Divorcing The CEO For My Secret Daughter

Out of sheer love for her billionaire husband, Easton Underwood, Chastity sacrificed her career and endured years of excruciating fertility treatments just to give him a child. Yet, as she lay on the delivery bed, literally bleeding to death in agonizing pain, the only thing the man she loved sent her was a cold, 50-50 financial split bill.

"The epidural is an unapproved out-of-pocket expense. Mr. Underwood insists on strictly adhering to the 50-50 marital financial split."

The assistant's voice was devoid of any human empathy.

Chastity clutched the sterile hospital bedsheets, trembling in agonizing pain. "I've been in labor for twenty-four hours... the doctor said I won't make it without the pain relief. But I... I don't have any money left."

"Call Easton. He can't be this heartless," the nurse whispered sympathetically.

The assistant didn't move an inch.

With no other choice, Chastity dragged her exhausted, shivering body off the bed and dropped to her knees on the freezing floor. With bloodstained fingers, she dialed her husband's number.

"Easton... the medical fees for the baby..."

"Everything goes strictly by our contract," Easton Underwood's icy baritone cut through the line.

Suddenly, a gush of scalding liquid tore through her body. Chastity looked down as thick, dark blood pooled onto the floor, rapidly staining her vision red.

"Easton, I'm hemorrhaging-"

Beep. Beep. Beep.

He hung up.

"Ah!"

Chastity gasped, her chest heaving as the phantom pain of that emergency C-section four years ago violently snapped her back to reality.

Her waterproof phone lit up in her palm. It was a video message from Switzerland. Elsie's sweet, pale face appeared on the screen, holding up a crayon drawing of a house with only two stick figures.

"Mommy," the little girl asked softly, "should I draw a daddy in our house?"

Chastity's heart ached. Easton didn't even know Elsie existed. When the doctors told him the premature baby was failing four years ago, he had simply left the hospital to attend a board meeting. For four years, Chastity had endured his coldness and worked herself to the bone to solely bear the crushing medical expenses for Elsie's congenital heart disease in a secret clinic.

Driven by the trauma of almost losing her own child, and to field-test the thermal imaging prototypes she secretly developed, Chastity spent her limited free time volunteering for an elite urban search-and-rescue team.

Right now, she was kneeling on the collapsed ruins of an abandoned warehouse by the Hudson River, braving the torrential rain. Her fingers steadily adjusted the dials of her handheld infrared scanner. On the monitor, cutting through layers of concrete and steel interference, a faint crimson life signal pulsed.

"Coordinates north fifteen degrees," Chastity spoke calmly into her tactical headset. "Viable respiratory trace confirmed. A child is trapped underneath. Dig here!"

As the rescue squad scrambled over the debris to start digging, Wyatt Tucker, the veteran team lead, approached Chastity, profound disgust written all over his face.

"You won't believe this, Chastity," Wyatt muttered, pointing toward the shadows outside the perimeter tape. "The kid wandered into this deathtrap because her mother was too busy getting intimately distracted in the backseat of an SUV. We found a discarded foil condom wrapper right outside their car door."

Chastity's amber eyes darkened with instant fury. Elsie had fought through countless life-and-death struggles just to breathe, and Chastity despised parents who neglected their children.

"That's absurd! Fooling around in a car while their child is missing-"

Chastity's words died in her throat.

A woman stumbled into the glaring floodlights.

"Kassie! My baby is in there!"

Chastity's face froze. She knew that woman.

Karis Estes. The widow of Nolan Jacobs-Easton's late best friend.

But Nolan had been dead for over six years, and Karis supposedly never remarried. What kind of man could make the haughty Karis so desperate that she would abandon her child for a quick hookup in a car?

Before Chastity could process it, the medics pulled a terrified little Kassie from the rubble.

Chastity stepped forward to help wrap the shivering child in a thermal blanket, but Karis lunged forward like a rabid dog.

"Don't touch my baby!" Karis shrieked.

Instead of showing gratitude, Karis slammed her shoulder hard into Chastity's chest. Karis's manicured nails dug violently into Chastity's forearm, ripping through the skin and leaving a bloody scratch. The look in Karis's eyes was not a mother's relief; it was the venomous, defensive panic of a woman caught doing something dirty.

"Watch it! She just saved your kid!" Wyatt shouted angrily.

Karis ignored him. Her face suddenly softened into a calculated, fragile mask of tears as she looked past Chastity.

"Easton..." Karis whimpered, her voice dripping with delicate vulnerability.

Chastity's heart violently skipped a beat. She turned around.

Easton Underwood strode through the rain. The towering, usually immaculate billionaire looked completely out of character. His bespoke tie was ripped loose, the top three buttons of his shirt were undone, and his collar was thoroughly rumpled.

"Daddy!" Little Kassie cried out, throwing her arms toward Easton.

Chastity's breath stopped. Daddy?

Karis threw herself into Easton's chest, her pale gold curls burying into his dark coat. She rubbed against him, her voice a soft, intimate whine. "Easton... it's all your fault. If you hadn't been in such a rush with me in the car, I would have kept a closer eye on her..."

The words were a deliberate, unmistakable declaration.

Easton caught Karis by the shoulders. Without a second's hesitation, he slipped off his heavy overcoat and wrapped it around her trembling frame. His slate-gray eyes-the same eyes that hadn't blinked when Chastity was bleeding out on a hospital floor-were now entirely consumed by an agonizing, protective tenderness.

Chastity stood frozen in the freezing mud.

Unexpectedly, her gaze collided with Easton's.

It was shallow. Indifferent.

In that fleeting second, he coolly looked away. Caught red-handed in an illicit affair, yet there was no panic. No explanation. Just a breezy nonchalance. It was as if she were nothing more than an insignificant stranger.

"Let's go," Karis tugged at his sleeve, her voice fragile. "Kassie is scared. She doesn't want to stay here."

"Alright," Easton said.

The three of them walked away, huddled together like a perfect family. Even as they left, Karis didn't offer a single word of apology.

Chastity stood there, repeatedly recalling the way Easton had just spoken to Karis. Gentle. Forgiving. Deeply affectionate and responsive to her every need. It was everything she had dreamed of getting for five years, yet never received.

If the epidural incident four years ago had merely chilled her heart toward Easton, witnessing his blatant betrayal tonight meant the man was now completely dead to her.

By the time Chastity and Wyatt walked out of the perimeter, the SUV that had dropped the condom was already gone.

"Damn!" Wyatt couldn't help but curse. "How desperate were they to do it in a car and forget their own kid?"

"Or it's an illicit affair," Chastity lowered her eyes to the bloody scratch on her arm. "Some men use a 50-50 financial split as an excuse to mess around outside, knowing they don't have to take any responsibility for their wife at home."

Wyatt spat on the ground in disgust. "If a scumbag is like that, I wouldn't want him even if he looked as handsome as that guy just now!"

Chastity let out a hollow, bitter laugh. "Exactly. It's filthy."

The air around them seemed to drop ten degrees.

A heavy, suffocating presence loomed behind her. Chastity turned around and met a pair of freezing, slate-gray eyes.

Easton hadn't left. He stood just a few feet away, tall and imposing, his expression a mask of lethal calm. He had heard every word.

A brief jolt of tension spiked in Chastity's chest, but she quickly crushed it. She hadn't lied. If he had the audacity to do it, why should she be afraid to say it?

Yet, Easton didn't offer a single word of fury or defense. He simply looked past her, treating her with the ultimate disdain of absolute invisibility.

"Julian," Easton's cold voice sliced through the rain as he addressed his assistant. "Have the security team distribute those relief supplies to the rescue crew. Consider it a token of my appreciation."

He walked right past her, the damp wool of his coat brushing against her shoulder. The chill he left behind was infinitely colder than the storm.

Chastity stood still, letting the biting wind clear the nausea from her chest.

She pulled out her phone, opened Elsie's video message, and typed her reply:

Baby, your daddy is dead.

After parting ways with Wyatt, Chastity sat in her cold car and dialed her best friend, Ember Rutledge.

"I want a divorce. And I want full custody of Elsie. What are my chances?"

"You finally thought it through?" Ember asked.

Chastity let out a soft "Mhm."

Actually, it didn't matter whether she had thought it through or not. Back then, when their relationship had deteriorated so badly, she assumed Easton would bring up divorce right after she gave birth. Who knew it would drag on for five years? He hadn't mentioned it once. If he wouldn't initiate it, she had to.

"Knowing Easton's ruthless nature, he would never allow Underwood blood to live outside the family," Ember said carefully.

Chastity remained silent. That was exactly what she feared.

"Chastity, have you ever thought that the 50-50 split in the delivery room wasn't entirely Easton's idea? Maybe his assistant, Julian, was making things difficult on his own?"

Of course, she knew Easton wouldn't stoop to calculating pennies. But so what? Without Easton's absolute indifference and silent approval, how would a mere assistant dare to act so atrociously? Besides, she had called him for help, and he didn't even have the patience to listen to her finish her sentence.

"As long as you know the truth in your heart," Ember sighed. She wasn't trying to persuade Chastity to stay; she was just afraid her friend would back out. Few people knew, but Ember knew clearly: Chastity had loved Easton for ten whole years.

Ten years of devotion, severed in a single night. It was like tearing flesh from bone.

"Also, he's cheating," Chastity said, briefly explaining what she had just witnessed at the rescue site.

Ember cursed Easton out over the phone. After venting, she faced reality. "Even if he cheated, it won't be a legal reason for him to give up Elsie. Chastity, the only way is to get Easton to sign a written agreement relinquishing his custody rights. Otherwise, with the Underwood family's power, you have zero chance of winning."

A written agreement! How incredibly difficult would that be?

"But I do have some good news for you," Ember said, shifting to a lighter tone. "My uncle just told me that Elsie's condition is almost fully healed. Starting this month, you don't need to wire any more medical fees."

Ember's uncle was Dr. Izayah Hansen, the elite physician who had been secretly treating Elsie in Switzerland. He was a late-born child of Ember's grandparents, only five years older than them.

Just hearing his name made a faint, involuntary shiver run down Chastity's spine. Izayah possessed a face of absolute, ascetic perfection, yet his aura was so profoundly cold and aloof that Chastity had been terrified of him since they were children. He was a man she had always kept at a respectful, fearful distance.

Chastity had never imagined that one day she would entrust her child's life to him. Four years ago, when she was completely abandoned and desperate, it was this terrifying, untouchable man who had stepped in and pulled her daughter back from the brink of death.

"That's wonderful!"

The news of Elsie's recovery swept away all the suffocating gloom in Chastity's chest. For four years, she could only fly out occasionally to see Elsie, relying on video calls for the rest. Finally, they could be reunited.

When Chastity returned to the Park Avenue penthouse, the heavy front door was wide open.

Clearly, someone was already inside.

As soon as she stepped into the gallery, a glass frame shattered right at her feet. "Ugly lady! You want to steal my daddy! Go away, go away!"