Chapter 3 The Love That Was Never Real

The boy, who looked about four years old, stood protectively in front of Caspian, glaring at me with his puffed-out cheeks.

I endured the pain and slowly got to my feet. Trembling, I reached toward him. "I'm your—"

"Shut up!" Caspian slapped my hand away. He picked up the boy and placed him in Tia's arms before looking at me, visibly irritated.

"Lydia, I had everything arranged. I left you a daughter and enough property. Just pretend I'm dead. Forget what happened today and let it go, alright?"

I stared at him as he stood protectively in front of Tia, holding the son I had given birth to.

My heart plummeted, and my entire body began to tremble uncontrollably.

In the six years I had known Caspian, I had never seen this side of him.

For the two years after my parents died, I had tried constantly to atone for what I believed I owed them. I even developed severe depression. Just when I felt I couldn't hold on any longer, Caspian, who worked as a psychologist, patiently talked me through it.

He knew all my pain.

Even when I broke down in the middle of the night and ran to the mountains intending to end my life, he had always been the first to find me and pull me into his arms.

"Lydia, don't be afraid. Even if the whole world gives up on you, I never will."

Caspian had used his gentleness and devotion to pull me out of the abyss. Then, he proposed to me.

After we got married, I became pregnant with our first child.

He had been so excited that he picked me up and spun me around. That same day, he bought prenatal education books and ordered a crib.

He had told me, "Lydia, this is our first child. Even before they're born, I want them to feel how much we love them."

But the day our child was born, I suffered complications during labor.

When I woke up, Caspian was clutching my hand, his eyes swollen and red. "Lydia, no child will ever be more important to me than you. You're the most important person in my life. Let's forget about the baby."

Then, he held me in his arms and sobbed.

I knew he had only been trying to comfort me—a man who had burst into tears just from looking at our baby's ultrasound scans could not have loved his child.

So, after spending six months recovering, I tried to conceive again. After multiple failed attempts, I finally decided to undergo IVF.

Whenever he saw the bruises covering my stomach from all the injections, the pain in his eyes did not go away.

Even when he was away on business and we spoke over video calls, he would still talk about the beautiful future he envisioned for our little family.

I'd never imagined that every bit of kindness he'd shown me had actually been meant to fulfill Tia's wish for happiness.

"Lydia, I know I owe you an apology, but Caspian and I have been legally married for a long time."

I jerked my head up and met the barely concealed smugness in Tia's eyes.

She spoke as though she were trying to reason with me, but every word pierced me like a knife.

"Now that you know the truth, if you keep clinging to him, people will call you a homewrecker. Besides, my son is very attached to me. You can't take him away."

When I returned to the Salisbury family, Tia had already been sent away, and I didn't meet Caspian until two years later.

So, I had never known that she and Caspian had met, nor had I noticed that after building a family with me, he had maintained another family of his own.

But the way she kept calling me a homewrecker and referring to my son as hers finally shattered the last of the sanity I had desperately tried to hold on to.

"I'm not a homewrecker, and that's my son! I gave birth to him! You stole him from me! I'm not leaving him with any of you!" I lunged forward like a madwoman, trying to take my son back.

But I had barely taken two steps when a powerful hand clamped down on my shoulder.

Before I could even see who it was, a heavy slap landed across my face.

The taste of blood spread rapidly through my mouth.

I covered my cheek and looked up at Ian's livid face.

His eyes were icy as he accused me, "Because of you, Tia can't have children anymore. The least you can do is give her a child! And you have no right to refuse!"