Stealing My Rival's Wife And Her Twins

Rhea Summerlin POV:

My phone went to voicemail for the fourteenth time just as the nurse laid my newborn son across my chest.

"Still nothing from Dad?" the delivery nurse asked softly, adjusting the heated hospital blanket over Noah's tiny, shivering shoulders while my daughter, Lily, let out a sharp, demanding cry from the bassinet beside me.

"He's in the middle of a league charity gala," I whispered, my throat raw from eight hours of unmedicated labor. "The ice rink reception is terrible."

It was a lie, and the pity in the nurse's eyes told me she knew it. Everyone in New York knew who Landon Sterling was. As the captain of the New York Blades, my husband couldn't sneeze without sports media documenting it. Five minutes ago, while the obstetrician was stitching me up, I had stupidly opened my social media feed. The top trending video showed Landon at the Manhattan hockey gala, looking immaculate in a custom tuxedo, laughing as rising actress Amelia Hayes adjusted his lapel for the flashing cameras.

He wasn't in a dead zone. He had simply turned his phone off so his wife going into labor two weeks early wouldn't ruin his press run with the woman half the city already believed was his soulmate.

"I'll be right back with more warm blankets and your pain medication," the nurse said, squeezing my shoulder before hurrying out into the busy corridor.

The semi-private maternity room fell quiet except for Lily's escalating cries. My daughter's tiny face was flushed red, her miniature fists punching the air after kicking her thin hospital swaddle loose. Noah was asleep against my collarbone, warm and impossibly light. Moving him safely into the second bassinet took every ounce of strength left in my trembling arms.

"Hold on, sweet girl, Mama's coming," I murmured, swinging my legs over the edge of the mattress.

The moment my bare feet touched the cold linoleum, a white-hot pain tore through my abdomen. Black spots swarmed my vision. My knees buckled, my hand missing the metal rail of the bassinet as the floor rushed up to meet me.

I didn't hit the ground.

A pair of large, calloused hands caught me securely around the waist, hauling me upright against a wall of solid muscle. The clean scent of winter air and cedarwood cut through the sterile smell of antiseptic.

"Easy," a deep, gravelly voice rumbled right above my ear. "Don't try to stand on your own yet."

I blinked through the dizzy haze, gripping a forearm thick with corded muscle beneath a dark cashmere sweater. When my vision cleared, my breath caught. Looking down at me with sharp, storm-gray eyes was Ciaran Whitlock-the thirty-four-year-old captain of the Boston Monarchs, a perennial Norris Trophy defenseman, and the man Landon hated more than anyone else on earth.

A quiet little boy, maybe five years old with the same dark hair, stood just inside my open doorway clutching a toy hockey stick, watching us with wide, perceptive eyes.

"Mrs. Sterling?" Ciaran's brow furrowed as recognition flashed across his rugged face. We had crossed paths twice at NHL awards banquets, where I usually stood five paces behind Landon in the shadows. Ciaran glanced around the empty, cramped room, taking in the lack of flowers, the absence of bags, and the glaring lack of a husband. His jaw tightened. "Where is Landon?"

Before I could invent another pathetic excuse, Ciaran guided me gently back onto the edge of the bed. Without waiting for permission, this six-foot-four bruiser who terrified forwards across the league walked over to the bassinet. With startling grace, he scooped up my crying daughter, cradling her against his broad chest.

"Hey there, little one," Ciaran murmured, rocking her with the practiced ease of a devoted father. Lily's cries immediately softened into tiny hiccups. Looking down at his son, he added, "Asher, hit that red button on the wall for the nurse."

The little boy obeyed instantly. Seconds later, a woman in a plush robe stepped into the doorway holding two extra fleece blankets-both stamped with the black-and-gold Boston Monarchs crest.

"Ciaran, the nurse said someone down the hall delivered twins alone and needed extra-" The woman stopped dead, looking from her massive brother holding my baby to me sitting pale and shaking on the mattress. "Oh, honey. I'm Maeve, Ciaran's sister. I just had my third two doors down. Look at you, you're freezing."

Maeve bustled in, wrapping one of the Monarchs blankets around my shoulders and tucking the other over Noah while the delivery nurse rushed back inside to check my vitals.

I stared at Ciaran, humiliation burning hotter than my stitches. "You don't have to stay. Really, I'm fine."

Ciaran didn't hand Lily back until the nurse had me settled cleanly against the pillows. When he laid my daughter in my arms, his gray eyes locked onto mine-steady, observant, and fiercely protective.

"Give me your phone," Ciaran said quietly.

"He won't answer my number," I admitted before I could stop myself.

A muscle feathered in Ciaran's jaw. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his own phone, tapped a contact, and put it on speaker. He didn't have to ask for the number; the two captains sat on the same players' association committee.

It rang twice before Landon's smooth, irritated voice filled the hospital room, loud music and laughter bleeding through the background. "Whitlock? You've got thirty seconds before I hang up. What the hell do you want?"

Rhea Summerlin POV:

Hearing my husband's voice while another man stood beside my hospital bed felt like a physical slap.

My mind flashed back to three weeks ago in our Manhattan penthouse. I had been eight months pregnant, my ankles swollen, sitting at the kitchen island breaking down game film of the Blades' struggling power play-notes Landon always took to the coaching staff and claimed as his own brilliant insights. Landon had walked in past midnight smelling of Amelia's floral perfume and dropped a thick manila envelope straight onto my tablet.

Sign them after the babies are born, he had told me, not even bothering to take off his coat. Amelia's management and Evan think it's time we stop hiding. A drawn-out divorce is bad for my Summerlin Performance endorsement bid. Sign quietly, don't make a scene in the press, and I'll make sure you and the kids get a decent monthly stipend.

When I had asked if he even wanted to be in the delivery room, he had looked at me as if I were an overzealous fan asking for an autograph in traffic. I'm in the middle of a contract year, Rhea. Stop being dramatic.

Now, in the fluorescent glare of the maternity ward, Ciaran Whitlock's eyes darkened to the color of bruised slate.

"Your wife just gave birth to your twins alone, Sterling," Ciaran said, his voice dropping to that lethal, ice-calm register that usually preceded a five-minute major penalty on the ice. "She nearly collapsed on the floor trying to pick up your daughter because nobody is here with her. Get down to Mount Sinai right now."

For three seconds, the only sound over the speaker was the clinking of champagne glasses and a woman's breathy laugh-Amelia's laugh-asking Landon who was on the phone.

Then Landon spoke, his voice turning brittle and defensive. "What the hell are you doing near my wife, Whitlock? Keep your nose out of my marriage. Rhea knows my schedule, and she has doctors paying attention to her. We'll deal with our family business on our own time."

The line went dead.

The silence left behind in the hospital room was suffocating. Maeve covered her mouth with her hand, while the nurse muttered something unrepeatable under her breath as she checked my IV drip.

I looked down at Noah and Lily sleeping side by side against my chest, my vision blurring with hot, furious tears that I refused to let fall. For four years, I had shrunk myself to fit into Landon Sterling's shadow. As an orphan who had grown up in a quiet Midwestern foster home after losing my memory in a childhood fever, I had clung to Landon because I wanted a family of my own. I had given him my youth, my sharp analytical mind that secretly elevated his on-ice stats, and now two perfect children.

And he couldn't even spare us ten minutes.

"Thank you," I said to Ciaran, surprised by how steady my voice sounded. The fragile, desperate woman who had dialed Landon fourteen times was gone, burned away by pure survival instinct. If I didn't protect Noah and Lily from a father who treated them like an inconvenience, no one would. I would sign his divorce papers. I would take my babies and vanish from his glamorous, hollow world forever. "Truly, Mr. Whitlock. Thank you for catching me."

Ciaran studied me for a long moment, something shifting behind his stern expression-not pity, which I would have hated, but a quiet, unmistakable respect. "If you need anything tonight, Maeve is in Room 412. Don't hesitate."

With a gentle nod and a hand on little Asher's shoulder, the Boston captain stepped out into the hallway.

Dr. Quentin Summerlin POV:

Down on the second floor of the hospital, my hands were shaking so badly I nearly dropped the glossy genetics file onto my desk.

As a senior obstetrician at Mount Sinai, I had delivered thousands of babies over thirty years, yet nothing had prepared me for the routine postpartum blood panel that had crossed my computer screen twenty minutes ago. When a mother with no documented family medical history gave birth to twins on my floor, hospital protocol flagged her bloodwork for a comprehensive genetic screening.

The patient's name on the chart was Rhea Sterling.

When the automated system flagged a ninety-nine-point-nine percent familial DNA match to a reference sample in our private database, my heart had stopped. Twenty-two years ago, my older brother Edward and his wife Evelyn had lost their four-year-old daughter during a chaotic winter festival in Chicago. Since that day, the entire Summerlin family had put our global fortune into finding her. Every hospital where I worked had our family's genetic markers quietly programmed into the pathology lab alerts.

I stared at the security photo attached to Rhea Sterling's admission chart. She had Evelyn's exact high cheekbones and Edward's unmistakable amber-flecked eyes.

She was here. Right upstairs in a cramped semi-private ward, registered without a single family member listed as an emergency contact.

Grabbing my phone, I bypassed every assistant and dialed my brother's private line. He answered on the first ring.

"Edward," I breathed, my voice cracking as tears stung my eyes. "Stop whatever you're doing and get Evelyn and the boys to Mount Sinai. I found her. God help me, Edward, I just found your daughter."

Dr. Quentin Summerlin POV:

"Say that again, Quentin."

My older brother's voice over the line wasn't the commanding baritone of Edward Summerlin, the billionaire chairman of Summerlin Performance who made professional sports commissioners sweat across negotiation tables. He sounded like a man standing on the edge of a cliff, terrified that a single gust of wind would shatter a miracle.

"It's a ninety-nine-point-nine percent paternal and maternal match against the samples you and Evelyn logged in the national database," I said rapidly, grabbing my white lab coat and striding out of my office toward the private elevators. "Her name is Rhea. She's twenty-six, she grew up with no medical history on file, and Edward-she just gave birth to twins an hour ago. A boy and a girl."

A sharp gasp echoed from the background on Edward's end, followed by the crash of a porcelain cup hitting the floor. That was Evelyn.

"Quentin, give me the phone-tell me you aren't mistaken!" Evelyn's voice broke through the speaker, raw and trembling with twenty-two years of agonizing grief. "We've had false leads before. The girl in Seattle, the woman in Montreal-"

"Those were tips from private investigators, Evie. This is hard genetics," I told my sister-in-law, punching the elevator button for the fourth floor with trembling fingers. "I ran the secondary markers myself ten minutes ago to be certain. She has the rare hereditary marker we share on chromosome seven. She's your little girl. And she's here in New York, completely alone in a standard ward."

"What do you mean, alone?" a new, razor-sharp voice cut in. That was my second nephew, Henry. At thirty, he was a senior federal investigator who had joined the bureau for one singular reason: to learn how to track down missing people after the police failed to find his baby sister. "If she just had twins, where is the father?"

I glanced down at the digital tablet in my hand, scanning the intake notes the maternity nurse had logged over the last two hours. My stomach twisted with sudden, violent anger. "Her legal name on the admission form is Rhea Sterling. Her husband is listed as Landon Sterling, captain of the New York Blades. According to the nursing notes, she checked herself in via taxi in active labor, and he still hasn't bothered to show up."

Dead silence fell over the speakerphone on the other end.

Of course they knew the name Landon Sterling. Every high-profile hockey player on the planet wore Summerlin skates, swung Summerlin carbon-fiber sticks, and begged to be the face of our biometric sports technology. In fact, if I remembered our last family dinner correctly, William-my eldest nephew and the sharpest sports attorney on the East Coast-had mentioned that Landon Sterling's agent was aggressively lobbying for Summerlin Performance's fifty-million-dollar global ambassador contract this week.

"Landon Sterling," William repeated slowly, his legal mind already sharpening like a guillotine blade. "The same Landon Sterling whose publicist has been leaking stories to the tabloids all month about his cozy dinners with Amelia Hayes?"

"I swear to God, if that arrogant bastard left my sister alone in a hospital bed to chase a camera, I'll end his career before sunrise," my youngest nephew, Oliver, snarled in the background. As a sports documentary director who spent half his life embedded in NHL locker rooms, Oliver knew exactly what kind of ego guys like Sterling carried.

"Nobody does anything rash until we see her," Edward commanded, though the tremor in his voice betrayed his own fury. "We are leaving the estate right now. Ten minutes to the helipad, fifteen to Manhattan. Quentin, get my daughter and my grandchildren out of that shared room immediately. Put them in the VIP wing and lock down the floor. Do not let anyone near her."

"Already on it," I promised.

As the elevator doors slid open onto the fourth-floor maternity ward, I tucked my phone into my pocket and clutched the blue folder containing the DNA report against my chest.

Down the corridor, I spotted a tall, broad-shouldered man in a dark sweater walking toward the exit with a small boy holding his hand. Even from the side, I recognized Ciaran Whitlock from Oliver's hockey documentaries. He looked grim, his jaw set tightly as he ushered his son toward the elevators.

I didn't spare him a second thought. My eyes were locked on Room 408.

Taking a deep breath to steady my racing heart, I schooled my features into the calm, reassuring bedside manner I had practiced for three decades. I couldn't barge in weeping and overwhelm a woman who had just gone through the trauma of childbirth alone.

I knocked softly on the half-open door and stepped inside.

Sitting propped up against the thin hospital pillows, wrapped in a Boston Monarchs fleece blanket with a sleeping infant tucked into each crook of her arms, was my niece. When she looked up at me with Edward's amber-flecked eyes, fragile yet fiercely protective over her babies, twenty-two years of family heartbreak cracked open in my chest.

"Mrs. Sterling?" I said softly, my voice thick with emotion. "I'm Dr. Quentin Summerlin. I apologize for intruding so late, but I have something extraordinary to show you."