Chapter 7 - The Ultimate BetrayalThe word hung in the sterile air like a guillotine blade dropping.
Yes.
My knees buckled. I had to reach out and grab the metal railing of Emily’s bed to keep from collapsing onto the floor. The room spun wildly around me, the sounds of the monitors blurring into a distant, metallic hum.
My husband.
And my sister.
"How?" I choked out, the word tearing its way up my throat. "How could you? After everything we went through... after every clinic, every needle, every tear..."
"Beth, it wasn't planned," Ryan stammered, stepping toward me with his hands up in a desperate plea for mercy. "I swear to God, it was a mistake. One night... eight months ago. At the cabin during the family weekend. You went to bed early with a migraine, and Emily and I stayed downstairs..."
He stopped, unable to finish the sentence. He didn't need to.
I looked at Emily, my own flesh and blood. The sister I had loved and protected.
"And you kept it," I whispered, staring down at her. "You let me sit across from you for months. You watched me cry over my empty womb while you were carrying my husband’s child."
"I didn't want to keep it at first!" Emily wailed, tears streaming freely down her cheeks as she pulled herself upright, ignoring the sharp pain in her abdomen. "I was terrified! I wanted to disappear! But Ryan... Ryan said we couldn't abort it. He said it was his blood, his child. He promised he would find a way to make it right for all of us."
"Make it right?" I laughed hysterically, the sound sharp and broken. "By forging my signature? By paying off a fake father with our life savings? By trapping me in a legal adoption contract to raise your baby with my cheating husband?"
"We wanted to give the baby to you, Beth!" Emily shouted back, her voice cracking with desperation. "That was the whole point! Ryan said you were broken because you couldn't have a child of your own. He said if I carried the baby and we set up a legal adoption, you could finally be a mother! You could have the baby you always wanted, and we could keep it in the family!"
The words hit me like a physical blow, knocking the remaining wind straight out of my lungs.
They had planned it.
They had looked at my grief—my deepest, most agonizing pain—and turned it into a logistical solution for their affair.
"You were going to let me raise your bastard child," I said, my voice dropping to a terrifying, dead calm. "You were going to let me play mother to the living proof of my husband's infidelity, while patting yourselves on the back for being so generous."
"Beth, please," Ryan whispered, reaching out to touch my arm.
I flinched away from him as if he were carrying a plague.
"Don't touch me," I hissed. "Don't ever touch me again."
May you like
I turned on my heel, grabbed the manila folder off the bed, and walked out of the room.
This time, neither of them tried to stop me.
