The Day I Lost My Baby

“Mia, I don’t love that woman at all. I will never let her have my child.”

Lucas Lu held my delicate little cousin in his arms as he said it.

Sophie Gou pressed against his chest, her voice soft and trembling.

“Lucas, I’m suffering too. I never wanted to ruin your marriage.”

“Good girl,” he murmured. “I only love you.”

Then they kissed in my family’s garden.

I stood upstairs, watching.

Something inside my chest split open slowly, like a dull knife chopping through flesh.

So he had never loved me.

Five years.

I stayed beside him for five years.

I lifted him from nothing, held him through ruin, pushed him toward success, and turned him into the industry elite he was today.

What were my sacrifices?

What was my love?

A joke?

Sophie was my cousin.

Her family had once been so poor they could barely keep food on the table. My parents paid for her education. When she came to our house as a child, I gave her my toys.

My parents even arranged for her to enter my private school, the kind where family background mattered more than grades.

And this was how she repaid us.

She hooked up with my husband.

She played the pitiful little white flower so men would ache to protect her.

And Lucas?

He only touched me when he was drunk.

Every time he woke, he forced me to take pills.

He never allowed me to carry his child.

He said his career was too busy.

He had no time for children.

But apparently, this busy man had plenty of time to hold another woman in my garden.

My legs felt wet.

Sticky.

Uncomfortable.

I looked down.

Blood.

Only then did I realize I had been pregnant.

I had not known.

I had wanted a child so badly.

I used to imagine that if we had a baby, maybe Lucas would be happy.

Maybe he would treat me a little better.

How pathetic.

“Madam!” a maid screamed. “Madam fainted!”

When I woke in the hospital, I felt like a corpse.

Hollow.

Gray.

Already dead in all but breath.

Lucas sat beside my bed, crying with fake grief.

“Wife, are you okay? The child simply wasn’t meant to be. We can still have—”

I slapped him.

Hard.

He stared at me in disbelief.

Of course he did.

I had never blamed him.

Never scolded him.

I had always found excuses for why he did not love me.

But now my child was gone.

And with that child, the last of my foolish hope died too.

“Stop pretending,” I said. “We’re divorcing.”

His expression changed.

“I saw you and the mistress in my garden.”

My fingers clenched around the blanket until my knuckles turned white.

“It’s over.”

Lucas stared at me for a moment.

Then he smiled.

A relaxed smile.

A relieved smile.

“Fine. I respect your choice.”

He leaned back.

“To be honest, I never had feelings for you. You were the one who insisted on marrying me.”

For a second, I thought the pain could not grow worse.

I was wrong.

I slapped him again.

“Beast.”

My voice shook.

“I have never seen a man as disgusting as you.”