Anneq Reed Shields

"Sign the papers, Natalie. The baby and I are leaving." My husband's voice cut through the hospital room like ice. I lay in the bed, my body still torn and aching from the emergency C-section twelve hours ago, and stared at the divorce papers he slid across my blanket. "What are you talking about?" My voice cracked. "I just gave birth to our daughter." Ethan Blackwood didn't even blink. The man I'd loved for four years looked at me like I was a stranger who'd wandered into his life by accident. "She's not yours to keep," he said. "You were just the surrogate. The contract is over." The room spun. "Surrogate? Ethan, we're married. That's our baby—" "You signed a contract three years ago." He pulled out a folded document, the paper crisp and official. "You agreed to carry a child and walk away. I paid you well. Don't make this ugly." I remembered that day. I'd been desperate, drowning in my dead father's debt, and a clinic had offered me money to be a surrogate. But the man I'd met there, the man who'd held my hand through morning sickness and midnight cravings, who'd married me in a courthouse and whispered I love you against my hair— That was Ethan. "You married me," I whispered. "Why would you marry your surrogate?" For the first time, something flickered across his face. Guilt, maybe. Or pity. "Because Camila couldn't have children, and she needed to believe the baby was hers from the start." His jaw tightened. "Camila is back now. She's my fiancée. The baby will be raised by us." Camila. The ex who'd left him at the altar two years before I met him. The woman whose photo I'd found in his drawer and he'd sworn meant nothing. I looked down at my arms, still trembling from the anesthesia. They felt impossibly empty. "Where is she?" I asked. "Where's my daughter?" "In the nursery. With Camila." He said it like it was nothing. Like he hadn't just ripped my heart out of my chest. "She's bonding with her." I tried to sit up and pain shot through my stomach so violently I gasped. "Don't." Ethan actually reached out, then stopped himself. "You'll tear the stitches." "Get out of my way." I clawed at the bed rail, dragging myself upright through the agony. "That's my baby. I carried her for nine months. I felt her kick. I named her—" "You don't get to name her." His voice hardened. "Natalie, I'm trying to make this easy. Twenty million dollars. Sign, walk away, and never contact us again." I stared at the man I'd given everything to. And then I laughed—a broken, hysterical sound. Because three days ago, I'd found out something Ethan didn't know. Something that changed everything. The baby in that nursery? She wasn't his.