The Marriage That Stripped Her Bare

Yesterday, Thomas Quinn had personally helped pick out the million-dollar wedding gown I was wearing.

Only, the one who tried it on wasn't me. It was Stacie Browning.

While he was at it, Thomas had a little fun with her in the fitting room.

He even had a noble-sounding excuse for it. "You're pregnant, so it's inconvenient. Better I make do with your sister than go out, sleep around, and catch something."

...

But now, looking at Thomas's furious face, I said numbly, "Can a sense of shame be traded for money?"

Thomas's face only grew angrier at my words.

But to me, shame mattered less than money. Money could get my daughter better medical care. Shame couldn't.

Besides, I remembered my birthday last year. All I'd done was refuse to kneel down and wipe Stacie's shoes, and for that, I was stripped naked and thrown into the swimming pool.

From then on, things like dignity and pride stopped mattering.

Thomas's face went livid, and he roared at me, "Rose, you're beyond saving!"

Actually, Thomas had once saved me from a living hell.

When I was first brought back to the Browning family, I'd barely stepped out of the car when I saw Stacie sitting on a third-floor windowsill, sobbing to her parents, David and Lisa Browning.

"Mom, Dad, if you're going to send me back to some godforsaken backwater, you might as well let me die right now! I'll repay you for raising me these twenty-some years in my next life!"

That day, Stacie didn't die.

And I, the real heiress, never made it through the Browning family's front door.

But Thomas was there.

Thank God Thomas was there. He was the reason I had any place at all in the Browning family.

He laid down the law to the Brownings without a second's hesitation. "As long as I'm alive, none of you are going to bully Rose!"

But then, on the day I married Thomas, I found out I was pregnant.

To this day, I still remember Thomas screaming at me hysterically.

"We've never even slept together, and you're pregnant? All these years, I couldn't bear to lay a finger on you, and you went and got knocked up by another man?"

The anger, the disappointment, the anguish in his eyes. It was all still vivid in my mind.

From that day on, Thomas was no longer my guardian angel. He became the source of all my pain.

When I was seven months pregnant, I walked in on Thomas and Stacie in bed together.

Thomas shielded her behind him. "Rose, you were unfaithful to me, so I'm not going to stay faithful for your sake. Besides, Stacie lost her virginity helping me when I was drugged. I have to take responsibility for her."

Stark naked, Stacie shrieked at me, "You slut! You don't even know whose kid you're carrying! What right do you have to tell us what to do?!"

So, heavily pregnant as I was, I beat Stacie so badly she ended up in the hospital.

That same night, I got into a car accident and went into premature labor.

When I woke up, everyone, my own biological parents included, forced me to walk away from the marriage with nothing.