PART 2 — The Secret Hidden Behind My Marriage
When I woke up, everything hurt.
My abdomen.
My chest.
My throat.
Even breathing felt difficult.
A nurse smiled when she noticed my eyes open.
"Welcome back."
I immediately looked around.
The baby.
The baby was alive.
A tiny bassinet sat beside my bed.
Inside was a sleeping little boy wrapped in a blue blanket.
Relief washed through me.
Then confusion returned.
What had Derek meant?
Why had he spoken as if the baby belonged only to him?
For the next two days, I tried convincing myself I'd imagined it.
The medication.
The anesthesia.
The stress.
Maybe I'd misunderstood.
Maybe I was paranoid.
But every time Derek entered the room, something felt different.
He barely looked at me.
Instead, he stared at the baby.
Obsessively.
Almost possessively.
His entire attention revolved around that child.
And not once did he ask how I felt.
Not once.
On the third day, while Derek was in the cafeteria, his phone buzzed on the chair beside me.
Normally, I never touched his phone.
Never.
But the memory of that operating room wouldn't leave me alone.
The screen lit up.
A text message appeared.
From a contact saved as:
"Lily ❤️"
My stomach dropped.
The message preview read:
"Did she suspect anything? Is the baby definitely healthy?"
I froze.
The room suddenly felt too small.
Too hot.
Too quiet.
My hands shook as I picked up the phone.
And then I saw months of messages.
Hundreds of them.
Photos.
Conversations.
Plans.
Secrets.
Lily wasn't just another woman.
She was Derek's ex-fiancée.
The woman he dated before me.
The woman he'd supposedly forgotten.
The woman who had secretly reappeared in his life nearly two years ago.
As I scrolled through the messages, a horrifying truth emerged.
Lily couldn't have children.
Several medical conditions made pregnancy impossible.
She desperately wanted a baby.
And Derek desperately wanted a child with Lily.
Not with me.
With her.
Then I found the message that made my blood run cold.
It was sent seven months earlier.
Derek wrote:
"Everything is working perfectly. Emily still believes the IVF embryo is ours."
My vision blurred.
No.
No.
No.
I kept reading.
"Once the baby is born, we'll finally have the family we always wanted."
The phone nearly slipped from my hands.
The embryo.
The IVF.
The fertility clinic.
The years of trying.
The treatments.
The hope.
May you like
The sacrifice.
It had all been a lie.
