My Husband Had a One-Year-Old Daughter While I Was Still Pregnant! Oops, Marriage Over Chapter 04

My Husband Had a One-Year-Old Daughter While I Was Still Pregnant! Oops, Marriage Over Chapter 04

Ten in the morning. People streamed in and out of the neighborhood entrance.

Ilood under an oak tree by the curb, waiting for the car my dad had sent.

“You must be Zoe, right?”

A young woman’s voice came from behind me.

I turned around. The woman standing there was a complete stranger.

“Who are you?” I frowned.

She didn’t answer my question. Instead, her knees buckled and she dropped to the ground right there on the sidewalk, in front of everyone.

Neighbors walking past and the security guard at the gate all stopped and stared.

“Zoe, my name is Megan Holloway. I’m begging you please, let me and my little girl have a way to survive!” She lifted her face, sobbing like her world was ending.

I stood frozen, staring at this woman I’d never seen before in my life. “You’ve got the wrong

person.”

“I don’t! My daughter is Derek’s child. She’s already a year old!” Megan crawled forward on her knees, tears streaming, reaching, for the hem of my pants.

A collective gasp rippled through the gathering crowd.

“She needs to start daycare soon, and then preschool after that, but she doesn’t even have a birth certificate with his name on it. Without legal papers, she’s invisible she doesn’t exist in the system!” Megan wailed, her voice cracking and raw. “But Derek refuses to divorce you. He says your family has money, and that you gave up everything for him back then, so he can never be the one to ask for a divorce. But Zoe he doesn’t love you!”

“He cried when he told me. He said that in front of you the girl from the wealthy family he would always be the guy who married up. That you were too perfect. So perfect that he had nothing left not even his dignity. He told me that I was the only person who made him feel like he could breathe, like he was actually needed as a man!”

Ten years of blood, sweat, and tears together. And to him, all of it was just a cage built from his own

Insecurity.

“Zoe.” Megan saw that I wasn’t responding and lunged at me. “I won’t push him to divorce you anymore! Just let our daughter be registered under Derek’s name. I won’t ask for anything else! I’ll be invisible. You’ll be the wife, I’ll be nobody. I’ll be your housekeeper if that’s what it takes. Just please-make room for us!”

“Let go of me!”

I yanked my leg back, trying to shake her off.

“If you don’t agree, I’ll kneel here until I die! My daughter can’t live without legal papers!”

When Megan saw that I was dead set on leaving, she completely lost it.

She clamped both arms around my leg with one hand and grabbed my suitcase with the other,

wrenching it backward with all her weight.

I’d just had the procedure. My body was at its absolute weakest. The violent jerking motion knocked my legs out from under me, and I slammed onto the rough asphalt.

A searing, tearing pain ripped through my lower abdomen.

I curled into myself on the cold pavement, feeling something warm and wet rushing down the insides of my thighs.

Bright red blood soaked through my light-colored dress in seconds.

Screams erupted from the crowd.

“Oh my God, she’s bleeding!”

“Someone call 911! She’s going to bleed out!”

Megan had still been gripping my suitcase, but the moment she saw the dark pool of blood spreading rapidly across the pavement, the frenzy on her face turned to sheer terror.

“Blood-why is there so much blood -”

She collapsed backward onto the ground, completely paralyzed with shock.

Wave after wave of blinding pain crashed through me.

The shriek of tires cut through the chaos.

“Why is everyone crowding around? Move! Let me through!”

Derek’s voice.

I fought to keep my eyes open. Through darkening, blurring vision, I watched his familiar figure shove through the crowd to the front.

And then.

I watched every bone in his body seem to dissolve as he dropped straight to his knees on the asphalt

in front of me.