CHAPTER 1

“Don't look at me like that, Lydia. You should be grateful. Not every woman gets the opportunity to do something this meaningful.”

Williams Osborne adjusted the cuff of his shirt, his expression carrying an infuriating calmness that made Lydia's stomach twist. He had just finished telling her that the baby she had carried for nine months wasn't hers, and somehow, he expected gratitude.

She stared at him, struggling to reconcile the man sitting beside her hospital bed with the husband she had spent seven years loving.

“You disgust me, Williams.” Her voice came out barely above a whisper, but the words scraped her throat on their way out.

He sighed, dragging a hand over his face. “Can we not do this right now? You've just given birth. You need to rest.”

A bitter laugh escaped her. Rest? How was she supposed to close her eyes when the very man who had promised to protect her had just revealed that he had used her body to give another woman a child?

The baby she had carried, the tiny life whose movements had kept her awake at night, whose first kick had brought tears of happiness to her eyes, belonged to her husband and his sister-in-law.

Clara Wayne.

She swallowed against the lump in her throat, but it refused to go away. “Did you ever intend to tell me the truth?”

Williams shifted on the edge of his chair. “I just did.”

“After I gave birth!” Her voice cracked, and she pressed her trembling fingers against the bedsheet. “You waited until after I had carried that child for nine months, gone through countless hospital appointments, endured the pain of childbirth, and nearly lost my life bringing him into this world before telling me that he wasn't mine?”

“Lydia, lower your voice.” He glanced towards the hospital door, clearly more concerned about being overheard than the state of his wife. “You're making this unnecessarily complicated.”

“Unnecessarily complicated?” she repeated, staring at him in disbelief. “What exactly would you call it, Williams? A misunderstanding?”

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Clara lost her husband. You know how difficult things have been for her. She wanted a child, and I wanted to help her. We simply found a way to make that happen.”

Her fingers curled into the sheets.

“And I was the way?”

“You were the perfect person for it.” He said it so casually that she almost forgot how to breathe. “You couldn't have children naturally, and we both knew how badly you wanted to become a mother. I thought this arrangement would give you something to be happy about too.”

For a moment, she couldn't speak. She simply watched his lips move as he continued explaining the destruction of her life as though he were discussing an ordinary business transaction.

Seven years.

Seven years of defending him against his family, swallowing insults at dinner tables, and convincing herself that every sacrifice she made would eventually mean something. She had abandoned opportunities, postponed dreams, and repeatedly made herself smaller to keep the peace in their marriage.

And this was what her devotion had earned her.

“You lied to me,” she finally managed, her eyes burning. “You looked me in the face and lied to me.”

Williams exhaled impatiently. “I knew you would react this way if I told you beforehand.”

“Because you knew I wouldn't agree!”

He didn't answer.

That silence told her everything.

After discovering that she couldn't conceive naturally, she had been devastated. Motherhood was something she had dreamed about for as long as she could remember. She wanted to experience the sleepless nights, the little fingers wrapped around hers, and the joy of hearing a child call her Mommy.

She had begged Williams to consider assisted reproduction. She had researched clinics, consulted specialists, and even offered to cover the expenses with her personal savings. But he always found a reason to postpone it. Sometimes work was too demanding. Other times, he insisted they should wait until his business was more stable.

She had believed him because she loved him.

Then his older brother died, leaving Clara a widow. The Osborne family practically wrapped themselves around her, treating her grief as though it were a sacred responsibility. Williams, especially, became her constant companion. He attended to her needs, remembered her appointments, and seemed to have an endless supply of patience whenever she was involved.

She had questioned their closeness once. He accused her of being insensitive to a grieving woman.

She never questioned it again.

Until the night he returned from a business trip with a medical appointment letter bearing both their names. He told her that he had finally reconsidered their plans and arranged everything with a fertility specialist.

She remembered the way she had thrown her arms around him that night, laughing and crying against his chest. She remembered thanking him repeatedly, telling him that he had no idea how much that decision meant to her.

What a fool she had been.

Every scan, every blood test, every consultation had been part of a carefully arranged deception. The embryo had been created from Clara's egg and Williams's sperm, then transferred into her womb.

She had never been given the chance to make an informed choice.

She had not been a wife receiving her husband's help to become a mother.

She had been a womb they had rented without her consent.

“Where is the baby?” she asked suddenly, lifting her head.

Williams looked towards the door. “With Clara.”

Her stomach tightened. “You gave him to her already?”

“She is his mother, Lydia.”

“And what am I?”

He stared at her, apparently struggling to understand why she was asking such an obvious question.

“You carried him. That doesn't change the fact that he's Clara's son.”