

At first she only whimpered quietly, before she suddenly broke down, burying her face in my shoulder and crying uncontrollably.

Tears streamed down my own face too, but I held back my tears, afraid of scaring her more.

Once she’d cried herself partially exhausted, she stammered out the whole story between broken gasps.

“I was drawing in Daddy’s office. Our teacher told us to draw a picture of our family going on an outing together. I wanted to draw Mommy, Daddy, and me side by side.”

“Then I accidentally knocked over a photo sitting on Daddy’s desk.”

My throat tightened instantly.

“What photo, baby?”

“Elodie saw Daddy hugging the lady who slapped me.”

My fingertips clenched slowly with suppressed fury.

I rarely set foot inside his corporate building. I never wanted to interfere with Matteo running DeLuca Group. More than that, I had truly, sincerely trusted him once.

Six months prior, Matteo had abruptly fired his long-serving male executive assistant and promoted a fresh new graduate named Bianca straight into the critical president’s assistant role.

I’d questioned him about it back then.

“The president’s assistant is such a vital position—are you really comfortable handing it to someone so new out of school?”

His reply at the time had sounded reasonable enough.

“Young people deserve a shot to prove themselves. She’s sharp and picks up new work fast.”

I’d believed him.

After that, overnight, he started taking business trips far more frequently, coming home late most nights, and habitually flipping his phone face-down on every surface.

Work had never been the reason for his busyness. He’d been keeping his mistress hidden in the company I built for him.

I glanced back down at Elodie.

“What happened next?”

She continued talking through hiccuping sobs.

“I tried to go find Daddy. But that woman rushed over out of nowhere, slapped my face, and ordered me to kneel down and say sorry. I already told her I was sorry, but I didn’t want to get on my knees.”

“She grabbed me and forced me down onto the floor right on top of broken glass shards. It hurt so badly.”

“She called me a nasty little brat with a wicked mother, too. Said she was just teaching me a lesson for Daddy’s own good.”

“I tried to say I was going to get you, Mommy. That’s when she dragged me off and locked me inside the storage closet to make me think about what I’d done wrong.”

Elodie trembled from head to toe as she finished recounting the ordeal.

I squeezed my eyes shut tight, yet tears still spilled down my cheeks unchecked.

My daughter was only seven years old. She was terrified of the dark—at home, she never dared walk to the bathroom alone at night, always needing me to tag along beside her.

While I’d been tied up with my own work somewhere else, she’d been trapped alone in pitch-black confinement for over three hours.

I dared not think how scared she had been all that time.

I spoke in a low, strained voice.

“Did your Daddy know what she was doing to you?”

Elodie hesitated for a moment, then whispered weakly.

“Bianca was leading me toward the storage room when we ran into Daddy. She told him I’d been misbehaving and that she was disciplining me. And Daddy just nodded his head and let it happen.”

My heart turned completely, irrevocably cold in my chest.

Elodie pulled a crumpled sheet of drawing paper out from inside her dress pocket and held it up to me.

“Mommy, I wasn’t scribbling messily on anything bad, honest. Our teacher assigned us to draw our family.”

On the paper was a little girl drawn simply, holding her mother’s hand on one side and her father’s hand on the other, the three of them flying kites across a grassy field.

That drawing ripped my heart right out of my chest.

I’d asked Matteo countless times if we could take a day trip out to the countryside as a family. Every single time, he’d claimed he was too swamped with work.

Elodie had never once resented him for it. She’d still chosen to include him in her perfect little family picture anyway.

Meanwhile, he’d heard Bianca’s excuse, nodded in agreement, and let his own daughter be locked away in darkness as punishment.

“Mommy… is Daddy really not going to want me anymore?” Elodie tilted her head up to ask, her eyes wide and full of anxious uncertainty.

I wrapped my arms firmly around her, my voice cracking so badly I could barely form words.

“Baby, it isn’t that he doesn’t want you. We’re the ones choosing not to have him in our lives anymore.”

Elodie cried herself to sleep nestled against my chest after a while, yet she kept jolting and twitching in fitful rest.

I reached out gently to brush my finger near the slap mark on her cheek; she flinched away in her sleep, her brows pinching tight in pain even unconscious.

Watching her suffering left my chest throbbing with an unbearable ache.

“Matteo…” I breathed his name quietly to myself.

How cruel did you have to be to stand by and watch another woman mistreat your own daughter, and do absolutely nothing to stop it?

Matteo and I had loved each other for six years, married for three. I’d thought I’d given him a loving home, as well as the position as president of DeLuca Group.

It was only now that I finally understood: once people get a taste of power, they forget who pulled them up from the bottom..

I was completely done with him.

This time around, I wasn’t going to sweep his mess under the rug for him anymore. I would never give him a second chance to hurt my daughter ever again.