My Husband Had a One-Year-Old Daughter While I Was Still Pregnant! Oops, Marriage Over Chapter 06

My Husband Had a One-Year-Old Daughter While I Was Still Pregnant! Oops, Marriage Over Chapter 06

I spent two months in the hospital.

The day before I was discharged, my father’s assistant delivered a detailed report from a private

investigator.

Looking at the photos and the documentation, I finally understood exactly how Derek and Megan

had ended up together.

Megan was the front desk receptionist at Derek’s company.

Fresh out of college, she’d never seen much of the world. Every time she looked at Derek-this young, successful CEO-her eyes were filled with undisguised worship and admiration.

Derek was desperate for exactly that kind of blind adoration. He needed it to feed his pathetic ego.

But the part that made my blood run cold was his mother’s role in all of it.

The day I was discharged, I had the driver take me back to the home Derek and I had shared. I needed to collect all of my personal documents.

The moment I pushed the door open, the stench of stale cigarette smoke hit me so hard my eyes

watered.

Derek was slumped on the living room carpet, surrounded by a minefield of crushed cigarette butts

and empty bottles.

When he saw me walk in, his dead eyes flared to life. He scrambled across the floor on all fours and threw his arms around my legs, clinging on with everything he had.

“Zoe, you’re back! You finally came back! I knew you wouldn’t just abandon me!”

He was crying so hard that snot and tears ran together in streaks down his face. “I’m not signing the divorce papers. You can kill me first. I already fired Megan. I gave her a lump sum and cut her off completely. From now on, it’s only you. Can we just start over? Please?”

I was about to pull my leg free when the front door twisted open behind me.

His mother walked in, lugging an enormous thermos container, sweat beading across her forehead.

She spotted me and froze for half a second. Then, as if someone had flipped a switch, her face

rearranged itself into an expression of bottomless maternal concern. She hurried over and grabbed

my hands.

“Oh, Zoe, sweetheart-you just had a procedure, what are you doing running around like this?”

Her eyes turned red on cue. She set the thermos on the table and reached up to touch my face.

“You poor thing. Everything that happened is that worthless son of mine’s fault. I’ll smack him for you later, I promise!”

Looking at that performance of loving concern, all I felt was revulsion.

For ten years of marriage, she had been unfailingly good to me. When I had cramps so bad I couldn’t move, she would sit up all night rubbing my stomach. During those years when I was choking down fertility supplements until I gagged, she had cried right alongside me, saying that if it didn’t

happen, it didn’t happen-we could always adopt.

I had genuinely treated her like my own mother.

“Mom,” I said, looking her straight in the eyes, “this chicken soup-how does it compare to the broth you were cooking for Megan over at Lakeview Estates? Which one do you think turned out

better?”

The tenderness on her face froze solid. Her hand hung in midair, suspended and useless.

Derek’s head snapped up, shock plastered across his face.

“You knew all along that Derek had another woman, didn’t you?”

I shook her hand off and tore through her mask without an ounce of mercy. “When you found out she was pregnant, you didn’t say a single word against your son. You covered for him. You told me the city air was bad, that you needed to go back to the country. But you never went back. You moved straight into the apartment Derek bought for his mistress and spent months taking care of her through the pregnancy and recovery.”

“You’d call me on the phone, full of sympathy about how hard the fertility treatments were on me- and then you’d hang up and go cuddle your real granddaughter in a luxury condo three miles away.” I stared at this woman I had once trusted with my whole heart, and all I felt was a deep, aching sadness. “Your entire family has been feeding off mine, and the whole time, you’ve been playing

me for a fool.”