He Used Me As A Surrogate

I was sitting in the waiting room at the clinic, mindlessly scrolling through a viral Reddit thread titled: What is the most catastrophic mistake youve ever made at work?

The top comment, pinned and glowing with tens of thousands of upvotes, was from a woman claiming to be the executive assistant to a tech CEO.

The day my boss went to the courthouse to get married, I accidentally submitted my own details on the marriage license instead of his fiance's. He was so terrified of making me feel bad for the screw-up that he just went with it. Were legally married.

The replies were a bloodbath. People were accusing her of being a homewrecker, of orchestrating the whole thing to steal another woman's life.

She responded by posting a blurred photo of the official county marriage certificate.

The paperwork is as real as it gets. If anything, his 'wife' is the mistress! If I hadn't been so worried about his paralyzed mother having no one to care for her, the other woman wouldn't even have a place in his house. Now, my boss is so worried about me ruining my body with pregnancy that hes making her go through the hell of IVF. When the baby is born, its going to call me Mom.

Getting a free, live-in nurse and a literal human incubator just for the price of a fake ceremonial certificate? Id say we won.

My blood turned to ice. I clicked on the photo, zooming in on the blurred edges. My pupils dilated.

The man in the photo, partially obscured but unmistakable in his custom Tom Ford suit, was Chris. My husband. The man I had supposedly married just months ago.

Before I could even draw a breath, the clerk at the records window slid my documents back across the counter.

Ma'am, its a federal offense to present forged legal documents. Are you absolutely certain this is the certificate you meant to hand me?

I walked through my front door, the fake ceremonial certificate clutched in my trembling hand, my mind a hollow, echoing chamber.

Chriss mother lay in the makeshift hospital bed wed set up in the guest room. Since her massive stroke left her bedridden and nonverbal, the room had taken on a permanent, suffocating odor of stale air and bodily decay.

Normally, I would have immediately rolled up my sleeves, drawn a basin of warm water, and gently cleaned her. But today, I was paralyzed. I stood in the doorway, glued to the hardwood floor, unable to pull myself back into the present.

The scene at the county clerks office played on a loop behind my eyes. I had pressed my hands against the glass partition, begging the woman to run it through the system one more time.

A fake? I got this at a courthouse. How could it possibly be a fake?

Can you just check again? Maybe theres a glitch

The clerk had cut me off, her patience entirely depleted. She pointed a manicured finger at the embossed seal. Mrs. Hayesexcuse me, Ms. Joanna. The notary seal on this is crooked. Its a novelty stamp. It holds zero legal weight. You can buy a pack of these blanks online for ten bucks. Please, take this home and look for your real paperwork. Youre holding up the line.

I leaned heavily against the hallway wall, staring down at the thick, textured paper. There were a hundred ways bureaucratic paperwork could get messed up, but taking the wrong document wasn't one of them. The day we got married, I had placed this certificate in our fireproof safe like it was the Holy Grail. It hadn't seen the light of day until this morning.

Driven by a frantic, suffocating panic, I drove straight to Chriss corporate headquarters.

I didnt even make it past the lobby security gates.

Ma'am, do you have an appointment? You can't just walk in, the guard barked, stepping in front of the turnstiles.

I scrambled to pull out my ID, my voice cracking as I told him I was Chriss wife.

I expected him to nod and swipe his keycard. Instead, his lips curled into a cruel, mocking sneer.

You? The CEOs wife? Have you looked in a mirror lately, lady?

He looked me up and downtaking in my practical sneakers, my exhausted, makeup-free face, my oversized sweater stained faintly with bleach. Then, he pointed across the sprawling, glass-walled atrium toward the private elevators.

Everyone in this building knows the boss and his wife. Theyre a power couple. Inseparable.

I followed his finger. In the distance, waiting for the elevator, were two figures standing so close the air between them seemed to crackle. The taut string holding my sanity together snapped.

The woman leaning her head against Chriss shoulder wasn't just anybody. It was his executive assistant, Mia.

My fingers shook so violently I could barely unlock my phone. I pulled up the Reddit thread again. The comment section was a war zone of insults directed at her, but her replies were chillingly serene.

You guys are just bitter. Hes been tired of her for years. Why do you think he rigged that audit to get her fired so I could take her job?

He tried a labor-simulation machine with me once and immediately decided I was never going to endure childbirth. Thats why he took her to the fertility clinic instead.

Love is about actions. Shes too busy scrubbing toilets and playing house to realize she's sharing a bed with a king. She brought this on herself.

A violent wave of nausea hit me. My stomach violently rebelled, and the coldness spreading from my chest reached the tips of my fingers.

So, my sudden termination from the firm wasnt a tragic misunderstanding. And Chris changing his mind about being child-free wasn't some beautiful evolution of our love.

It was all for her. His shiny, new assistant.

All the puzzle pieces that had kept me up at night suddenly clicked into a horrifying, grotesque picture.

But the tragedy was I wasn't always just the woman scrubbing the toilets.

When Chris and I first met, I was the golden girl of Northwesterns Kellogg School of Management.

Chris was a notorious playboy, a trust-fund kid who treated life like a casino. Yet, it was this man who followed me around campus, practically begging for my attention for six solid years.

When I finally said yes, he treated me like a deity.

He knew I loved venture capital, so he built a boutique investment wing at his firm just for me to run. I had always been physically fragile, prone to severe bouts of illness, so he was the one who suggested we remain child-free. He couldn't bear the thought of putting my body through the trauma.

Back then, we were atmospheric. We breathed the same air, shared the same relentless ambition.

Until his mother had the stroke.

She woke up trapped in her own body. To save Chris the emotional agony of strangers bathing his mother, I stepped up. I became the part-time nurse.

I ran the VC division by day. On my lunch breaks, I drove home at breakneck speed to feed her pureed food. At night, I rushed back to sponge-bathe her. Sometimes, at two in the morning, I was awake changing soiled sheets.

My conversations with Chris dwindled to logistical updates. And then came the day I was fired. The board claimed I had made a catastrophic error on a multi-million-dollar risk assessment. Chris came home, looking absolutely wrecked, and told me his hands were tied. He had to let me go to save the company.

I was devastated, but I believed him. I loved him.

Later, I heard through the grapevine that a bright, bubbly intern had taken over my office. People said she reminded them of a younger me. But I didn't have the mental bandwidth to dwell on it. Keeping Chriss mother alive consumed every ounce of my humanity.

Gradually, my world shrank to the size of a kitchen and a sickroom. The sharp, brilliant edges of my mind were dulled by laundry detergent and exhaustion.

Chris stopped coming home for anniversaries. He was always "closing a deal."

Then, a few months ago, he suddenly said he wanted a baby.

I was thrilled, yet deeply confused. I had no surviving family of my own, so the idea of creating a blood relative was an ache I had long suppressed. But given his previous terror regarding my health, why the sudden change of heart?

I pushed the doubts away. Seeing the desperate, hopeful look in his eyes, I agreed to start IVF.

Through the endless, agonizing rounds of hormone injections, the brutal egg retrievals, the cramping, and the invasive procedures, he was never there. He always had a sudden, unavoidable crisis at the office.

I never understood how a CEO could be so busy that he couldn't spare a single hour for his wife.

Now, staring at the screen, the truth was a physical blow.

He was busy. He was busy building a beautiful, vibrant life in a home that didn't include me.

Loving him had cost me my career, my identity, and my pride. And now, I realized the child growing inside me wasn't even meant to be mine. I was just the surrogate.

A sharp cramp ripped through my lower abdomen. I stumbled into the lobby restroom, locked myself in a stall, and dry-heaved over the toilet until I tasted bile.

My phone lit up on the tiles. The Reddit user had posted a new update.

Oops, guys, I think I messed up. I was trying to change my bosss desktop wallpaper and accidentally leaked a folder of photos and videos to the company-wide server. Its a bunch of really intimate pictures of that woman.

My breath hitched. I opened Twitter.

My face. My body. Splashed across the screen.

The trending hashtag was already climbing: #ChrisCEO Leaked Scandal.

Panic seized me. I went to dial Chriss number, to beg him to take it down, but before I could press call, his companys official PR account released a statement.

The rumors circulating online regarding our CEO are entirely fabricated. The explicit images in question are AI-generated deepfakes created by a Ms. Joanna as a delusion. Our legal department has issued cease-and-desist letters. Any further distribution will be met with severe legal action.

AI-generated delusions.

My eyes burned so fiercely they blurred. Those photos were real. They were taken in our bedroom. He had coaxed me into taking them, whispering about how beautiful I was.

On the Reddit thread, Mia posted two new photos.

The boss just bought me two limited-edition Birkins to make up for the stress! Don't worry about me, guys.

In the corner of the photo, you could clearly see their hands tightly intertwined.

A bitter, broken laugh scraped its way out of my throat. I opened my medical app, navigated to the clinics page, and booked an appointment for a surgical abortion.

Were done, Chris. We end here.

When Chris finally came home, I was standing in the bedroom, zipping up a suitcase.

Mia was right beside him, draped in his oversized charcoal blazer, tucked safely under his arm.

Chris surveyed the chaotic state of the house, his brow furrowing in irritation.

"What is that smell?" he demanded. "What have you been doing all day? You can't even keep the house decent?"

I looked past him to the bedroom wall, where a pile of his mother's soiled, yellowing sheets sat waiting for the wash. My chest felt hollow.

I used to do the horrific, degrading work that professional nurses quit over because I loved him. Now, looking at my cracked, calloused hands, and then at Mias flawless, manicured fingers, I just wanted to scream.

Why?

He got to play the dashing billionaire with her, sipping champagne in high-rises, while I was left to rot in the mud, my light slowly being snuffed out.

Mia gave Chriss sleeve a tiny, calculated tug. Immediately, the harsh lines of his face softened.

That micro-interactionthe invisible tether between themmade me feel like a homeless person who had accidentally wandered into their pristine living room.

Mia stepped forward, her face a mask of perfectly calibrated remorse.

"Joanna, I am so, so sorry," she said, her voice dripping with fake empathy. "Chris missed your doctor's appointment today because he was protecting me. Please, don't be mad at him. Blame me."

She sighed, touching her collarbone. "I ran into a total creep on the way home. He was taking non-consensual photos of women. Thank God Chris was there to stop him, otherwise, if those pictures got out, I'd just die of embarrassment."

She paused, letting the silence stretch before gasping softly. "Oh... I'm so sorry. I forgot about your photos..."

Chris gave a dismissive, easy laugh and walked over, trying to take my arm.

"She's new. She doesn't know when to stop talking. Don't take it out on her," he murmured. "The photo leak was an accident. Legal is handling it. The internet has a short memory; everyone will forget about it in a week."

There was no horror in his voice. No rage that his wife was being subjected to a mass digital violation. He was just running damage control for Mia.

I stared at him, my eyes dead. "Who leaked them, Chris? Have you found the IP address?"

He flinched. Just for a microsecond.

"Some idiot in IT probably got on my laptop by mistake. Why are you being so hysterical about this? Everyone is stressed."

I let out a harsh, metallic laugh and shifted my gaze to Mia.

"Is that so? Well, I am a hysterical woman. I won't be able to sleep until the police investigate. Mia just said she'd die if her privacy was violated. Why am I expected to just swallow it?"

Chris shifted his weight, smoothly stepping between Mia and me, his eyes darkening with warning.

"Joanna, stop being difficult. Mia is different. And frankly, don't you bear some responsibility for those pictures getting out in the first place?"

A physical pain lanced through my chest, sharp and breathless. "You took those pictures! You begged me to"

"Yes, I took them," he snapped, his voice turning cold. "But if you had an ounce of self-respect, you never would have let me."

I stared into his eyeseyes that used to look at me like I hung the moon. Now, there was nothing but glacial contempt.

When he wanted them, it was romance. Now that he needed to protect Mia, I was just a shameless whore.

Perhaps it was a blessing he hadn't shown up at the clinic today. It made cutting the cord so much easier.

He finally noticed the luggage at my feet. His frown deepened. "Where are you going?"

I looked away, staring blankly at the wall. "To the hospital. I need to stay for a few days."

A flash of genuine panic crossed his face. He suddenly realized what hed been saying to a pregnant woman.

"Is it the baby? Is something wrong?" he asked, stepping toward me, his voice frantic. "I didn't mean to miss today, Jo. I swear. The board has been breathing down my neck. Once the new product launch is done tomorrow, I am all yours. I'll take a month off."

I didn't want to hear another syllable of his lies. I snapped the handle of the suitcase up.

"The baby is fine."

Its just us that's dead.

Driven by a sudden, desperate guilt, Chris grabbed the handle of my suitcase.

"Jo, let me take this. I promise, I'll be right by your side for this."

I opened my mouth to tell him not to touch my things, but he was already out the door, carrying my bag down the stairs and shoving it into the trunk of his Mercedes.

Mia stepped into my space, her hand gripping my forearm with surprising, painful strength.

"Yeah, Jo. He cares about you so much. Stop being a bitch and let him make it up to you," she whispered, her sweet voice dropping into a venomous hiss.

I watched Chris disappear down the stairwell. I pulled my arm out of her grip and started to walk past her.

Before my foot could hit the first step, she violently shoved me between the shoulder blades.

I didn't even have time to scream. I hit the concrete landing hard, my knees and shoulder taking the brutal impact. Pain exploded in my lower back, radiating through my pelvis. The color drained from the world.

A heavy, suffocating weight dropped onto me. A massive man, reeking of stale cigarettes, straddled my legs. He was holding up a smartphone, the recording light blinking red.

"Photos are boring," he grunted, his meaty hands grabbing the collar of my sweater. "A live video is gonna fetch way more money. Gotta hand it to Ms. Mia, she knows exactly what the internet wants."

Years ago, I used to kickbox. I might have fought him off. But the fall had triggered something agonizing in my abdomen. My uterus was cramping so violently I was gasping for air, the pain rendering my limbs entirely useless.

He yanked at my clothes, the sound of tearing fabric echoing in the stairwell.

"Help..." I wheezed.

The stairwell was pitch black. Through the narrow, dirty window, I could see the street below. A thunderstorm had rolled in. Chris was standing by his car, holding an umbrella, looking impatiently up at our building.

A surge of adrenaline hit my system. I opened my mouth to scream his name.

Then I saw the lobby doors open. Mia ran out into the rain and threw herself into Chriss arms. He didn't hesitate. He dropped his umbrella, tilted her chin up, and kissed her deeply, hungrily, against the hood of the car.

The roaring thunder drowned out the sound of my clothes ripping.

As the man dragged me by my hair toward the darker corner of the landing, I blindly jammed my thumb against the power button of my phone, triggering the emergency SOS shortcut. It was programmed to call Chris.

The line connected.

"Help... Chris, please" I gagged as the mans hand clamped over my mouth.

Through the speaker, Chriss voice was thick, husky. In the background, I could hear the wet, unmistakable sound of skin slapping skin, and a woman's breathless moans.

"Jo, I... I got pulled into an emergency," Chris panted into the phone. "Just take an Uber to the hospital. I'll come the second I'm done. I promise."

There was a pause, followed by a sharp intake of breath and a muffled squeal from Mia.

I bit down on the man's hand as hard as I could, screaming into the phone, "Chris! Help me! He's"

"Jesus, Jo, I said I'm busy!" Chris snapped. "I'm hanging up. I'll call you later."

Click.

He was busy. He was so incredibly busy.

The man slammed my head against the concrete. Warm blood trickled down my temple, pooling in my ear. The cold stairwell air hit my exposed skin as my sweater was ripped away entirely.

The physical pain was blinding, but it was nothing compared to the absolute, hollow void opening up inside my chest.

When I opened my eyes again, I was staring at the harsh, fluorescent ceiling of a hospital room.

My phone, cracked but functioning, lit up on the bedside table. A notification from Reddit.

A photo of a rumpled hotel bed. A woman's bare shoulder, a man's muscular arm, their hands intertwined. It was undeniable.

See? I just have to snap my fingers, and he drops everythingeven his pregnant wifeto be with me. His massive product launch is tomorrow. Once it goes live, our names will be etched into the company's history together. Its his anniversary gift to me.

I screenshotted the post.

I opened my email and attached it to a thread, along with the IP logs I had hired a private investigator to pull weeks ago, and sent it all to the chairman of Chriss board of directors, the lead investors, and the top five tech journalists in the city.

Once this hit the wire, tomorrow's product launch would be a massacre. Chriss career would be reduced to ash, and Mia would face federal corporate espionage charges.

I hit Send. I didn't feel a flicker of hesitation.

Then, I buzzed the nurse. I asked her to help me arrange a courier.

I put the fake novelty marriage certificate into a heavy envelope. And beside it, secured in a sterile medical specimen jar, I placed the remains of the embryo I had lost on the concrete stairs.

I sent it all to Chriss office.

I discharged myself against medical advice. I had no luggage. I walked out into the cold Chicago air and got into a cab headed for O'Hare.

I rolled down the window and tossed my SIM card onto the highway, watching it vanish into the slipstream.

As the city skyline shrank in the rearview mirror, a profound, terrifying stillness settled over me.

I hope you love your gift, Chris.