My Husband Had a Child With Someone Else While I Was Carrying His Chapter 07

My Husband Had a Child With Someone Else While I Was Carrying His Chapter 07

Lucas’s fork stopped over the plate. He let out a sigh, set it down, and his voice carried that weary, indulgent patience of his.

“Rachel, there you go overthinking again. I’m doing this to protect you and the baby. In your

condition, you can’t be up walking around at all. Once you’ve delivered and you’re safe, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

He reached out to touch my hair, and I shrank back. He didn’t get angry. He only pulled his hand

away and tucked the blanket up around me. “I’ve got a meeting at the office. I’ll come check on you

later.”

After Lucas left, the room went dead silent again.

Janet sat on the couch, eating popcorn, and never once looked at me.

That afternoon, a nurse carried in a delivery with my name on it.

Janet gave it a wary glance, but the moment she saw it was only a thin envelope, she tossed it onto

my nightstand.

I tore the envelope open and found a gold-embossed invitation inside.

[You’re cordially invited to the Halls family’s baby welcome party. Warmly, Lucas and Sally.]

On the back of the card, someone had added a handwritten line.

[Rachel, Lucas says he’ll announce my place in the family in front of everyone at the welcome party.

So you stay put in the hospital and take good care of that pregnancy.]

As I stared at that line, my belly clenched without warning. A sharp contraction rolled through me, and I bit down hard and refused to let out a single sound.

Lucas was perfectly capable of ending this ridiculous situation.

He didn’t want to give up on either side. He wanted Sally to give him a firstborn son so he could have

it both ways, and he wanted me, his lawful wife, to sit quietly at home and keep his marriage looking respectable.

He was certain that with a baby inside me, I had nowhere left to run.

The contractions slowly faded, and a cold sweat covered my whole body.

I pushed the invitation under my pillow, and my mind went sharp and clear.

I couldn’t afford to keep waiting, and I had to save myself.

At eight in the evening, Janet went downstairs for dinner.

The second she was gone, I threw off the blanket, pushed through the dull ache low in my belly, climbed out of bed, and crossed to the wardrobe.

From the lining of one of my dresses, I dug out an old phone. I had hidden it there in secret the day I was admitted.

I switched it on and connected to the hospital’s free WiFi.

I didn’t reach out to anyone. Instead, I opened the hospital’s internal directory, found Ashley Jones, one of the OB nurses, and pulled up her WhatsApp.

Ashley was a new intern, and she had been the first one to rush into my room and stop the bleeding that night.

Me: [Ashley, are you there?]

Her reply came fast.

Ashley: [Ms. Bennett, how did you reach me on this number?]

Me: [Please do me a favor. That night, I know you saw Summer pull out my call line. I don’t need you to testify. I only want to know whether there’s any way to prove what happened that night, other

than the cameras.]

The typing bubble stayed on the screen for a long time. Finally, Ashley wrote back.

Ashley: [Ms. Bennett, the cameras really were down. But the call system at the nurses’ station has a backup recording feature.]

Ashley: [The moment anyone presses a call button, the system starts recording automatically and continues until a nurse picks up. Your call button was pulled that night, but the recording had already been triggered.]

I read the words on the screen, and my palms started to sweat.

Me: [Where’s the recording?]

Ashley: [It’s in the hospital’s backend system logs. Only someone with admin access can pull it.]

Footsteps came down the hall, and Janet was on her way back. I deleted the chat in a hurry and stuffed the phone back under the covers.