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Nine years into my marriage, I finally discovered the truth my husband hid. He had given away our son to his first love to raise as her own. By the time I found out, our boy was already seven years old. And desperately needed to be registered under a legal guardian's name to start elementary school. My husband wore an apologetic expression, proposing we get a "fake divorce." "Look, switching the kids back then... it wasn't like I had a choice." "Nina couldn't have children. Her in-laws were making her life he11." He reached for my hand. "I promise, the second we get him enrolled in school, we'll remarry." I looked at my son—the child who'd grown up calling another woman "Mom". He stared at me with pure hatred in his eyes. Something inside me died in that moment. Without a word, I nodded. We went to the courthouse and signed the papers. While they were celebrating their new marriage certificate, I was boarding a one-way flight. This family? This life? I was done with all of it. We'd just walked out of the courthouse—freshly divorced—when Derek stopped mid-stride. "So, uh..." He scratched the back of his neck. "When Nina and I go back in there to get married, you don't have to stick around if it's gonna be awkward. You can just take off." He said it like he was doing me a favor. "We're doing dinner tonight though. All of us. Family thing." He paused, then actually had the nerve to add: "You know that seafood bake you do? Nina and Simon are obsessed with it. And since it's both their birthdays today, maybe make a double batch? It'd really help smooth things over." I just stared at him. He wanted me—his ex-wife of literally thirty minutes—to cook a birthday celebration dinner for his new wife and the son she'd stolen from me. I didn't have it in me to fight anymore. "Yeah, sure. Do whatever. I'm out." Relief washed over his face, like I'd just agreed to cover his shift or something. I'd barely turned to leave when I heard them—little feet pounding across the parking lot. "Dad! Daddy! We're here!" A small blur crashed straight into Derek's arms. Simon. Seven years old. "Does this mean you're gonna live with us now?" The kid was practically vibrating with excitement. "Can you both come to Field Day? All the other kids have both parents there." Derek dropped to one knee, and his entire voice changed. Soft. Patient. Like melted butter. My flight was in four hours, but I couldn't stop myself from looking back one more time. At the boy I'd almost bled out delivering seven years ago. Simon stood there gripping Derek's hand, a perfect miniature version of his father—same jawline, same aristocratic features that made strangers do double-takes as they walked past. Then Nina glided over in her wedding dress. Not some over-the-top ball gown, but a sleek, body-hugging number that screamed "I'm getting married but I'm still effortlessly chic about it." That's when it clicked. Derek wasn't wearing his usual wrinkled button-down. He had on a custom-tailored suit in the exact shade to complement her dress. They'd coordinated. Like an actual couple. He was looking at her now with this expression—somewhere between longing and relief, like he was finally getting something he'd been denied his whole life. Simon grabbed Nina's other hand and stood between them, his whole face lighting up as he swung their arms. Picture-perfect family. Magazine-cover material. My husband. My child. And me, standing there like some pathetic extra who'd wandered onto the wrong movie set. The pain wasn't clean or simple. It was the kind that burrowed into your che//st and nested there, sharp and suffocating with nowhere to go. I turned to walk away, forcing my legs to move. Then someone slammed into me from behind, and I went stumbling forward, arms flailing to catch myself. "Get away from my dad, you crazy b!tch!" Simon's voice echoed through the courthouse lobby, bouncing off the marble floors and high ceilings. Every conversation stopped. Every head turned. "My dad's marrying my real mom now! Why don't you just leave them alone and stop being a homewrecker?" Heat flooded my face so fast I thought I might pass out. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole. The irony of it all. I'd spent months losing my mind over this exact situation—crying myself hoarse, screaming at Derek in our bedroom, begging him to explain why I had to be the one to give everything up. We were married. Legally married. Why did I have to divorce him so he could marry her? Why couldn't Simon just come live with me, his actual mother? The Connor family could buy out an entire school board without blinking. Getting one kid enrolled couldn't possibly be that complicated. But Derek had his answer ready every single time: "Simon won't budge on this. He refuses to be registered under your name. As far as he's concerned, Nina's his mother." Then he'd pile on the guilt: "Nina wants him in public school so he learns what real life is like. She's not even his biological mother, and she's already thinking about his character development. Meanwhile you're stuck obsessing over our relationship status. Annie, you need to focus on what's actually best for him. That's what mothers do." I'd just stood there, completely blindsided. Focus on what's best for him? My son was ripped away from me the moment he was born. I never held him. Never saw his face. They told me I'd delivered a stillborn and I believed them for seven years. Nobody gave me the chance to focus on anything. And now because I wouldn't play along with their deranged little theatrical production, I was the selfish one? The other woman trying to break up their happy family? "Simon Matthew Connor!" Derek's voice cracked across the lobby like a gunshot. "You do not speak to your Annie Mom that way! Where did you even learn that language? That's it—I'm taking your iPad for a month." He glared at the boy with this manufactured parental fury that would've been convincing if I hadn't known him for nine years. Nina swooped in immediately, pulling Simon behind her skirt like I was about to backhand him across the face. "Oh god, I'm so sorry—" She kept bowing her head, almost folding herself in half. "He's only seven, he doesn't understand what he's saying. I should've been watching what he streams online. Please, please don't be upset with him." Each apology came with another little bow, another tremble in her voice. The whole performance screamed helpless devoted mother protecting her child from the monster. Like I was the unreasonable psycho who'd shown up to terrorize a kid at his parents' wedding. Nina Laurent—Georgetown's former ice princess, the girl who once made grown men nervous at charity galas—now practically prostrating herself in public to protect her son. It was actually a brilliant performance. I could see people's expressions softening. Derek's certainly did. His anger evaporated into pure sympathy as he watched her grovel on Simon's behalf. He cleared his throat and turned that familiar patronizing frown on me. "Annie. Come on. You're better than this. It's supposed to be a celebration, not a scene. Can you just... not make this harder on Nina than it already is?" I literally hadn't said one word, and somehow I was the one causing problems. Amazing how once someone decides you're the villain, reality just bends itself into knots to prove them right. I opened my mouth, ready to finally defend myself— "Nina, what are you doing?" The new voice cut through the lobby. Victoria Connor came clicking across the marble in Louboutins and a cream Chanel suit, her helmet of highlighted hair not moving an inch. Derek's mother. Old money personified. "I will not stand here and watch my grandson apologize to anyone." She looked at me like I was something unpleasant she'd stepped in. "Especially not to someone who clearly doesn't know when she's overstayed her welcome." Without missing a beat, Victoria pulled Simon flush against her side, one manicured hand gripping his shoulder. Grandmother and grandson stood there in perfect solidarity, both looking at me like I was something dangerous that had wandered in off the street. The absurdity of it would've been funny if it didn't hurt so much. The Connor family built their entire identity around legacy and bloodlines, yet they'd tolerated me as Mrs. Connor for nine full years without ever pushing for an heir. Turns out they'd had their insurance policy the whole time. The real kicker? When I delivered Simon, I bled out so badly on that table that my body just... gave up. No more children. Ever. Victoria knew that but it never stopped her from turning my "failure" into dinner table entertainment. Every holiday, every family gathering, she'd find some way to bring up how I couldn't even manage the one job nature gave women, how I'd trapped her son in a barren marriage, how Derek could've done so much better. Derek's response was always the same: frown, get uncomfortable, leave the room. He never once told her to stop. Later he'd find me crying in our bedroom and hold me while he explained it away: "She's just frustrated about grandkids. It's not personal. She doesn't really mean it." Then he'd tip my chin up and look at me with those earnest eyes: "I married you, not your uterus. I don't need kids. I just need you to be happy." I'd believed every word. I'd actually felt grateful that he loved me despite my broken body. Eventually I stopped thinking about children altogether. For seven years, that was our truth. Then they casually informed me that my son had been alive this entire time. Breathing, growing, learning to talk—just not with me. But by then he was seven years old with a whole life I wasn't part of. He had a mother. She just wasn't me. And he made it clear he wanted to keep it that way. What was I supposed to do? Kidnap him? Force a traumatized kid to accept the stranger who shared his DNA? I shut my eyes hard, blocking out the sight of the three of them standing there. I'd barely taken two steps toward the door when Derek's voice followed me across the lobby. "Annie." "Just go home and wait for us. We'll be done here in twenty minutes." I didn't slow down. Behind me, Victoria's voice cut through the murmur of the courthouse crowd with that particular brand of upper-crust disdain. "Wait for what, exactly? Tonight is a Connor family dinner. She's not a Connor anymore. Her presence would be... awkward." A pause, then slightly quieter but still audible: "And frankly, Simon doesn't want her there. It's the child's birthday—let's not ruin it by making him uncomfortable in his own home." My walk turned into something faster. The afternoon sun hit my face, and I kept moving. Outside the courthouse, the sun was doing that thing where it's almost offensively bright and cheerful, like it's mocking you. Perfect day to bu//rn your whole life down and start over. I stood there gulping air until my lungs stopped feeling like they were in a vise. It was just a divorce. Millions of people got divorced. The world kept spinning. I hadn't told anyone I was leaving—only my best friend Lily knew. The Connor family had gotten powerful enough over the years that even my own parents tiptoed around them now. If word got out that I was planning to vanish, I'd be drowning in phone calls from people trying to convince me to stay and "work things out." Lily was currently wrestling three enormous suitcases onto a luggage cart, her face red from exertion as she navigated through the airport crowds while I finished checking in. "When you land, promise me you'll actually give a sh!t about yourself for once." She shot me a look that was half concern, half fury. "No more wasting energy on those two selfish pricks." She squeezed my hand hard enough to hurt. "Nobody's getting your location out of me. I don't care who asks. I'll lie to God himself if I have to." For the next five minutes she launched into an increasingly creative and profane character assassination of Derek, her voice climbing loud enough that a family nearby hurried their kids past us. Finally she grabbed me by both shoulders and got right in my face. "Your one job now—your only job—is to be obnoxiously, insufferably happy. You got that?" Before I could answer, she'd already turned and bolted toward the exit. Running away before I could see her lose it. She was too late. I was already falling apart. The second she'd turned around, something broke open in my heart and now I couldn't make it stop. Happiness. What a joke that word had become. Maybe only someone who'd been there through all of it—who'd actually watched what was happening to me—could see how completely happiness had been missing from my life. At seventeen, when I first saw Derek across a college mixer and felt my entire world tilt on its axis, I thought I'd found it. At eighteen, when we randomly crossed paths at a café in Paris during my study abroad and he not only remembered me but asked for my number, I was sure of it. At twenty-two, walking toward him in that stupid expensive wedding dress while everyone cried happy tears, I believed I'd secured happiness for the rest of my life. At twenty-three, throwing up every morning and feeling like death but glowing because I was carrying his baby, I actually thought the universe loved me—that I'd somehow won the lottery and gotten everything I'd ever wanted. Looking back now, the whole thing felt like one of those dreams where you're desperately trying to hold onto something beautiful and it just keeps dissolving in your hands. None of it had been real. All that happiness had only ever existed in my imagination. From day one, Derek had kept Nina in first place. Even when she belonged to someone else. Even when he'd made vows to me. He'd been willing to take our son and hand him over to her like he was a borrowed book she'd wanted to read. God, I'd been so stupid. I don't know how long I stood there in the middle of the terminal with tears running down my face. Eventually the boarding announcement jolted me back to the present. My phone lit up. Several notifications in a row. Derek. My phone lit up with a string of texts. [Derek: Hey, we're running late here. Dinner's gonna have to be pushed back.] [Derek: Also, don't bother with the birthday cake. Nina says Simon's weirdly picky about that stuff—won't eat it unless she makes it from scratch.] [Derek: Just saving you the hassle.] I stared at the messages, my thumb hovering over the keyboard. Nothing came to mind worth typing. Another text appeared, like he could sense my silence and it made him nervous. [Derek: Look, don't take it personally. Nina swears she's not trying to edge you out or anything.] [Derek: Simon just needs time to adjust. We'll get there. Just... be patient with him? For me?] I locked my phone without responding. There was nothing left to be patient about. I'd bu//rned through my supply of patience years ago, along with every last shred of hope. The thing is, Simon and I weren't even strangers—not at first. When he was still an infant, Nina had started bringing him to the Connor estate constantly, always with some excuse about our families being close. I'd run into them all the time. Back then, when he was tiny, Simon used to light up when he saw me. These huge dimpled smiles that made something twist painfully in my heart. But as he got older, everything shifted. Each time they visited, the moment his eyes landed on me, his whole expression would shutter. He'd look away fast, like I scared him. Eventually fear hardened into something uglier. Pure contempt. When Derek finally came clean I completely unraveled. I hunted down my own child like some kind of unhinged stalker who didn't know when to quit. I didn't trust myself to just pull him into a hug. Instead I showed up with toys I'd researched online, things other kids his age supposedly loved, desperately hoping I could buy my way into some kind of connection. Simon glanced at the gifts for maybe two seconds, then snatched them out of my hands and chucked them straight into the garbage. Then he looked me dead in the eye and called me a word I didn't think six-year-olds even knew. I'd never seen hatred that concentrated in someone so small. For days afterward I couldn't function. Food tasted like cardboard. Sleep was impossible. I kept running through every interaction we'd ever had, trying to figure out what I'd done to earn that level of rage from my own kid. When Derek heard what had happened, he'd pulled Simon aside for what he called "a serious conversation." He even managed to keep Nina away for nearly a week so Simon and I could have supervised one-on-one time to "rebuild trust." Around Derek and Victoria, Simon transformed into this eerily polite child. All "yes ma'am" and careful manners. But the second we were alone? The act dropped instantly. He'd stare at me with undisguised loathing and hiss that I was the reason his real mom had to stay away. Then came the day that shattered whatever hope I'd been clinging to. In front of the entire Connor family, Simon accused me of abusing him behind closed doors. His voice shook as he described how I'd been threatening him—telling him I'd have him thrown out of the house if he didn't start calling me "Mom." It should have been simple to disprove. The Connor estate had security cameras in practically every room. But then Simon pulled up his shirt, and everyone went silent. His torso was covered in bruises—dark purple fingerprints along his ribs, greenish marks on his arms. When I instinctively moved toward him to get a better look, he literally threw himself backward into the corner, his whole body shaking. There was no defense I could offer that would matter after that. Nina had immediately pulled Simon into her arms and started crying so hard she was nearly hyperventilating, choking out words between sobs: "He's seven years old. Just give him time, please, I'll make sure he learns to call you Mom properly. If you're upset—if you need to hit someone—do it to me. Hurt me instead. Just leave him alone. God, please, I'm begging you..." Victoria had gone ballistic, announcing on the spot that I was permanently banned from being alone with Simon ever again. Even Derek had looked at me like I was a stranger. "Annie." His voice had gone flat and cold. "You actually hurt our son to get back at me? At Nina?" He'd run his hand through his hair, shaking his head slowly. "I don't even recognize you right now." I didn't try to explain. What would have been the point? As everyone cleared out of the room afterward, I saw it—just for a split second—the triumphant little smirk tugging at Simon's lips. That's when I finally stopped fighting. Fine. If this was what they all wanted, I'd give them exactly that. They could have their picture-perfect family. I'd remove myself from the equation entirely. Sitting here now in the airport terminal with tears running down my face for the second time today, I noticed a couple nearby whispering and glancing over at me. I wiped my cheeks and pulled out my phone to check how bad the damage was. That's when a breaking news alert slid across my lock screen: TECH MOGUL DEREK CONNOR MARRIES CHILDHOOD SWEETHEART—INTRODUCES SON AS HEIR TO BILLION-DOLLAR EMPIRE The headline was pure tabloid bait, but the photo underneath made my stomach drop. It was a formal family portrait. Derek and Nina stood center frame, flanked by what looked like every Connor who mattered. Derek's father was there. The man ran a multi-billion dollar empire and supposedly only showed up for quarterly earnings calls. But here he was, front and center, all smiles. Even the Connor grandfather—who'd been living in some luxury medical facility in Switzerland for the past three years—had apparently made the trip. He was holding Simon like the kid was the second coming. The whole extended family had turned out. That's when it clicked. This wasn't just a photo op. This was the family making a very public statement—that Nina belonged, that Simon was the golden child, that the Connor legacy was secure. When Derek and I got married, exactly zero family members showed up. The company had been circling the drain back then, weeks away from bank//ruptcy. Nobody cared about weddings—they just needed Derek legally attached to my family's money before the whole thing collapsed. So we'd stood in some cramped chapel in Paris with a priest who kept mixing up our names, signed some papers, and called it done. We didn't even file the marriage license until months later. I'd been so desperately in love with him that even that bare-bones ceremony had felt like a fairy tale. For nine years, I'd held onto that memory like it was something precious. Now it just felt like evidence of how pathetic I'd been. The article had a slideshow. I watched it cycle through one image after another. The reception—easily two hundred people in black tie. A shot of the whole Connor clan raising champagne glasses. Derek's mother presenting Nina with some kind of ornate jewelry box... Then one photo froze me completely. Clearly taken by a photographer with a telephoto lens, zoomed in so tight you could see everything. Derek and Nina at the courthouse, pressed together in front of that tacky "Just Married" backdrop. His hand was tangled in her hair as he kissed her, and she was smiling against his mouth, her eyes closed in what looked like genuine bliss. You could practically feel the heat coming off them through the screen. This was what Derek had called a "fake marriage for paperwork." This was what "just getting some documents sorted" looked like. There had never been anything fake about any of it. Nina was the daughter-in-law the Connors had wanted from day one. She was the woman Derek had spent a decade unable to get over. And I'd just been too stupid to see it. My hand had gone numb from how hard I was gripping my phone. I was about to force myself to turn it off when a new message popped up. Unknown number. An image loaded. Some kind of medical document. Ultrasound results. Patient: Nina Laurent Status: Intrauterine pregnancy, approximately 4 weeks I stopped breathing. Two more texts appeared below it: [Annie, Derek and I are pregnant again.] [He made me promise not to tell you, but I can't keep this from you. My kids need their father in their lives. Please... can you just let him go?] Everything went numb. Four weeks ago, Derek had been in Seattle "drowning in back-to-back meetings" for that subsidiary IPO. That had been the only time in eight years he'd gone three straight days without calling. He hadn't been too busy. He'd just had company. And when I'd questioned the whole divorce plan, he'd actually had the nerve to explode at me: "Jesus Christ, Annie, when did you turn into this paranoid, jealous person? Nina and I haven't done anything wrong. Honestly, thank God Simon grew up with her—I'd hate to see what kind of neurotic mess he'd be if you'd raised him." "If you can't trust me on something this basic, then what have we been doing for eight years?" My throat closed up. I couldn't get air into my lungs properly. The heartbreak hit again, wave after wave, dissolving whatever microscopic piece of love I'd still been clinging to. I'd gone so numb I couldn't even cry anymore. Around me, travelers rushed toward their gates, pulling luggage and juggling coffee cups, but the sound felt muffled and far away, like I was hearing it through water. My phone screen went dark. Then immediately lit up again, vibrating so hard it nearly fell out of my hand. Derek Connor I stared at his name. I had nothing left to say to him. 【11417】