Chapter 2

For three days, time ceased to exist. All I remembered was the stench of sweat and alcohol, the filthy hands tearing at my clothes, and the suffocating darkness that pushed me to the edge of insanity.

When the warehouse doors finally opened, I thought I was saved. Instead, I was met with my fiancé's disgust.

Everyone looked at me like I was a leper. They whispered that I should just kill myself to prove my innocence.

But Michael had stepped forward. He threw a ring on my finger and told the world that I was his everything. He swore that marrying me was the greatest privilege of his life.

The public's mockery slowly morphed into envy, and I fell into the gilded cage he built for me.

But reality had just shattered the illusion. He wasn't my knight in shining armor. Indeed, he was the monster who locked me in the tower.

No wonder Claire always looked at me with that sickening mix of pity and contempt.

On the day I was abducted, she was supposed to be my bridesmaid. She walked out of the building right next to me, yet the kidnappers somehow only targeted me.

She knew the whole time. For years, she had been sitting back, eating popcorn, watching me play the pathetically grateful fool.

And the biggest joke of all? I fell in love with the man who ruined me. I went through hell to give him a child, turning my own body into a sacrificial altar just to save the spawn of the woman who ruined my life.

I bit my lower lip so hard that the metallic tang of blood filled my mouth. But the physical sting was nothing compared to the gaping, bleeding hole in my chest.

"Nora? Sweetheart, are you in there?"

The familiar voice echoed through the hallway. A second later, the bathroom door was kicked open. Michael rushed in, his face masked in perfectly panicked concern as he pulled me into his chest.

"Baby, what's wrong? Are you sick? Did you have another nightmare? How the hell are you people taking care of her? You're all fired! Useless trash!"

He glared over his shoulder at the terrified staff hovering in the hallway. My eyes drifted past his shoulder and locked onto Samuel, standing near the back.

He was the main accomplice, the one who planned the kidnapping.

A feral scream of hatred clawed at my throat, but before I could make a sound, Michael scooped me up into his arms and carried me toward the master bedroom.

"I know my wife has a bleeding heart, and you'll want to beg for their jobs," he murmured softly into my hair. "But I don't want to hear it right now. Let me just hold you while you rest, okay?"

He laid me gently on the mattress. As he hovered over me, I caught that predatory, expectant gleam in his eye.

"By the way, honey, you mentioned you were feeling off and went to the clinic today. What did the doctor say?"

He was dying to know. I didn't bother hiding it. I lowered my eyes and placed a hand over my flat stomach.

"I'm pregnant," I said.

His face lit up with an Oscar-worthy performance. He pressed his face against my stomach, his eyes crinkling with what looked like pure joy.

If I hadn't heard that conversation in the study, I would have bet my life that he loved this baby.

What a tragedy.

"What are you idiots standing around for?!" Michael barked at the maids. "Get to the kitchen and make my wife something nutritious. Move!"

Having gotten exactly what he wanted, Michael shifted into the ultimate doting husband. He ordered organic meal plans, strictly scheduled my prenatal vitamins, hired a 24/7 live-in doctor, and even curated classical music playlists for the baby's development.

This was the flawless facade that had duped me for half a decade.

"Baby, what's wrong? You're so pale," Michael cooed, sitting on the edge of the bed and instinctively wrapping his warm hands around my cold feet. "Are you feeling nauseous? Did the staff mistreat you at the clinic?"

Without missing a beat, he turned and viciously kicked the nanny who had accompanied me earlier. She crumpled to the floor with a gasp.

"What the hell did I pay you for?" he roared. "She is carrying my child! If anything happens to her or the baby, do you think your pathetic life can cover the cost?"

Still unsatisfied, he snapped his fingers. Two burly bodyguards dragged the weeping woman out of the room. Her terrified screams echoed down the hall. I flinched involuntarily and forced a fragile, practiced smile.

"I just got back. It's just morning sickness, Michael. It's not her fault..."

"Shh," he interrupted smoothly, pulling the duvet over my shoulders and stroking my cheek. "Don't waste your breath defending her. If she can't make you comfortable, she's worthless."

This was the real Michael Sterling, the ruthless ruler of the Sterling family.

If I hadn't played along just now, my fate would have been worse than that bleeding nanny's.

If he were capable of orchestrating my assault just to clear his nephew's path, he would have no qualms about tying me to a bed for nine months to harvest this baby.

I kept my face perfectly pale and passive, while beneath the blankets, my fingernails dug so deeply into my palms that they drew blood. It took everything in me to close my eyes and feign sleep.

For the first four years of our marriage, Michael had never touched me.

He claimed he couldn't bear to trigger my PTSD from the kidnapping. He told me he loved my soul and that a platonic marriage was more than enough for him.

Then, about a year ago, the narrative shifted. He started bringing his friends' toddlers around. He would look at them with this melancholic longing, sighing about how much he wished he could be a father.

Guilt-ridden and desperate to make him happy, I quietly started seeing a trauma specialist. I fought through debilitating panic attacks, took mountains of medication, and endured endless hormone injections until my stomach was a bruised canvas of needle marks, all so I could overcome my fear of intimacy and give him a child.

I walked through fire to stabilize this pregnancy, only to find out I was paving the road for another woman.

He couldn't bear the thought of his precious Claire Sutton suffering through labor, so he turned his traumatized wife into a human incubator.

I cried silently until exhaustion dragged me into a fitful sleep.