Nouvelles Familial Bond Romance & Romans Ruthless Regret

After my son was abducted, my husband took me to an adoption center to bring home a baby boy born the same year as the child we'd lost. I poured every ounce of love I had into raising him. He had a sensitive stomach, so I pushed through my chronic back pain to cook him special meals every single day. When he spiked a fever in the middle of the night, I carried him twenty miles through the rain to the nearest hospital. When he couldn't focus in school, I was constantly at his classroom door, flattering his teachers and bringing them gifts, just to get them to pay a little extra attention to him. Fifteen years of grinding sacrifice, and it all came down to one moment at his college acceptance party. "I couldn't have gotten into Harvard without my mother's love and hard work," he said into the microphone. He raised his glass, eyes drifting toward where I was sitting. The cameras flashed as I started to rise from my seat, matching his silent lip movements. And then I heard a name I didn't expect. "She is Rachel Lynch." I froze. That was my best friend's name.

When I found the hotel booking receipts on my husband's phone, I asked for a divorce. I didn't yell. I didn't cry. My husband, Mark Sterling, thought I was just throwing another childish tantrum. He tossed a black credit card onto the counter. "The PIN is your birthday. Go buy yourself something nice and stop being so paranoid." When I didn't touch it, he sighed and pulled a limited-edition action figure from behind his back. "Look, I even got a gift for Leo. I'll pick him up from preschool tonight. Happy now?" My hands shook as I stared at the toy. Our son died in a car crash two months ago, on the day Mark skipped his parent-teacher conference. He didn't even know that our boy was dead.

Three months after our daughter, Aria Kirk, is born, she ends up in the ICU. That's when my wife, Leyla Saunders, sends her childhood friend and secretary, Kamryn Benton, to hand me 50 bucks. She wants me to get rid of our baby, claiming that "a poor man's genes aren't worth passing on". I tear up the agreement, scoop Aria into my arms, and leave Leyla. I run into her again five years later. She's donating 30 million dollars to the municipal children's hospital, while I'm working as a caregiver at the hospital, with Aria by my side. My baby girl is starving. The moment she spots half a leftover drumstick on a tray, she reaches for it. I grab her frail wrist and pull her back. "Aria, what did I tell you? We don't pick up food other people leave behind." She stares longingly at the chicken. "But it's just on the table. It didn't hit the trash can yet. If you wipe it off, I can still eat it." My throat tightens, and I feel a heavy weight pressing against my chest. Just as I'm about to pull out the half-eaten bread from this morning, a familiar voice calls out from behind us, "Jason?"

When my husband threatened me with divorce for the hundredth time, demanding I sacrifice myself for my sister, I did not cry or make a scene. I simply signed my name on the divorce papers and willingly handed over the man I had loved for ten years to my sister. A few days later, my sister spoke recklessly at a banquet and offended a powerful family. Once again, I stepped forward to take responsibility, bearing all the consequences in her place. When they later proposed that I become a test subject for my sister's drug research, I gladly accepted. Mom and Dad said I had finally grown into someone mature and responsible. Even my cold husband stood by my hospital bed and, for the first time in so long, gently stroked my cheek. He said tenderly, "Don't be afraid. The experiment won't be life-threatening. When you get out, I'll cook you a big meal." However, he did not know that regardless of whether the experiment was dangerous or not, he did not have to wait for me because I was already dying from a terminal illness.