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Home / While I Gave Birth, He Married My Sister / Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 8

Lahat ng Kabanata ng While I Gave Birth, He Married My Sister: Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 8

8 Kabanata

Chapter 1

I pulled a document from beside my pillow and held it out to Nicolo.“Sign.”A moment earlier, my father had walked into my hospital room with him. The joy still lingered on both their faces, as if they had stepped out of a celebration and come here only because duty demanded it.After I gave birth, the hospital room had felt unbearably still. I had sat on the bed with my newborn in my arms while tears slid down into his blanket. The city lights spilled in through the windows, cold and distant, and there had not been a single person beside me to wipe my face clean.My father glanced at the document and laughed. “What is this? My daughter asks her husband for everything now and not her father?”Nicolo crouched in front of me and took my swollen ankle gently in hand. His voice was warm, flawless, practiced. “Why didn’t you wait for me? Where’s the baby? Are you upset with us? Tomorrow I’ll have the hospital director come to the estate and examine you himself.”If I had not seen that vide

Chapter 2

I spent the entire next day in the hospital.Nicolo never came.On the second day, after I finished the discharge paperwork alone, I passed the VIP floor and looked through the open door of one of the suites.My father and Nicolo were both inside with Elena.My father was feeding her fruit with his own hands, patient and almost tender. Nicolo stood beside the bed talking to her doctor with the focus of a man handling a matter that could not afford the slightest mistake.I stood in the hallway and remembered the night, months earlier, when Elena had come home crying with a swollen belly. She had said the baby's father was trash, that he had vanished the moment he learned she was pregnant, and that she wanted nothing from him except the chance to keep the child. Back then I thought my father and Nicolo were disgusted with her. They had both told her she had brought it on herself.Later I learned how badly I had misread everything.My father gave her formal standing in the family. Nicolo

Chapter 3

Before sunrise, my bedroom door was kicked open.My father stormed in and slapped me so hard my head snapped to the side. "Valentina, your sister tried to help you, and you kicked her. Do you have any idea she's pregnant?"My cheek throbbed, but the real pain was deeper.I looked up at him and said hoarsely, "She poured something on me and set me on fire."His face changed, then darkened further. "You still dare to lie."He grabbed my injured arm and squeezed hard enough to make white pain explode through me. "Elena is already miserable enough, and now you're slandering her child too. You've always been selfish, but this is disgusting."I nearly buckled.Nicolo stood by the door, his gaze fixed on the bandages around my arm. Something flickered in his eyes, but he still said nothing in my defense. He only spoke at last to say, "Come to the hospital and apologize."A laugh broke out of me before I could stop it.Even now, he wanted me to apologize."What if I don't?"My father kicked me

Chapter 4

At the hospital, Nicolo was pouring Elena a glass of water when his hand shook so badly the glass slipped from his fingers and shattered across the tile.Elena flinched. "Nicolo. What is wrong with you?"He looked down at the water running over his hand and into the cracks between the broken pieces. Nothing had cut him, but something inside him had gone sharp and ugly. Since dawn, a restlessness had been working through him, a low animal warning he could not name. It had started the moment Valentina opened her eyes, pulled her hand out of his, and looked at him as if he were a stranger standing too close to her bed. It had only gotten worse after he left.He took out his phone and called her.No answer.He called again. Then again.Still nothing."I need to go home," he said.Elena's expression changed for only a second before she covered it with a soft, frightened look. She reached for his sleeve and held on with both hands. "Please don't leave yet. I hate hospitals when I'm alone. Ju

Chapter 5

She was talking.She was doing what she had always done best. Turning every silence into a stage."I don't even know whether Valentina will visit Mom's grave this year," Elena said, picking at the blanket with lowered lashes. "She never goes. She never cared. Sometimes I think she forgets our mother died bringing her into this world."My father answered with old anger, the kind so worn it had become habit. "Don't mention that ungrateful girl to me. I should have raised her harder."Elena looked down, hiding the satisfaction that came and went in the corners of her mouth. "I know she has a temper. I know she resents me. But she's still my sister. I don't want Nicolo and you blaming her for hurting me."Then the message came through.My father opened it.At first he only frowned. Then his face lost all color. He watched Elena smiling in my room. He watched her talk about our mother's death. He watched her set my arm on fire. He watched her fall on purpose and start crying before Nicolo e

Chapter 6

Elena clawed at his wrist. Her face reddened. Her eyes bulged with panic. Nicolo held her there against the pillows, his expression flat with a violence so pure it frightened even my father. "You let me destroy the woman who actually saved me. You let me use her. Lie to her. Marry her under false vows. And still you thought you deserved more."Elena's feet kicked uselessly against the mattress. My father grabbed Nicolo's arm with both hands. "You'll kill her."Nicolo looked as though that possibility did not trouble him.Then, slowly, he released her.She collapsed back against the bed coughing and choking, one hand at her bruising neck."From this moment on," Nicolo said, "you don't use my name. You don't use my protection. You don't use a single thing that came from me."He turned to my father. "And if you put her under my roof again, don't expect me to stop at words."My father nodded once. He looked years older than he had the night before.By dawn, the whole household knew somethi

Chapter 7

They knew I had come from Italy. They knew I had a child. They knew I worked hard enough to make up for every hour I lost to motherhood and sleep deprivation. Within six months I had earned a place in the data modeling team. Within a year I was contributing to a project important enough that security tightened around our section of the campus. My world shrank to deadlines, snowstorms, daycare pickup, and the slow rebuilding of a self I had almost handed away for love.Letters started arriving in the second month.The first was from my father.I knew his handwriting before I opened the mailbox. The sight of it made my stomach turn. I carried the envelope upstairs, placed it on the kitchen table, stared at it for an hour, then slid it into a drawer unopened.The second letter was from Nicolo.I did not open that one either.More came after that. Some weeks there was one. Some weeks there were three. My father's letters were thick, pages upon pages. Nicolo's were shorter at first. Then lo

Chapter 8

"I qualified," he said. "The same way everyone else does. Coursework. Reviews. Probation. Publications. Interviews. Three years of them."I stared.He gave the smallest nod. "I know how insane that sounds."It did sound insane.Later Ingrid confirmed every word. He had not bought a back door because there was no back door to buy. He had built a file thick enough to pass on merit and then waited through the same scrutiny given to anyone seeking entry into the program. Some evaluators had rejected him the first time. He reapplied. A few had doubted his academic background. He filled the gaps. One had flagged his security profile because of family associations. He opened more of his records than any man with his kind of power usually would. He kept going until there was nothing left to question but motive.I knew the motive.I simply did not know what to do with a man who had spent three years proving he meant it.After that, Nicolo kept his word.He did not press. He did not reach for me

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