My Best Friend’s Secret Plan, My Dead Husband’s Watching Eyes Chapter 05

My Best Friend’s Secret Plan, My Dead Husband’s Watching Eyes Chapter 05

“What did you say?”

Graham’s hand dropped.

I hit the floor, choking, one hand clamped around my throat.

Miles was already looming over me.

“Keep your voice down. It’s our wedding day. Everyone’s watching!”

“Miles, what are you afraid of?”

I pointed at Vanessa.

“What have you two been doing behind my back? You think none of it’s going to come out?”

Something wounded flickered across Vanessa’s face, rehearsed down to the second.

“Maren, what are you even saying? Everything Miles and I did was to help you.”

I got to my feet. Every word came out steady.

“That ultrasound report is Vanessa’s. Not mine.”

“My mom locked me in the attic for two days. I tore my hand open trying to pick the lock with a piece of wire.

My blood is still on it. I never went anywhere near a hospital.”

I held up my palm, still torn open.

Vanessa’s head snapped up. Her eyes went cold.

Then, just like that, her eyes welled with tears.

“It’s not mine, Maren. Why would you do this to me?”

I wasn’t making it up. The comments had already told me.

Vanessa was carrying Miles’s child.

But she hadn’t told Miles. Her plan was simpler than that: wait for Graham to kill me, then pin the baby on him. Then walk straight into my life.

She’d climb over my corpse and take everything. The thought made my stomach turn to ice.

“You bitch!”

Vanessa’s mom lunged at me.

“Vanessa doesn’t even have a boyfriend! You’ve been friends for years. How dare you say that about her?

You’re trying to ruin her life!”

I stepped out of her reach. “Fine. Let’s all go to the hospital and find out who’s really pregnant.”

“Maren, it’s our wedding day. Can you stop this?”

Miles turned to Graham, playing dumb.

“You must be a friend of Maren’s. I’ll have someone find you a seat. Sorry about all this. She gets a little

dramatic sometimes.”

“I was late picking her up from the prenatal appointment yesterday and she’s been holding it over me ever

since.”

I almost laughed. “You won’t go, Miles.”

Miles sighed.

“We just did an ultrasound yesterday. You’re being paranoid.”

He reached for my arm, gentle, like always.

“Don’t be upset. You’re going to stress the baby out.”

I slammed his hand away.

I struggled to breathe.

“You make me sick. Do you know that?”

“I never agreed to this. You paid my mom $75,000 and she dragged me here.”

Miles sighed again, long and theatrical.

“Fine. You want to get checked? Let’s go.”

Something loosened in my chest.

Machines don’t lie. Once they ran the scan, the truth would be right there on the screen.

I made sure we went to a hospital none of us had any connection to.

The results came back. And the ground dropped out from under me.

“Maren: fourteen weeks pregnant. Vanessa: not pregnant.”

“Impossible!”

I grabbed the report. The words stared back at me: viable fetus.

Three months with Miles and he’d never touched me. Not once. So how the hell was I pregnant?

I made them run it again.

Same result.

“There you go. Now let’s get back and finish the wedding.”

Miles grabbed my hand to drag me outside.

I planted my feet.

I turned to Graham. I was shaking.

He looked at me like I was a stranger.

“That baby’s not mine.”

Graham’s mother died giving birth to his younger brother. After that, he refused to have children. He was

terrified the same thing would happen to me.

He got a vasectomy the day he turned eighteen.

Miles smirked, dropping the act. “Oh, Mr. Ashford. Welcome to our wedding.”

“I don’t know how you’re alive, and honestly, I don’t care. Maren’s my wife now. She never loved you. So do us

both a favor and walk away.”

Then Miles looked down at my stomach, and his face softened into something warm.

“The baby wasn’t planned. That Fourth of July weekend, you were out of the country on business. Maren and I got together. One thing led to another.”

“In your bed, actually. That mattress of yours was so comfortable, we bought the same one for our place.”