Chapter 2

Yvette stood frozen, stunned by the news. She couldn't tell which shocked her more, the sudden accident or the revelation that Claire had been pregnant with Yates's child.

Throughout their five years of marriage, Yvette and Yates had always used birth control. They'd never had a child. Yet how long had he even been with Claire? How could she already have been pregnant?

A week later, Yates came home.

He didn't question Yvette or raise his voice. In fact, he said nothing at all, merely studying her for a long time with a dark, inscrutable gaze she couldn't begin to understand.

Then, without warning, he seized her and began roughly tearing at her clothes.

"Yates! What are you doing?" Yvette cried, struggling in terror.

He ignored her protests and forced her down onto the bed, his movements driven by a desperate, almost frenzied intensity.

For the next month, Yates behaved like a completely different man. He stopped going to work, paid no attention to Claire, and spent his days and nights demanding sex from Yvette instead. He took her several times a day, barely allowing her any rest, with a relentlessness that seemed almost self-destructive and punitive.

The physical strain was nearly more than Yvette could bear, and the humiliation cut even deeper. Yet despite everything, a small, desperate hope began to grow inside her.

Perhaps Yates was simply overwhelmed by grief. Perhaps he'd finally come to his senses and was trying to forget Claire. Could this be his way of returning to her, of making things the way they used to be?

Clinging to that possibility, Yvette endured his demands in silence, sometimes even willingly going along with him.

Then one day, she suffered a violent bout of vomiting. Uneasy, she secretly went to the hospital for an examination, only to discover that she was pregnant.

As Yvette rested a hand on her still-flat stomach, she felt a flicker of hope. Perhaps this baby could save their marriage.

She never imagined what would happen when she told Yates.

Instead of the overwhelming joy she'd expected, he remained remarkably calm as he studied the test results. After a moment, he glanced at his bodyguards and delivered an order, enunciating every word.

"Throw her off the fifth floor."

Yvette stared at him in disbelief.

"Yates, what... what did you just say? Don't you realize I'm carrying your child?"

There was no trace of the love or tenderness that had once filled his eyes. Instead, his gaze trembled with hatred and grief.

"Do you realize Claire was carrying my child, too? You destroyed the baby we conceived out of love! So I made sure you'd get pregnant to repay her for what she lost!"

Yvette felt as though she'd been struck by lightning.

Suddenly, everything he'd done over the past month made horrifying sense.

Claire had lost her baby, so Yates had deliberately gotten Yvette pregnant just to make her miscarry, too. He intended to use the loss of their child to make up for Claire's.

To think he loved Claire so much that he was willing to do something like this!

Yvette opened her mouth, desperate to question him, to scream at him, to say anything at all. Yet her throat seemed to have been filled with cement, leaving her unable to utter a single sound.

Before she could recover, two towering bodyguards approached with expressionless faces and seized her by the arms.

"No! Yates, you can't do this!" she screamed, struggling desperately against their grip.

Yates merely turned his back on her, refusing to look at her again.

The bodyguards showed no mercy as they dragged her up to the fifth floor and shoved her over the edge.

"Ahhh!"

When Yvette hit the ground, the impact sent agony tearing through her body. It felt as though every bone had shattered. Warm blood spread beneath her, staining her dress red.

It hurt so much.

Just before she lost consciousness, Yvette remembered Yates confessing his love to her when they were sixteen. Standing beneath the moonlight with his ears flushed red, he'd promised, "Yvette Chandler, I'll love you for the rest of my life."

A single cold tear slipped from the corner of her eye as she finally accepted the devastating truth.

Yates Prescott, the man who had loved her for nine whole years, really didn't love her anymore.

When Yvette regained consciousness, she was lying in a hospital bed. Her stomach was flat again, and she knew the baby was gone.

She didn't cry or make a scene. It felt as though someone had hollowed out her chest, leaving nothing behind but cold, empty numbness.

Reaching for her phone, she called one of the maids at the mansion. Her voice was perfectly calm, without the slightest trace of emotion.

"There's a sandalwood box in my study drawer. Bring it to me."

The maid arrived with the box shortly afterward. Inside was a blank sheet of paper bearing Yates's signature.

He'd given it to her on her eighteenth birthday, promising that whatever she wanted in the future, all she had to do was write it down, and he would give it to her.

Yvette had treasured that piece of paper for years, unwilling to use it because she couldn't bear to waste her one chance to ask him for anything.

Now, she knew exactly what she wanted.

She would use that promise to put an end to the love she'd devoted nine years of her life to.

She still had enough self-respect to know she didn't need Yates.

Losing her baby had finally destroyed the last of her hopes and forced her to face reality. In exchange for that devastating loss, she would reclaim the person she'd been before she ever met him.

The independent, clear-headed Yvette Chandler who had once known how to stand on her own two feet.