I Married the Man Raising My Real Daughter

Chapter 1

Isabella's POV

"Mrs. Reed, are you certain this girl is your child?"

Doctor Frank's question landed like a blow to my chest. For a moment, I could not move.

What kind of question was that to ask a mother?

"Of course she is my child. Who else's child would she be, if not mine? I carried her for nine months. I laboured for her." My voice came out sharper than I intended, but something about the question had unsettled me deeply.

He sighed and slowly removed the gloves from his hands, avoiding my eyes.

"I am sorry, Mrs. Reed, but I have just run a blood test, and I have discovered that you and this child do not share a compatible blood type."

My lips parted. My chest tightened.

"You are AB. She is O negative. There is no match at all. Biologically speaking, there is no way this child came from you." He said it so plainly, as though he were not dismantling my entire world with those few words.

My hands began to tremble, on their own, as though my body understood before my mind could accept it.

"No." I shook my head and took a step backward, my spine meeting the cold wall behind me. "That is not possible."

Was he mistaken? Was this some cruel error? Because if it was a joke, it was the most merciless one anyone had ever played on a mother.

But there was no time to dwell on that. My daughter, my Chloe, my only child, was fighting for her life behind that door. She had fallen from a swing during break time and struck her head against the concrete, losing so much blood that the hospital did not have enough of her rare blood type in reserve.

They had summoned me for a transfusion. I had rushed here prepared to give anything, everything, only to be told that my own blood did not belong to my own child.

"No. This must be a mistake. Run the test again," I said, my voice cracking, refusing to accept what he was telling me.

Doctor Frank rubbed the bridge of his nose, as though I were the one causing him distress rather than the reverse.

"Madam, with respect, this is not the moment to dispute results. Your daughter urgently needs blood. Could you call your husband? We need him here immediately."

Chloe needed saving. That was all that mattered. Whatever error had occurred could be addressed afterward. Some careless technician had likely mixed up the samples. That had to be the explanation.

I dialled Marcus's number with fingers that would not stay still. It went straight to voicemail. I tried again. And again. On the fifth attempt, he finally answered.

"What is it?" His voice was heavy with irritation, as though I had interrupted something far more important than our daughter's life.

"Marcus…"

"Whatever you are about to say had better be worth my time, or you will regret disturbing me." He cut me off, and something inside my chest collapsed quietly.

When had we arrived at this place? When had the man who once knelt in the rain outside my parents' gate to prove his devotion become someone who threatened me over the telephone as though I were his adversary?

"Chloe is in the hospital. She has had an accident, and the doctors need you here to donate blood. Now." I forced the words out, and what followed was a sudden, loud crash, glass, perhaps, something shattering violently against a wall.

"You had one responsibility." His voice rose to a shout that forced me to pull the phone from my ear. "Keep our child safe. That is all I asked of you, and once again, you have failed. I am on my way."

The line went dead before I could respond.

I stood frozen, the phone still pressed to my ear, listening to nothing, my heart pounding painfully against my ribs.

That was not even the most troubling part. The most troubling part was that Marcus never responded this way where Chloe was concerned. Ordinarily, he would bark instructions down the line, tell me to manage it myself, tell the doctors I would be the one to donate, insist he was occupied with something of greater importance. For him to say, without hesitation, that he was coming immediately, without argument…

Something was deeply wrong. I could feel it settling over me like a shadow.

Fifteen minutes later, Marcus burst through the hospital doors, drenched in sweat, breathing heavily, the top buttons of his shirt undone.

"Where is she?" he demanded, seizing my arm so tightly his fingers pressed into my skin. As he drew close, a scent reached me, sharp, floral, unmistakably lavender.

That was not Marcus's cologne. He had never once worn anything resembling lavender.

And I knew, with a certainty that turned my blood cold, that only one woman of my acquaintance wore that exact fragrance, as though it were her signature. Why, then, was it soaked into my husband's collar?

Then I noticed it, a faint smear of red lipstick, just above his collarbone.

My stomach dropped away entirely.

Could it be? Could Marcus and…

"I asked you where she is." He shook me, hard, jolting me from the thought, his eyes burning with an anger I no longer recognized as belonging to the man I had married.

Before I could answer, Doctor Frank's voice rang out from down the corridor.

"This way, please, Mr. Reed. Quickly."

Marcus released my arm without so much as a backward glance and followed the doctor, prepared to be tested himself, to prove he was the match I apparently was not.

He had to be a match. He simply had to be. So why was I not?

My head throbbed beneath the weight of questions stacking one upon another, each heavier than the last. But none of it mattered in that moment, not the perfume, not the lipstick, not the ice spreading through my chest.

Chloe had to survive. Everything else could wait.

I paced the corridor, my heart slamming so violently against my ribs I feared it might break free entirely. Nurses passed and cast me pitying glances, but I barely registered them.

Finally, unable to bear the waiting any longer, I went in search of my husband and the doctor, only to freeze mid-step upon turning a corner and finding them standing together outside Chloe's ward, their backs to me.

Neither of them noticed my presence.

"The transfusion was successful, Mr. Reed. Congratulations to you and your wife," Doctor Frank said, smiling.

Relief flooded through me so suddenly that my knees nearly gave way. I pressed a hand to my mouth to stop myself from crying out.

My daughter was safe.

"Thank God. When may I see her?" Marcus asked.

"Within an hour or two, once she has rested fully." Doctor Frank replied, and I stepped forward, prepared to announce myself, prepared to rush past them both into that ward and hold my daughter…

"If you do not mind, sir, may I ask something?" Doctor Frank's voice stopped me where I stood. "How is it that you are a match for your daughter, and yet your wife is not?"

The air around me grew thick, suffocating, as though something dreadful were gathering, and only I could sense it approaching.

"Cases of that nature are exceedingly rare, though not unheard of," the doctor added.

Then Marcus laughed. A short, cold, mirthless laugh that turned my blood to ice.

"Rare, indeed. But this is not one of those rare medical mysteries you are imagining, Doctor. It is, in fact, quite simple." He paused, and in that pause, the ground seemed to shift beneath my feet.

"My wife is not Chloe's biological mother. She never was. And she never will be."

The words did not merely knock the breath from my lungs, they dismantled the walls, the floor, the very foundation of the life I believed I had built with this man.

What is happening to me?

No, oh noooo…