“Sure,” I whispered.
“I’ll be there.”
Julian laughed softly on the other end of the phone.
“I’m glad you’re finally being mature about this.”
I closed my eyes.
If only he knew.
He thought I was sitting somewhere alone, devastated by the news that Fiona was pregnant.
He had no idea I was lying in a hospital bed.
He had no idea that eight months after our divorce, I had just given birth to a baby girl.
His baby girl.
And he certainly had no idea why I had agreed to attend his wedding.
I looked at the tiny bundle sleeping beside me.
Her name was Amelia.
She had Julian’s dark hair.
My eyes.
And the same tiny dimple that appeared on his left cheek whenever he smiled.
I touched her little hand.
“You’re going to meet your father tomorrow.”
But there was something else Julian didn’t know.
Amelia wasn’t the only truth I had discovered.
For seven years, I had believed I was the reason our marriage had failed.
Two miscarriages.
Seven years of appointments.
Seven years of tests.
Seven years of Julian slowly turning from a loving husband into a man who looked at me as though I had disappointed him.
After the second miscarriage, he stopped holding me.
Then he stopped asking how I felt.
Eventually, he stopped coming to appointments.
And one night, after I cried in the bathroom for nearly an hour, he said the words I would never forget.
“Maybe you’re just not capable of giving me a family.”
I never told him how deeply those words destroyed me.
Instead, I became determined to prove him wrong.
I didn’t know then that the person who had actually betrayed our family wasn’t me.
It was him.
And Fiona.
The Folder
The leather folder beside my hospital bed contained everything.
The first document was the paternity test.
Probability of paternity: 99.99%.
Julian was Amelia’s father.
The second document was a medical report.
It showed something I had never been told during our marriage.
The miscarriages had not been caused by me.
My medical tests had been normal.
The problem was elsewhere.
A specialist had discovered that Julian had a genetic condition that significantly affected fertility and increased the likelihood of pregnancy complications.
I stared at the report for a long time when I first received it.
Then I cried.
Not because I was angry.
Because I finally understood.
All those years, I had blamed myself for something that had never been my fault.
But the third document hurt even more.
Bank statements.
Transfers.
Large amounts of money moving out of an investment account my father had left me.
My inheritance.
During our marriage, I had trusted Julian completely.
The account had been managed by an investment company he recommended.
I never questioned it.
Until recently.
Nearly $480,000 had disappeared.
And the money had gone through several companies.
One of them was connected to Fiona.
That was when everything changed.
The Messages
I found the first message by accident.
It was buried in an old email archive.
Fiona had sent Julian a message three years earlier.
“She still doesn’t suspect anything.”
Julian replied:
“She never checks the accounts.”
Another message:
“When are you going to tell her?”
His response:
“After the next transfer.”
I stared at the screen.
My hands went numb.
There were hundreds of messages.
Fiona wasn’t just his assistant.
She had been involved in managing the transfers.
She knew about my inheritance.
She knew about my miscarriages.
And she knew Julian had been blaming me for something he knew wasn’t my fault.
Then I found the message that changed everything.
It was dated six months before our divorce.
Fiona had written:
“If she gets pregnant, we’re finished.”
Julian replied:
“She won’t.”
I read it again.
And again.
Then another message appeared.
“And if she does?”
Julian’s answer was short.
“I’ll make sure nobody believes her.”
My hands began shaking.
I was pregnant at the time.
I simply didn’t know it yet.
The Night Before the Wedding
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