After My Husband Sacrificed Our Baby for His Mistress

Today was our fifth wedding anniversary. It was also my twenty-eighth birthday.

I carried a bottle of red wine and a small silver gift box into our Manhattan penthouse. Earlier that afternoon, I had filled Kian’s pill organizer for the coming week. Blue tablets for the morning, white capsules for midday, yellow pills for the night. Every dose was measured down to the milligram. For five years, I had never missed a single day.

Kian had received a heart transplant before we met. Keeping that heart beating was the center of my entire life.

The penthouse was dead quiet.

I set the wine on the kitchen counter. That was when I heard the noise down the hall.

It was a woman’s laugh. Soft, breathless, and familiar.

My chest tightened. I walked quietly across the dark hardwood floor toward the master bedroom.

The door was cracked open an inch. A sliver of warm light cut through the dark hallway. I looked inside.

My husband was in bed. Beside him lay Aspyn Flores.

Her long brown hair was spilled across our white pillows. Aspyn was a famous lifestyle influencer, but to Kian, she was the first love he had never gotten over. She trailed a manicured finger down Kian’s bare chest, tracing the thick surgical scar that ran right down his sternum.

Kian looked relaxed. He held a glass of scotch in one hand.

"Doesn't she notice you're gone?" Aspyn whispered, leaning into his neck.

Kian scoffed and took a slow sip. "Katalina? She’s probably counting my pills or scrubbing the stove. She’s pathetic."

Aspyn laughed quietly. "Be nice, Kian. She takes care of you."

"She suffocates me," Kian said flatly. His voice was cold and careless. "She's just a charity case who married up. She clings to me because she has nowhere else to go. Trust me, she won't do anything."

I stood frozen in the dark.

My hands didn't shake. I didn't drop the gift. I didn't scream or slam the door open.

I just turned around.

I picked up the wine from the kitchen, walked out the front door, and took the elevator down to the empty lobby.

I walked three blocks into Central Park and sat on a cold wooden bench. The October wind bit into my face.

I looked down at my hands.

For five years, I had given everything to Kian Edwards. I cooked every low-sodium meal. I checked his blood pressure twice a day. I tracked his clinic visits and guarded his medication schedules like blueprints. I had told myself it was love. I had told myself it was duty.

Sitting in the dark, the truth hit me with brutal clarity.

*I've been keeping a dead man’s heart alive inside someone who doesn't even see me as human.*

In the days that followed, I didn't break our routine.

I made breakfast at seven. I set out his vitamins. I logged his resting heart rate in my small black notebook. My face stayed calm. My voice stayed quiet. But deep down, the last light had gone out.

One afternoon, while Kian was at his family's corporate office, I unlocked the bottom drawer of my desk.

Inside lay Arlo Nichols’ old sketchbooks. Arlo had been a brilliant architect. He was my first love, a gentle man who had loved me without conditions. Five years ago, a car crash had killed him. His heart had been donated to a dying young heir named Kian Edwards.

I traced Arlo’s handwriting on the yellowed drafting paper.

I had thought loving Kian was a way to keep Arlo in this world. But it wasn't devotion. It was a burial. And I had spent five years burying myself alive right beside him.

I locked the drawer. I didn't cry. I simply waited.

Two days later, Aspyn tracked me down at the coffee shop near my old design firm.

She wore a cream cashmere coat and carried an alligator Birkin bag. She slid into the booth across from me with an easy, practiced smile.

"Katalina," she purred. "What a coincidence."

I stirred my black tea and looked at her. Her face was perfectly made up for the cameras.

"He never asked you to hover, you know," Aspyn said, leaning forward. Her voice was sweet, dripping with fake pity. "Kian told me how exhausting it gets. You act like his nursemaid, not his wife. It's sad."

I didn't blink. I didn't get angry.

I gave her a faint, polite smile. I took my card out of my purse, set it on top of the bill, and stood up.

"Enjoy your coffee, Aspyn," I said softly, and walked out.

At home, Kian stopped bothering with excuses. Now that Aspyn was back, he treated me with open contempt.

On Thursday, my phone buzzed with an alert from the hospital portal. Kian had canceled his quarterly cardiac checkup without telling me.

The next morning, his plastic pill organizer sat untouched beside his coffee mug on the kitchen island.

I walked over and quietly pushed the tray toward his hand. "You need to take the yellow pill before eight," I said.

Kian didn't look up from his phone.

With a sharp flick of his hand, he shoved the plastic box off the counter.

It hit the hardwood floor with a loud snap. The lids popped open, scattering dozens of colorful pills across the floor.

"I don't need a nursemaid," he said coldly, his thumbs still flying over his screen.

I stood there in the quiet kitchen.

Then, I knelt down. One by one, I gathered every single pill from the floor. I closed each lid, set the tray back on the marble island, and walked away without saying a word.