Chapter 2 - The Father I Had Erased“Your daughter?”
The second betrayal came three seconds later, when my husband looked directly at me from across the hospital hallway—and did nothing.
“Rachel,” Daniel Carter said quietly.
That was all.
Not What the hell are you doing?
Not Get away from my wife.
Not even Emily, are you okay?
Just her name.
A warning whispered so softly it meant absolutely nothing.
Rachel Monroe’s black stiletto had already scraped hard across my shin, knocking me sideways into a row of plastic chairs outside the maternity assessment unit.
Metal legs screeched across the polished floor.
My hip struck an armrest.
Pain flashed through my abdomen.
I sucked in a breath.
For one terrifying second, my baby stopped moving.
“Emily?” Daniel finally said.
I looked at him.
My husband of seven years stood ten feet away in a midnight-blue suit, holding Rachel’s designer purse as if the entire scene were merely inconvenient.
Rachel was his twenty-nine-year-old marketing director.
And, as I had discovered twenty minutes earlier, his mistress.
I hadn’t come to St. Catherine Medical Center looking for them.
I had come because my obstetrician wanted me checked after I experienced cramping during breakfast.
Daniel had texted that he was in an “emergency investor meeting.”
Then I saw him stepping out of an elevator with Rachel’s fingers laced through his.
She was laughing.
He was smiling at her the way he hadn’t smiled at me in months.
When I called his name, both of them froze.
Rachel recovered first.
“Oh,” she said, looking at my stomach. “So this is why you’ve been impossible lately.”
I stared at Daniel.
“Tell me I’m misunderstanding this.”
He rubbed the back of his neck.
That gesture told me everything.
Rachel smiled.
Daniel whispered, “Emily, not here.”
Not here.
As if my humiliation was the problem.
As if his affair was merely private information I had rudely uncovered in public.
I stepped toward him.
“You told me you were meeting investors.”
“I was.”
“With her?”
“It’s complicated.”
Rachel laughed.
Actually laughed.
“There’s nothing complicated about it.”
I turned toward her.
“You stay out of this.”
Her expression changed.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
She moved so close I smelled her perfume.
“I’m tired of being treated like some dirty secret because you trapped Daniel with a baby.”
My entire body went still.
“What did you say?”
Daniel stepped forward.
“Rachel, enough.”
But she wasn’t finished.
“He was already miserable.”
“You don’t know anything about our marriage.”
“I know what he tells me.”
That hurt more than I expected.
Then Rachel looked at my stomach and smirked.
“He said having a child with you was the biggest mistake he ever made.”
My eyes moved to Daniel.
He didn’t deny it.
That was when something inside me cracked.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
I reached for my wedding ring.
Daniel noticed.
“Emily, don’t.”
I pulled it off.
Rachel’s smile widened.
Then I said, “You can have him.”
Her smile vanished.
Maybe she expected screaming.
Maybe she expected me to beg.
Instead, I held out the ring toward Daniel.
Rachel stepped between us.
“You think you’re better than me?”
“No.”
I looked straight into her eyes.
“I think you deserve each other.”
Her face twisted.
And before I realized what she intended, she shoved me.
I staggered.
Then she lifted her leg.
Her heel struck my side.
That was the moment everything changed.
A contraction tore through me so violently that my knees almost buckled.
I grabbed the chair.
“Emily?” Daniel said.
Warm liquid suddenly ran down my legs.
Rachel backed away.
“What is that?”
I looked down.
My hospital gown was wet.
My heart stopped.
“My water.”
A nurse at the far end of the hallway shouted.
“Someone get obstetrics!”
Daniel finally moved toward me.
I pushed his hand away.
“Don’t touch me.”
Rachel’s face had gone pale, but she still managed to say, “She’s exaggerating.”
The nurse stared at her.
“You kicked a pregnant woman?”
“She came at me.”
“I was standing still,” I whispered.
Footsteps thundered from the corridor behind us.
Several staff members appeared.
Then every nurse suddenly became quiet.
An older man in a charcoal suit walked toward us.
Silver hair.
Hospital identification badge.
Calm expression.
He stopped when he saw me.
For a moment, he simply stared.
Then his face changed.
“Emily?”
I knew that voice.
I hadn’t heard it in almost fourteen years.
Daniel frowned.
Rachel whispered, “Who is that?”
The man walked directly past both of them.
His eyes filled with shock as he looked at my bruised face, my soaked gown, and my trembling hands.
Then he turned toward the nurses.
“Get her into Labor and Delivery immediately.”
Rachel crossed her arms.
“You can’t just—”
The man slowly looked at her.
His voice became ice.
“I absolutely can.”
She scoffed.
“And who exactly are you?”
He removed his identification card from his jacket and held it where she could see.
DR. CHARLES BENNETT
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
ST. CATHERINE MEDICAL CENTER
Rachel’s expression changed.
But that wasn’t what made her face go white.
Dr. Bennett turned toward me again.
His voice softened.
“Someone call security.”
Then he looked at Rachel.
“And tell them the woman who just assaulted my daughter is not to leave this building.”
Daniel stared at me.
Rachel’s mouth dropped open.
I closed my eyes.
Because after fourteen years of silence, the father I had sworn never to call family again had just claimed me in front of everyone.
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And judging by the look on his face…
Rachel kicking me was only the beginning.
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