Chapter 1
After I got pregnant, my husband, Derek Walsh, once treated me like his whole world, allowed his mistress to run me down with a car on the day went into labor, leaving me bleeding on the pavement.
All because she waved a so–called terminal diagnosis, claiming she didn’t have long to live.
begged Derek to take me to the hospital, but he kicked me away in anger and locked me in the car.
“Get lost! If anything happens to Tiffany, I’ll make sure you and that bastard in your belly pay with your lives!”
I was trapped inside for a full day and night. When I was rescued, the baby was already gone.
Barely clinging to life, I got a call from Derek. “Let’s get a divorce. Tiffany’s running out of time. I want to take her abroad for treatment as her husband.”
I agreed with tears in my eyes and left the country with my child’s ashes.
Five years later, I met Derek by chance.
Derek’s eyes turned red the moment he saw the three–year–old girl in my
arms.
But I just took a step back, held my daughter tighter, and let out a cold. laugh.
“Don’t get the wrong idea. She is not yours.”
Chapter 1
***
“Five years old and still so skinny. Claire, you really have no business being a mother.
“I thought you were tough, not keeping in contact with me for five years. It turns out you’re picking up trash with your kid. Oh, you knew I was coming to check on things, so you’re deliberately putting on a show, right?”
I was holding my little daughter. My head felt dizzy from being scolded. by the man who appeared out of nowhere.
I looked at him for a long time before I recognized him. He was my ex- husband, Derek, whom I had divorced for five years.
The exquisite–looking woman holding his arm, dressed in luxury goods, was none other than Tiffany Ross, the orphan he had sponsored before.
The sight of the two of them whispering in each other’s ears had me holding my daughter tightly in a trance. My thoughts drifted back to five
years ago.
I was pregnant at that time, but Derek, who had always been cold and indifferent, suddenly sponsored a high school girl from an orphanage and let her live in our house.
When I saw Tiffany, who was pale, thin, and dressed in tattered clothes, my maternal instinct kicked in.
Not only did I prepare nutritious meals for her despite my being pregnant, but I also stayed up late helping her with homework.
Under my care, Tiffany became more and more lively and bright.
Her grades also improved from being the last in the class to the first in the school. She was successfully admitted to an Ivy League college.
Chapter 1
But I never expected that the first thing Tiffany did after she became an adult was to climb into Derek’s bed, betraying me brutally.
Seeing that I didn’t say anything, Derek locked his eyes on my daughter, frowned, and said unhappily, “Why is it a girl? My mother has always. wanted to have a grandson. She was not satisfied with you in the first place. How are you going to explain to her that you had a daughter?”
Only then did I understand that Derek thought the daughter in my arms was his.
I sneered.
I was stunned by the sheer audacity.
That child died five years ago, suffocated to death in my belly.
The culprit who did that to the baby was none other than their biological father!
Anger welled up in my chest. I took a deep breath, held my daughter in my arms, and took a step back.
“Don’t get the wrong idea. The child is not yours.”
