My Husband Had a One-Year-Old Daughter While I Was Still Pregnant! Oops, Marriage Over Chapter 09

My Husband Had a One-Year-Old Daughter While I Was Still Pregnant! Oops, Marriage Over Chapter 09

I stared at the words on my screen.

Calmly, I tapped the menu icon in the corner, hit delete, and blocked his number.

The next morning, security called to say the man outside the gate had been standing in the rain for

half the night. He’d collapsed with a high fever. An ambulance took him away.

I didn’t even ask which hospital.

My father’s legal team moved fast. They were pushing the divorce proceedings forward while

simultaneously filing for asset preservation.

The money Derek had used to buy that luxury unit at Lakeview Estates for Megan came from our joint marital assets. The lawyers presented the bank records-ironclad evidence-and petitioned the court to rescind the gift and recover the full amount.

A woman like Megan, who had built her entire life around latching onto someone else, couldn’t

come up with several hundred thousand dollars in cash to pay it back.

Two months later, a court officer showed up at the door and placed the apartment under judicial

seal, scheduled for forced auction.

The day of the enforcement was ugly.

Derek’s mother planted herself on the marble floor outside the building lobby, rolling and wailing,

slapping her thighs, screaming that the court was bullying them, that I was a heartless monster trying to destroy the Ashford family.

Nobody paid her any attention. The officers followed procedure, affixed the seal, and escorted them

and their belongings out to the street.

With the apartment gone, Derek sidelined and salary-slashed at the company, and a massive

court-ordered settlement hanging over his head, he couldn’t even afford a decent rental. He moved his mother, himself, and the baby into a cramped studio apartment with peeling walls and a leaking

faucet.

Megan finally saw the writing on the wall.

She had assumed the baby would be her meal ticket for life. But now Derek was just an overpaid

wage worker drowning in debt who came home every night without so much as a civil word.

One evening, while Derek was at the office working late, Megan ran.

She grabbed the last few thousand dollars in cash and every piece of jewelry worth anything, and

e vanished. She didn’t even take the baby. She left the one-year-old alone on the bed, blocked

Derek and his mother on every platform, and disappeared without a trace.

They say Derek came home that night, saw the emptied closets and his daughter screaming herself- hoarse from hunger, and smashed everything in the apartment until there was nothing left to

break.

His mother stood in the ransacked room, staring at the wreckage, and realized that the Ashford family’s only heir was now a motherless burden. She beat her chest and howled.

Six months later, the court’s divorce decree was finalized.

We crossed paths one last time outside the courthouse.

Derek was wearing a shirt washed so many times it had faded to near-white, the collar crumpled

and fraying.

In just half a year, nearly half his hair had gone gray. His cheeks were sunken. He walked with a stoop, shoulders caved inward. He looked like he’d aged a decade, maybe more.

There was nothing left of the ambitious young CEO he used to be.

He held that decree in his hands and stared at me, eyes rimmed red, lips trembling, as though he

wanted to say my name.

I didn’t spare him a second glance. I walked straight to the car waiting at the curb.

“Zoe!”

He called out from behind me, his voice so raw it sounded like sandpaper dragged across concrete.

He stumbled forward two steps before one of my father’s security guards raised an arm and blocked

his path.

“If I hadn’t” He stared at me over the guard’s shoulder, drowning in his own desperation. “If I’d never screwed up. If I’d just been honest with you, the whole time. Could we have-would things still be the way they used to be?”

I stopped walking.

i turned around and looked at his face one last time.

“There is no ‘if.’ Derek, the weakness and the vanity and the greed that live in your bones – they guaranteed you would never be able to hold on to anything truly good.”

I turned away and got into the car.

The door shut with a heavy thud, sealing off the sound of him standing on the courthouse steps, face buried in his hands, sobbing.

The car pulled smoothly onto the main road. Afternoon sunlight poured through the window and pooled on the backs of my hands, warm and steady.

I slipped the plain silver band off my ring finger and tossed it out the window.

The year after the divorce, I opened a flower shop. My days became simple-trimming stems, reading, drinking tea.

That spring, Callan Mercer walked through the door.

He was the son of one of my father’s oldest friends. Two years older than me, recently back from overseas, teaching architecture at the state university downtown.

Our families had known each other for decades.

He wore a clean, light-colored trench coat and carried an easy, unhurried warmth about him. He said his mother had sent him to pick out a bouquet of lisianthus.

Things between us unfolded naturally, without force.

Callan was the most emotionally grounded person I had ever met.

With him, I didn’t need to tiptoe around a fragile ego. I didn’t need to dim myself down or play small to make someone else feel adequate.

My family’s wealth didn’t make him uncomfortable. He never flinched when I bought expensive jewelry, never made me feel like I should apologize for it.

He’d show up at the shop and carry the heavy ceramic pots in from the delivery truck without being asked. On weekend afternoons, he’d sit in the wicker chair in the garden, quietly sipping tea while I knelt in the dirt, loosening the soil around the hydrangeas.

Everything happened the way it was supposed to.

Two years later, Callan and I got married.

The wedding was held on the lawn of my father’s estate. We kept it small-only close family and old Riends.

I wore a white gown, my arm linked through my father’s.

My dad was smiling so hard that the creases at the corners of his eyes bunched together like fault

lines.

He placed my hand into Callan’s, his eyes glistening, and gave Callan’s shoulder a firm pat. “This time, I can finally hand my daughter off with a clear conscience. You two take good care of each

other.”

Callan held my hand tight and gave my father a solemn nod.

“You have my word, Dad.”

The afternoon sun was golden and generous. Pale pink rose petals blanketed the grass.

My mother stood among the guests, watching us exchange rings, dabbing her eyes and smiling through her tears.

After the ceremony, Callan and I walked across the lawn hand in hand. An early autumn breeze drifted past, and he stopped to gently tuck a windblown strand of hair behind my ear. His eyes were so tender they looked like still water in spring.

“Tired?” he asked softly. “What do you want for dinner tonight? I’ll make it.”

“Breakfast burritos,” I said, leaning my head against his shoulder with a smile.

“Deal. I’ll drive us to pick some up in a bit.”

I looked out at the sunlit lawn, the twinkling lights strung between the trees, and listened to the distant sound of my parents laughing with old friends. A feeling I’d never known before-true peace, true stillness-settled deep inside my chest.

That ten-year fever dream had broken long ago.

Now I was standing in my own sunlight. And I was genuinely, deeply happy.