They Gave My Newborn to His First Love,My Ruthless Revenge

“Nolan, let's get a divorce. I keep the baby.”

On the other end, a long silence.

But the next second, what came through wasn't his answer. It was Renee's fake, tearful little voice.

“Nolan, did I do something wrong…… Does she hate me even more now……”

Then I heard Nolan cover the mouthpiece, though his voice still came through clear as ever.

He soothed her gently “Don't cry. This has nothing to do with you.”

Only after he'd finished comforting Renee did Nolan pick the phone back up, his voice thick with irritation.

“Prudence, can you not go looking for trouble on a good day like today?”

“I'm warning you. Get back to your room right now and apologize to Renee. Don't push me.”

As if that still wasn't enough, he let out a scornful laugh.

“Divorce? You think I don't know what's going through your head? You just want to use the baby to twist my arm.”

“Let me tell you, you dare bring up divorce, and I'll make sure you never see this child again in your life. Can you afford that?”

I hung up.

One more word and I would have thrown up.

I dragged his number into my block list.

The postpartum contractions and the stitched episiotomy throbbed in waves, a reminder of just how absurd everything I'd just been through was.

“Honey, are you all right?”

The nurse making up my bed couldn't hold back. She'd heard the whole thing.

“That man is a real piece of garbage! When I had my baby, my husband was so worried about me he ran out overnight to borrow money and bought a whole hen to make me soup.”

“How can you put up with this?”

Her words pried open a memory I'd sealed away.

I thought back to that brutal car accident.

Both my legs had been shattered. The doctors said I might spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair.

It was Nolan who cared for me at my bedside, cleaning up after me, never once leaving to change his own clothes, for a full six months.

To scrape together the steep cost of my surgery, he even sold his family's old ancestral home.

The day I was discharged, he carried me on his back, stepping down the hospital stairs one at a time, and said in my ear.

“Prudence, don't be afraid. From now on, I'll be your legs.”

That devotion, that refusal to leave me, once moved everyone. It made me love him with my whole heart for all these years.

But this devotion, when did it change?

Maybe everything changed the moment Renee, under the pretense of being childfree, moved in near our home.

Nolan said she was lonely on her own, that we had to look after her.

So when Renee couldn't sleep, he could drive me out of the master bedroom in the middle of the night and stay up talking with her until dawn.

When I bled in my third trimester, he could turn off his phone to go see the northern lights in Scandinavia with Renee, leaving me lying alone in a cold pool of blood.

He could even take the money I'd set aside for my delivery and buy Renee a discontinued designer bag she'd been pining over.

Every time, he guilt-tripped me with how lonely she was all by herself.

Every time, afterward he numbed me with double the tenderness and remorse.

Living on my hopes for the baby about to be born, I compromised again and again, forgave again and again.

Until today.

I quietly opened my messages and left that family group chat that made me sick.

Nolan's icon quickly popped up with a warning emoji.

【You'd better not regret this.】

I didn't reply.

He thought I'd come crawling back soon enough, like always, wagging my tail and begging him for the baby's sake.

But he didn't know.

This time, I really was done with him.

I lay back down on the bed.

The tearing pain below, mixed with the raw ache as the anesthesia wore off, left me drifting in and out.