Chapter 4

When I opened my eyes again, I was in a hospital emergency room.

A doctor was already inserting an IV into my arm.

“Ms. Quinn, I’m sorry, but your baby... there’s nothing we can do.”

“What?”

The words hit me like a bolt of lightning.

I was pregnant? How could I possibly...

“You’re one month along, but between the untreated fever and the severe trauma to your body, the baby has no chance. We need to perform a D&C immediately.”

I stared blankly at the ceiling, numb to the core.

Then a woman with delicate features walked in, already dressed in surgical scrubs.

“Hello. I’m Vivian Lane, and I’ll be your surgeon for this procedure.”

I froze. Cold sweat beaded across my back.

Vivian?

“Get away from me!”

I screamed with the last of my strength. “You barely have any training and you’re doing surgery? That’s a crime! And I haven’t signed anything, you can’t—”

A surgical consent form was thrust in front of my face.

“Your husband already signed it.”

Vivian said softly, a smug grin spreading across her face.

“I heard you were so looking forward to this baby. What a shame...”

“But don’t worry. I can always give him a child. You just rest.”

With that, she waved her hand, and someone wheeled me into the operating room.

“Vivian! Dominic! You’ll pay for this!”

I screamed, but it made no difference.

Claiming I was allergic to anesthesia, Vivian performed the procedure without any sedation, forcing the instruments into my body.

Blinding pain tore through me. My vision spun, and then I lost consciousness entirely.

When I woke again, I was lying in a hospital bed.

A nurse was changing my dressings.

“Ms. Quinn, you lost a great deal of blood during the surgery. Your husband authorized us to remove your uterus to save your life.”

My hand flew to my lower stomach.

In that moment, I felt as if my body had been hollowed out.

As if my heart had been ripped from my chest, the pain suffocating.

My fingers dug into the sheets, fighting to keep myself from breaking down.

The door creaked open.

It was Vivian.

“What do you want? Get out!”

I hissed through clenched teeth.

Vivian’s lips curled into a smile. She walked up to me, pulled out her phone, and scrolled to those naked photos of me.

“Dominic doesn’t trust you at all, does he?”

“If he’d bothered to check, he would’ve found out these photos are fake. And that I’m the one who leaked them.”

“But he couldn’t even be bothered to look into it for you.”

Vivian shook her head and tucked her phone away. “That tells you exactly where you stand with him. You’re nothing but mud under someone’s shoe.”

Her words hit me like a freight train. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.

“You thought having Dominic’s baby would cement your place as Mrs. Ashford? Pathetic.”

“Take a good look at yourself. You’re nobody.”

The pain was too much. I coughed up blood.

Vivian threw her head back and laughed, looking at me with pure contempt.

“Disgusting. You almost got that on me, you know that?”

I gathered every last shred of strength I had, shot up from the bed, and slapped Vivian hard across the face.

“How dare you hit me?”

Vivian’s eyes flashed with fury. But the instant Dominic walked into the room, she dropped to the floor.

“Dominic, does Stella have some kind of problem with me? She hit me...” She dissolved into sobs.

Dominic rushed over and swept Vivian up into his arms.

“That’s not what happened!”

“Then what did happen!”

Dominic cut me off. “I saw it with my own eyes. Are you going to deny that too?”

“Stella, I never imagined you were this kind of person!”

“Scheming and vicious. I must have been blind to ever marry you!”

“Someone take her back and lock her up!”

With that, Dominic carried Vivian out of the room.