Chapter 3

I found a small, private clinic on the other side of the city. The doctor was a kind-faced woman with gentle eyes. After a series of tests, she sat me down in her office.

"Mrs. Jones," she began, her expression a mix of sympathy and professional calm. "You're pregnant."

The word hung in the air. Pregnant. Connor and I had been trying for years. I had a condition that made it difficult to conceive. We had almost given up hope.

"We talked about this before, remember?" the doctor continued softly. "Connor was so excited. He said a child was the one thing missing from your perfect life."

The irony was a bitter pill in my throat. Our perfect life.

"Is... is it possible to terminate?" I asked, the words feeling alien on my tongue.

The doctor's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Well, yes, but given your condition, this might be your only chance to have a child. It's a miracle you conceived at all. This is something you should discuss with your husband."

My husband. The man who loved another woman.

A war raged inside me. This child was a part of him, a part of the man who had betrayed me. But it was also a part of me. It was my child. An innocent life caught in the crossfire of our broken marriage.

Maybe... maybe this child could change things. Maybe it was the one thing that could pull him back from the edge.

I decided to give him one last chance. For the baby.

I went back to our house, the one I had designed from the ground up. It felt cold and empty. I sat in the dark living room and waited.

He came home late, his face etched with exhaustion. When he saw me, a flicker of surprise crossed his face, followed by a wave of feigned concern.

"Haven, you shouldn't be here. You should be in the hospital."

"I'm fine," I said, my voice hollow.

He came closer, trying to put his arm around me. "Look, about Gemma..."

"I don't want to talk about her," I cut him off. I stood up and walked to the large window overlooking the garden, where the rose bushes we planted together were in full bloom. "Remember when we built this place, Connor? We said it was our fortress. Our future."

"It still is," he said, his voice soft.

I turned to face him, my heart pounding. "I'll give you one more chance, Connor. One last chance to save us."

Hope flickered in his eyes. "Anything."

"Send Gemma away," I said, the words clear and sharp. "Send her away and never see her again. Do that, and we can try to fix this."

His face fell. The hope in his eyes died, replaced by that familiar, stubborn guilt.

"I can't do that, Haven," he said, shaking his head. "I owe her father. And she's... she's got nowhere else to go."

"She's a liar and a manipulator, and she's trying to destroy us!" I yelled, my voice cracking with a pain I could no longer contain.

"You don't know what you're talking about," he said, his voice hardening. "She's just a scared girl."

"Do you love her?" The question ripped from my throat, raw and desperate.

He looked away, unable to meet my eyes. "You are my wife, Haven. That's not going to change."

It wasn't a no. It was an evasion, a confirmation of the ugly truth I already knew.

He tried to pull me into a hug, to soothe me with physical contact. "I love you," he whispered, but the words were empty, meaningless.

I pushed him away. "You used to say that if you ever did anything to hurt me, you'd get on your knees and beg for my forgiveness."

"I am sorry," he said.

"No, you're not," I replied, my voice turning to ice. "You don't think you've done anything wrong."

I saw it in his eyes. He truly believed he was the righteous one, torn between his duty and his wife. He didn't see the betrayal. He didn't see the pain he was causing.

My last bit of hope withered and died. It was over.

I turned and walked away from him, my steps heavy.

As I reached the stairs, his phone rang. He answered it, his voice immediately shifting to business mode.

"What? A security breach? How bad is it?"

I paused, listening. He was talking about Apex. Our company.

He spoke in clipped, urgent tones, making decisions, giving orders. He didn't include me. He didn't even look at me. It was his problem now, not ours.

He hung up the phone and grabbed his keys. "I have to go to the office. It's an emergency."

He rushed past me without another word, leaving me alone in the house that was no longer a home.

The final connection was severed. He had shut me out of his heart, and now he was shutting me out of our life's work.

I stood there in the silent hall, a cold, hard resolve forming in my gut. He thought I was weak. He thought I would just stand by and let him destroy everything we had built.

He was wrong.

I took out my phone and dialed a number.

"I need you to find out everything you can about a woman named Gemma Chan," I said, my voice steady and cold. "Everything."