CHAPTER 9: The Deception

Arabella stood beside the bed long after Adrian left.

Raina slept now, her lashes dark against flushed cheeks, her breathing uneven but steady. The room smelled faintly of antiseptic and baby lotion. Arabella had imagined this moment before, what it would feel like to finally see and hold her daughter, even for a moment. But nothing had prepared her for the weight of it.

This was her.

This small, warm body. She tried to take in every detail of her daughter as much as she could. The curve of her mouth. The tiny crease between her brows when she frowned in her sleep.

Love hit her without warning.

I carried you, she thought. I felt you move inside me. I bled for you. I almost died bringing you into this world. Her throat tightened and her eyes filled with hot tears, but she didn't let them drop.

And then, the doctor’s words surfaced again, “Your pregnancy was not the result of natural conception.” The joy in her heart twisted.

She looked at Raina’s face again, really looked this time. The familiarity was there but so were questions she never knew existed. The things that hadn’t made sense. The memories that had always felt… blurred.

“If I didn’t conceive you the way I believed I did… then how?” she thought to herself.

Her gaze shifted to Everett who stood near the door, silent, avoiding her eyes. She straightened slowly, pressing a hand to the bed rail as if grounding herself. Then she turned to the doctor, her voice was quiet, but unyielding.

“You were saying something,” she said. “About me not getting pregnant the natural way.” The doctor nodded. “Yes.”

Arabella’s eyes never left Everett. “And Everett, you seem to know what the doctor was talking about.”

Everett’s shoulders stiffened.

“I need to understand what had been done to my body,” she continued. “What I consented to. And what I didn’t.”

The walk back to the doctor’s office felt longer than before. Each step sharpened her focus, replaying years of marriage she’d once believed were built on trust.

The doctor returned to his desk and opened the file from earlier.

“Doctor,” Arabella started, “I don’t remember anything about the IVF procedures you  mentioned earlier. I do not remember giving consent to anything like that.”

Then she turned fully to Everett now. “ You seem to know what the doctor is talking about. How is my pregnancy not the result of a natural conception?”

“Because it couldn’t be natural,” Everett said finally, his voice hoarse.

The words landed heavily.

Arabella froze. “What?” Nothing on earth prepared her for his response. 

He swallowed. “I couldn’t risk it.”

“Risk what, exactly?” her mind raced. “You made it sound like we were just… unlucky. Like we needed time. Like it was stress. Or God’s timing.”

Her voice cracked. “So what exactly was the truth?”

Everett’s shoulders sagged, the weight of it crushing him. “I have a hereditary condition,” he said quietly. “It affects fertility. After I turn thirty, my chances drop drastically. Eventually, nothing viable.”

The room went still. Arabella felt something crack inside her chest. Not sympathy but recognition. He'd known. From the very beginning, he'd known their entire marriage was built on this lie.

“Everett, I was your wife for three good years and I knew nothing about this… like you knew exactly what you were doing from the very beginning…,” Arabella said slowly, each word deliberate. “You knew before we even started trying.”

He nodded once.

“And instead of telling me,” she continued, her voice sharpening, “you decided to plan around me.”

Everett explained that he had stored his sperm years ago, before the condition deteriorated beyond recovery. He had planned ahead. Protected himself. More like insurance. 

The word echoed bitterly in Arabella’s mind. 

Insurance…  on her body! Without her consent. 

Her memories shifted now… settling, rearranging, clicking into place.

The injections, the appointments that always felt rushed, how he insisted on driving her, how tired she always felt afterward.

“So all those times you said my body just needed support…” she murmured.

She looked up at him. “Those weren’t even vitamins, were they?”

Everett didn’t answer.

“They were hormones,” she said. “For IVF.”

Her breathing became shallow. “And the procedures you called ‘routine checkups’…?”

Her voice faltered.

“…those weren’t checkups.”

The truth slammed into her fully now… not all at once, but in waves.

“You didn’t want me asking questions,” she said softly. “Did you?”

He looked away.

“You didn’t want me reading forms. Or knowing what was being done to me.”

Silence.

“But you needed me pregnant anyway.”

She stepped closer. “Not just for a child. But for control. For my inheritance. For your standing. For Lilian.”

Everett flinched.

“You used one lie to secure everything,” Arabella said. “A baby. Money. Leverage.”

Her eyes burned. “And I was just… the vessel.”

"And after all this," her voice broke, "you had the audacity to call me a womb with legs. As if that's all I ever was to you."

The doctor’s voice was careful now. “Ms. Ashford, if consent was forged or obtained under sedation…”

Arabella raised a hand, stopping him.

She was staring at Everett, seeing him clearly for the first time.

“I thought the worst thing you ever did was try to take my daughter and my inheritance,” she said quietly.

Her voice dropped. “But you took my body long before that.”

Everett’s voice cracked. “I never meant to hurt you.”

“But you did,” she said. “And you did it deliberately.”

She turned back to the doctor, grounding herself. “So the IVF explains how I got pregnant.”

She paused.

“But it still doesn’t explain,”

Her eyes slid to Adrian.

“Why he is Raina’s biological father.”