His Debt Her Baby

His solution to her problem was to divorce me and marry her.

I was used to my husband, Ethan, sacrificing me to repay his debts of gratitude. I had cried, I had screamed. I’d even taken a page from his mentor’s daughter’s book and tried to use a child to trap him.

Nothing ever worked.

Now, he’d added another property to the divorce agreement, tossing the papers at me with an impatient flick of his wrist.

“Is that enough? Just sign it, Claire. Sadie’s pregnancy can’t wait.”

I signed my name without a single tear, and only then did a satisfied smile finally spread across Ethan’s face. He took my hand, his voice dropping into that familiar, placating tone.

“Honey, Professor Miller was like a father to me. I can’t let his daughter be shamed for getting pregnant out of wedlock. As soon as the baby is born and has my name, we’ll get remarried. I promise. I’ll only stay with Sadie from Monday to Friday. I’ll still come home to you on the weekends.”

I collected my copy of the divorce certificate and quietly watched him pack a suitcase.

He didn’t know I had an appointment scheduled to terminate my own pregnancy. He didn’t know I’d already bought a one-way ticket out of this city.

This time, I wouldn’t be waiting for him to come back.

1

“Here are your certificates of divorce.”

The moment the clerk handed us the documents, Ethan eagerly showed his to Sadie, who was waiting just a few feet away. Then, beaming, he hurried her over to the marriage license queue.

The clerk watched his retreating back and let out a quiet “jerk” under her breath before shooting me a look of pity.

I calmly tucked the certificate into my purse, opened a ride-share app on my phone, and went to wait by the curb.

A few minutes later, a black SUV pulled up in front of me. The window rolled down to reveal Sadie’s face, smugness radiating from her like heat. Ethan walked over from the driver's side, his brow furrowed with concern as he opened the rear passenger door.

“Claire, I told you to wait for me by the entrance. It’s pouring out here, you don’t have an umbrella. You know you refuse to take medicine when you catch a cold. You’re so much trouble,” he chided, his words a familiar litany of care. “I’ll make you my ginger ale and Coke remedy when we get home. You have to drink it all before you go to sleep.”

When I just stood there, unmoving, Ethan’s expression faltered. An awkward flush crept up his neck. “Sadie’s… her condition is delicate right now. She gets car sick in the back. You were her sister-in-law. Just let her have the front seat.”

Sadie immediately hopped out of the car, her voice dripping with manufactured remorse. “I’m so sorry, Claire. Ethan’s just so used to taking care of me. Please don’t get the wrong idea. Ethan, honey, I can just be sick for a little while in the back, it’s fine. Don’t fight with Claire over this.”

At that, Ethan shot me a warning look. “Claire, don’t make a scene,” he hissed. “Get in the car.”

He started to physically push me toward the back seat, and I finally spoke, my voice devoid of emotion.

“Ethan, did you get a new car?”

He buckled my seatbelt for me, his answer casual. “Well, with Sadie being pregnant and all, I figured an SUV would be a smoother ride. If you don’t like it, we can buy something else after we get remarried.”

I just hummed in response.

Ethan had always loved his sports cars. When I was pregnant for the first time, I had asked him if we could switch to a sedan or an SUV, something safer. He refused, saying he wasn’t comfortable driving anything else.

But for Sadie, he’d made the change without a second thought.

A bitter, humorless smile touched my lips.

We hadn’t been on the road for ten minutes before Sadie clutched her stomach, moaning that she felt sick. Ethan instantly tensed. He pulled the car over to the side of the road and turned to me, his voice sharp with command.

“Claire, just get a ride home from here. Sadie’s not feeling well. I’m taking her to the hospital.”

And just like that, he left me stranded on the side of a busy road in the pouring rain, in a spot where it was nearly impossible to get a cab. As I watched his SUV disappear into the downpour, the only thing I felt was a profound, hollow calm.

My phone buzzed. It was a text from the clinic, asking me to confirm my appointment for the procedure.

2

That evening, just as I’d placed the last of Ethan’s suitcases by the front door, a friend request popped up on my phone.

It was Sadie.

Her message was simple: she wanted me to move out of the house I shared with Ethan as soon as possible. She needed to start decorating the nursery.

I responded by taking a photo of the asset division section of our divorce decree and sending it to her. My phone immediately lit up with an incoming call. I ignored it, and a sixty-second voice memo came through, then another, and another.

“You bitch, Claire! Ethan earned all that money, why should you get any of it? How can you be so shameless? If you take all the cash, what am I supposed to live on? That’s my son’s money! You bitch! I’m telling you to get out now and give me back the money, or you’ll regret it!”

I didn’t bother listening to the rest. I just blocked her number and deleted the chat.

Later that night, I was ripped from a deep sleep by a hand yanking me up from the bed. A sharp sting exploded across my cheek. I blinked my eyes open to see Ethan’s face, dark and furious, looming over me.

“Claire, you’ve gone too far!” he raged. “You knew she was pregnant, and you sent her the divorce papers just to upset her. How can you be so vicious? How many times do I have to tell you? Professor Miller saved my career. I only see Sadie as a little sister! Once her baby is born and has a legal name, we’re getting remarried. What is your problem? You were her sister-in-law, for God’s sake. Why can’t you just cut her some slack?”

He must have seen the red handprint swelling on my cheek, the way I was staring at him with pure, undiluted hatred. A flicker of something—guilt, maybe—crossed his face. His voice softened as he reached for me.

“Honey, we’ve been together for so many years. Don’t you trust me? I only love you,” he cooed, the words practiced and hollow. “I swear, this is the last time I’ll help Sadie. After we get remarried, we’ll go back to how things were. Okay?”

I let him pull me into his arms, my body numb. I didn’t believe a single word.

In college, Ethan had been willing to defy his wealthy family to be with me. He pursued me for four years, so relentlessly that even his mother eventually gave in and started helping him win me over.

He told me it was love at first sight, that he would love me more than his own life.

I believed him. I loved him without reservation, and in the end, it left me shattered.

When did the disillusionment start? When did I start wanting to leave?

Was it when Sadie posted intimate photos of them together online and was attacked by commenters, and he publicly defended her, claiming I was the one who had schemed my way into his life, leaving me to be torn apart by strangers online?

Was it during my first pregnancy, just after I’d felt the baby move for the first time, when he dragged me from our home to the hospital to give blood for Sadie after a minor accident, causing me to miscarry? And when his mother demanded to know what happened, he blamed me to protect Sadie.

Was it when, to fulfill Sadie’s birthday wish of seeing a private fireworks display, he had our entire gated community locked down, ignoring my frantic calls for help, preventing the ambulance from reaching my mother in time, stealing her last chance at life and leaving me with a wound that would never heal?

If it hadn’t been for my mother’s last words, her dying wish for me to live on, I might have followed her into the darkness right then…

My continued silence seemed to fray Ethan’s patience. He ran a hand through his hair and tossed a key onto the nightstand. “I have another house in the next neighborhood over. You can move there for now. Let Sadie have this one.”

I picked up the key. “Okay,” I said, my voice placid.

My compliance seemed to unnerve him. He gripped my hand tighter. “Claire, why are you… so agreeable? You’re not planning something, are you?”

A small, cold smile touched my lips. “Isn’t this what you wanted, Ethan?”

He pressed his lips into a thin line, a flicker of genuine unease in his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something else, but his phone rang. Sadie.

His brow furrowed in concern, but his voice, when he answered, was impossibly gentle. “Sadie, don’t be scared. I’m on my way back right now.”

As I watched him hurry out the door, I opened an app on my phone and booked the earliest flight out of the city.

3

On the day of the procedure, the doctor looked at me, alone in the examination room, with surprise.

“Mr. Hayes isn’t with you today?”

“Ethan and I are divorced,” I said flatly.

The doctor paused, a flicker of awkwardness in his eyes. He cleared his throat. “Mrs… Ms. Evans, you’ve wanted this child for so long. Are you absolutely sure you don’t want to reconsider?”

I shook my head, my decision firm.

With a sigh, he wrote out the necessary forms and sent me to the billing department.

As I stepped into the main lobby, I saw him. Ethan was standing with Sadie, one hand resting protectively on the small of her back, murmuring softly to her as she pouted about something. It wasn’t until she broke into a relieved smile that he turned to walk toward the payment counter.

Sadie looked up then and saw me. A triumphant grin spread across her face as she walked purposefully toward me. I tried to turn away, but she grabbed my arm, her grip surprisingly strong.

Her eyes fell to the paperwork in my hand. Her pupils contracted, her expression twisting into a mask of pure jealousy and hatred.

“Don’t you think for a second that having Ethan’s baby will force him to remarry you, Claire. He’s divorced you. I’m his wife now! If you ever dare to show your face in front of him again, I’ll make sure everyone knows you’re nothing but a pathetic homewrecker!”

A chill went through me. I wrenched my arm from her grasp. “You can have the garbage I threw away. It seems you have a taste for secondhand things.”

Her face flushed with rage, but then her expression shifted in an instant. She stepped closer, her face a mask of pitiful sorrow, but her eyes held a bright, vicious malice. She leaned in, whispering in my ear.

“Let me tell you the truth, Claire. This baby is Ethan’s. We’ve been together for a long, long time. He told me he stopped loving you ages ago. He said being with you makes him sick to his stomach.”

Seeing Ethan getting closer, and seeing that her taunts weren't getting a rise out of me, she grew desperate. She reached out to grab me again.

Some instinct, honed by years of watching her manipulative games, made me take a sharp step back.

A smirk of triumph flashed across Sadie’s face before she let her body go limp, collapsing dramatically to the floor.

Before I could even process what had happened, I was shoved violently from behind. I stumbled, and a searing pain shot through my ankle as I crashed to the ground.

Ethan was already crouched over Sadie, his hands fluttering over her as he scanned her for injuries. “Sadie, are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere? Is your stomach cramping?” he asked, his voice trembling with panic.

When Sadie just shook her head, tears streaming down her face, Ethan’s heart seemed to break for her. He whirled on me, his face contorted with rage.

“Claire, what did you do to her? If anything happens to her or this baby, I swear I’ll make you pay a thousand times over.”

4

Ethan wanted to rush Sadie to be examined immediately, but she clung to his sleeve, her tears flowing like a river.

“Ethan, she called me a homewrecker! She said my baby was a bastard! She put a curse on me and my child! I know she doesn’t like me, but the baby is innocent! How could she be so cruel to an unborn child?”

At the word “bastard,” a flicker of guilt crossed Ethan’s face, so fast I almost missed it, but it was quickly swallowed by a wave of fury. He gently wiped the tears from Sadie’s cheeks, then turned to me, his voice lethally low. He ordered me to get on my knees and apologize to her. If I didn’t, he would have the hospital cut off the supply of the experimental medication for my mother.

The mention of my mother was a knife to the heart. My eyes stung, and I bit down hard on my lip to suppress the wave of hatred that churned in my gut. Leaning on the wall for support, I forced myself to stand.

I ignored them both, limping toward the exit one painful step at a time.

Ethan’s eyes fell to my injured foot, his brow knitting in a flicker of concern. He started to reach for me, but was interrupted by a fresh sob from Sadie.

She put on a show of being terrified, clutching her barely-there baby bump as if to shield it. “Claire, I’m so sorry, it’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have asked Ethan to come with me to my appointment. But… but I’m already four months along. Please, I’m begging you, just let me have this baby.”

With a final, heart-wrenching sob, she collapsed into Ethan’s arms, a performance of utter devastation that had its intended effect.

He was consumed with pity and rage. He lunged at me, grabbing my shoulders and forcing me down, trying to make me kneel in front of Sadie. “Apologize to her, Claire! If she’s not satisfied, you’ll stay on your knees until she is.”

I stared up at him in disbelief, struggling against his iron grip.

He clicked his tongue in annoyance. “Fine. If you want to do this the hard way, don’t blame me for what comes next.”

He gestured with his head, and two of his security guys, who were always hovering nearby, stepped forward to hold me down. One of them understood the unspoken command and grabbed the back of my head, forcing it down, again and again, making me kowtow to Sadie on the cold hospital floor.

After a few forceful impacts, my forehead was raw and bleeding, my vision blurring at the edges.

Ethan’s voice sounded distant, a hint of unease in it now. “Claire, have you learned your lesson? Just apologize to Sadie and promise you’ll leave her alone, and we can put this all behind us.”

I lifted my head, meeting his gaze with pure disgust. “I. Did. Nothing. Wrong,” I said, each word a shard of glass.

His chest heaved. “Fine! Fine! I’ve spoiled you rotten for too long, you’ve forgotten your place. Today, you’re going to learn some goddamn respect.” He barked at his men, “You two hold her here. She’ll kneel until she’s ready to admit she’s wrong.”

Sadie made a weak, token protest. “Ethan, honey, it’s okay if I’m a little upset. Please don’t be angry with Claire because of me.”

Ethan wrapped a protective arm around her, his face a mask of disappointment as he looked at me. “Claire, why can’t you be more understanding, like Sadie?”

Sadie shot me a triumphant smirk over his shoulder. But as her gaze swept over me, her eyes locked onto the silver locket around my neck. Her expression changed.

She lunged forward and ripped the locket from my neck. “What are you doing with this?” she spat, her hand closing around it in a fist.

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