My Husband Planted His Mistress in Our Bedroom

The antiseptic smell burned my nostrils as consciousness clawed its way back to me. White ceiling tiles swam into focus, then blurred again. Pain radiated through my abdomen—sharp, insistent, consuming. I tried to move, but my body felt leaden, trapped beneath an invisible weight.

"She's waking up," a voice said somewhere above me.

I turned my head slightly, wincing at the effort. A doctor in a white coat stood beside my bed, his expression grave. Dr. Aris—I recognized him from the Graham Corporation's medical staff.

"Miss Graham," he said, his voice gentle but clinical. "You're in the private wing of Seattle Memorial. You're safe now."

Safe. The word seemed hollow, meaningless.

"What happened to me?" My voice emerged as a rasp, my throat raw from the breathing tube they'd removed hours earlier.

Dr. Aris exchanged glances with the nurse beside him. "You were found three days ago in an abandoned warehouse. You'd been..." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "You were assaulted, Lorelai. Severely."

Memory flashed—rough hands, cruel laughter, pain unlike anything I'd ever known. I closed my eyes against the flood of images.

"The trauma was extensive," Dr. Aris continued, his voice dropping lower. "We had to perform emergency surgery to stop the internal bleeding."

Something in his tone made me look up sharply. "What else?"

He met my eyes directly now, and I saw pity there. "The damage to your reproductive organs was... catastrophic. I'm sorry, but you won't be able to have children."

The words hit me like a physical blow. No children. Ever. The future I'd vaguely imagined—a family of my own to replace what I'd lost—vanished in an instant.

"No," I whispered, tears sliding down my temples into my hair. "No."

---

Days blurred together in a haze of medication and nightmares. Sometimes I wasn't sure if I was awake or dreaming when nurses came to check my vitals or change my bandages.

On the third day, I heard familiar voices in the corridor outside my room.

"—cost a fortune to make it look authentic," Zeke was saying, his tone irritated. "Those thugs were expensive."

I kept my eyes closed, feigning sleep. The door opened with a soft click.

"The board's asking questions," said another voice—Martin Keller, Zeke's lawyer. "They want to know why the wedding's been postponed."

"What do you expect me to tell them?" Zeke replied, moving closer to my bed. "That my fiancée got herself kidnapped right before the ceremony? That she's too broken to be a proper wife now?"

Their laughter cut through me like glass.

"It worked, though," Martin said. "You said you needed to break her spirit before the wedding. Mission accomplished."

"Couldn't have planned it better myself," Zeke agreed, his voice dropping to a whisper that chilled me to the bone. "She'll never question me again. Never defy me. She's exactly what I need her to be now."

I lay perfectly still as they continued talking, discussing me as if I were a business acquisition rather than a human being. My savior. My protector. My executioner.

---

A week later, Zeke brought me home to the Graham estate. I was still too weak to walk, confined to a wheelchair that made me feel like an invalid rather than the heir to a business empire.

"We're going to take care of you properly now," Zeke announced as he wheeled me through the grand foyer.

The house looked different somehow—fainter traces of my mother's elegant taste, stronger signs of Zeke's preferred austerity.

"I've made some changes while you were recovering," he explained, steering me toward the living room. "I've invited some guests to stay with us."

That's when I saw her.

A woman with honey-blonde hair sat on our sofa, a small girl playing at her feet. She rose when we entered, her smile perfectly composed.

"Lorelai, this is Skye Woods," Zeke said casually. "She's a distant cousin who's fallen on hard times. And this is her daughter, Mercy."

Skye's eyes met mine—calculating, assessing, triumphant.

"I'm so grateful for your hospitality," she said, her voice dripping with false sweetness. "Zeke's told me all about your... condition. Don't worry about a thing. I'll take care of everything."

Before I could respond, she turned to the housekeeper who stood hovering nearby.

"The kitchen needs reorganizing," she said with authority. "And these flowers are wilting. We'll need fresh arrangements throughout the house."

Zeke beamed at her efficiency. "Skye's been a godsend," he told me. "She's already got the household running smoothly."

I stared at him in disbelief. "But we don't need—"

"We do need this, Lorelai," he interrupted firmly. "You're too fragile to have an opinion right now. Let Skye handle things."

As Skye continued issuing orders to my staff in my home, I felt something shift inside me—a tiny spark of rage beneath the layers of shock and pain.

Zeke had taken everything from me—my dignity, my future, my sense of safety. Now he was giving away my home.

But as I watched Skye settle herself more comfortably on our sofa, Mercy playing quietly at her feet, I made a silent vow: This wasn't over. Not by a long shot.