Chapter 2
In the hospital, I was tightly strapped to a bed, my face streaked with tears.
“Let me go!”
“Lucas Reed, the baby is only eight months along. If you force me to have a C-section now, I will never forgive you!”
“Lucas, let me go!”
I struggled frantically against the restraints, my hair wild like a madwoman, my body shaking uncontrollably.
Through a half-open door, I could hear every word of Lucas’s conversation with the doctor.
“Mr. Reed, inducing labor two months early will not only cause irreversible damage to the mother, but the fetus’s immune system isn’t ready either. Ms. Sanders’ condition can wait for other options…”
Lucas coldly interrupted the doctor.
“Ruby can’t wait that long.”
“Prepare for surgery.”
As the anesthetic was injected into my arm, my body grew heavier and heavier.
I was truly terrified now, my voice breaking into sobs. “Lucas, I’m begging you, don’t do this to me.”
“He’s your child too…”
Lucas stared at me, his gaze hard to read. He walked to my bedside, his tone softening slightly for the first time.
“Ruby needs the cord blood to save her life. Besides, if you hadn’t deliberately triggered her attack, she wouldn’t be suffering like this. Bear with it, it’ll be over soon.”
“Mr. Reed, Ms. Sanders has fainted.”
Lucas’s face changed instantly. He strode out, leaving behind only one sentence: “Do the C-section now!”
Tears fell uncontrollably as all the pent-up hatred and grievances poured out. I screamed in despair.
“Lucas Reed! You monster! I hate you! I hate you!”
Lucas’s figure paused for a moment, but his steps didn’t stop.
My shattered heart froze completely in that moment.
Cold instruments kept probing inside me.
I could clearly feel something being slowly separated from my body, until I felt empty and cold.
After a long while, I heard faint, panicked voices.
“Doctor, the baby has no heartbeat. It’s a stillbirth…”
My eyelashes fluttered slightly, and finally, only endless despair and desolation remained in my eyes. A single tear silently slid down.
I seemed to have a dream, where I was back in that small alley.
A frail me dragging a bloodied Lucas, hiding from those thugs.
The Cinderella and Prince Charming story had descended upon Lucas and me.
When we were most in love, he even knelt in front of the Reed family ancestral shrine, swearing in front of everyone that he would marry no one but me in this life.
But the scene changed, and I saw the corpses of his parents and mine.
Blood spread out on the ground like a long river.
I helplessly listened as the traffic police ruled that my parents’ drunk driving had caused this accident.
Lucas seemed to become a completely different person after that.
Even though I apologized over and over, begging for his forgiveness.
But four lives became an insurmountable chasm between us.
On the day of his parents’ funeral, Lucas brought people to smash up the memorial hall.
I collapsed on the ground in despair: “My parents also died in this accident. Isn’t that enough?”
He grabbed my neck, his hands covered in wounds, his eyes bloodshot and desperate.
“They deserved to die! But what about my parents! Can their deaths bring my parents back?!”
But after the funeral, he still used every means to marry me.
Only it was no longer out of love, but hatred.
There was no wedding and no marriage certificate.
I lived in the Reed house like a rat in the gutter.
Until I saw Ruby again, all my strength crumbled at that moment.
She looked… exactly like myself at twenty-two.
A substitute carefully selected by Lucas.
Later, he gave all his love to this substitute and vented all his torture on me, the original.
For six years, my heart’s blood was consumed in these six years of love and hate, just as he wished.