Part 1
Emily Carter was still bleeding from her emergency C-section when her husband, Nathan Brooks, walked into her private room at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan—his arm wrapped possessively around another woman.
The woman beside him, Vanessa Reed, looked as though she had stepped out of a luxury fashion campaign. She wore a perfectly tailored white designer dress, flawless stilettos, and carried a black Hermès Birkin as casually as if it were another piece of jewelry. Her crimson nails rested lightly on the handbag while she studied Emily with a smile that mixed pity and triumph.
Beside Emily’s hospital bed, three newborn boys slept peacefully in clear bassinets.
Ethan. Liam. Noah.
Only a few hours old.
Completely unaware that the cruelest moment of their lives had just entered the room.
Emily had been awake for nearly thirty-six hours. Her face was swollen from labor, her dark hair clung to her temples with sweat, and every attempt to move sent a sharp pain through the fresh incision across her abdomen.
Nathan, meanwhile, looked refreshed.
He wore an expensive navy suit, a luxury watch, and the confident smile of a man convinced he had already won.
Vanessa glanced at Emily and laughed softly.
“You weren’t exaggerating,” she whispered. “She looks even worse than you said.”
Nathan chuckled.
The sound hurt more than the surgical stitches.
Without so much as looking at his newborn sons, he tossed a thick folder onto Emily’s blanket.
“Sign the divorce papers.”
Emily stared at him.
For a moment she honestly believed the medication had made her hallucinate.
“…Here?”
Nathan shrugged.
“Where else?”
His eyes swept over her body with open disgust.
“Face it, Emily. Nobody wants a woman who looks like this—three babies hanging from her arms, a wreck after childbirth.”
