The Baby I "Killed"

The day Rhys Caldwell threw me out, he did it to ruin me. And then he divorced me.

The snow in Chicago that afternoon was a thick, blinding curtain. I had his baby in my belly and a permanent limp in my left leg—a souvenir from the accident where I’d saved his life. I hobbled away from the grand stone mansion that had been my home, my prison.

He watched from the second-floor balcony, a new woman tucked into the curve of his arm. A cigarette dangled from his fingers, the smoke a lazy curl in the frigid air. He was savoring the spectacle of my destruction.

The days that followed were a special kind of hell.

To survive, I had to agree to marry a man in his forties, to become a stepmother to his eight-year-old son.

But the night before the wedding, Rhys dragged me back to his house.

His face was a mask of fury I had never seen before, his voice a blade of ice as he cornered me.

“You kill my child behind my back, just so you can go play mommy to some old man’s spawn?”

He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a venomous whisper. “Sadie… how dare you?”

1

On the day Rhys kicked me out, the snow fell like ash.

I was holding my six-year-old sister’s hand, about to step past the wrought-iron gates, when Arthur, the butler, stopped me.

“Miss Miller,” he said, his voice quiet but firm. “Mr. Caldwell’s instructions were that you are not to take a single thread that belongs to this house.” He gestured delicately. “The down coat you’re wearing, and the boots… Mr. Caldwell purchased those.”

I understood. I lowered my gaze, my silence a shield as I unzipped the parka and slid it off my shoulders. I pulled off the warm, fur-lined boots.

The wind hit me instantly, driving icy pellets against my bare arms. A violent shiver wracked my body. Stepping onto the thick blanket of snow, my bare feet screamed in protest. I looked back, up to the second-floor balcony.

Rhys was there, leaning against the railing with a casual indolence. His left arm was wrapped around Brooke, his right hand holding that cigarette. He was watching me, his expression one of detached, pleasant amusement. Brooke, however, was glowing with the pure, unadulterated triumph of a victor.

She unlooped a gray cashmere scarf from around her own neck and let it drop, a soft spiral falling through the air. “Why would Rhys ever want something so… cheap?” she called out, her voice laced with laughter. “Arthur, make sure that goes in the trash.”

I had knitted him that scarf two months ago.

He had wrapped it around his neck, smiling, and brought my hands to his lips. “My wife has magic in her fingers,” he’d murmured.

Now, it was all ash.

My family was bankrupt. My father was in prison.

Rhys didn’t have to pretend anymore.

The day he’d forced me to sign the divorce papers, he had looked at me with cold, dead eyes and dismantled me, piece by piece, with his words.

“Sadie, do you know why I never wanted to be on top when we were in bed? Why I never wanted to see your face?”

“Do you know why I had to take a scalding hot shower for an hour every single time after I touched you?”

“Because the sight of you makes me sick. Because the thought of you, of what you are, is disgusting.” His voice was low, clinical. “If I hadn’t needed to destroy your father, did you really think a woman who throws herself at men like you would ever have been an option for me?”

The words were poison, a slow-acting venom that constricted my chest until I couldn’t breathe. Tears burned my eyes, hot and useless. It was then that I finally, truly accepted it: he had never loved me.

And so, I didn’t tell him I was pregnant.

There was no point.

With an ocean of blood and betrayal between us, our story was always destined to be a tragedy.

This child never should have been conceived.

2

With no money and no insurance, my only option was a back-alley clinic in a part of town I’d only ever driven through.

My luck held true to form. I started hemorrhaging on the table. For a few minutes there, I almost died.

When I woke up, my little sister, Paige, was asleep in a chair beside the bed, her face tear-stained.

I stroked her fine, blonde hair. “It’s okay, sweetie,” I whispered. “I’m okay.”

I said it for her, but a cold fear was still coiled in my gut. If I had died, what would have happened to Paige?

It was just the two of us now. We only had each other. I had to live. I had to find a way to raise her.

Making money, I learned quickly, was brutal.

The only real skill I had was dancing. I’d trained my whole life. But the car crash four years ago—the one where I’d swerved to shield Rhys’s side of the car with my own—had shattered my leg. It had healed, but not perfectly. A slight, almost imperceptible limp remained. You had to be looking for it to see it, but it was there. An echo of the break.

I could never dance professionally again.

After weeks of dead ends, I decided to start a food cart. Grilled cheese and tomato soup.

I’d grown up with private chefs, clueless in a kitchen. But Rhys had loved grilled cheese, a simple comfort food from a childhood he never talked about. I had taught myself to make it for him, perfecting the golden crust, the perfect cheese pull.

I never imagined that stupid skill would one day become the only thing keeping my sister and me from starving.

The business was surprisingly good. I worked late into the frozen nights, my fingers swelling with chilblains until they were raw and cracked, but I never complained.

I just never expected Rhys and Brooke to appear in the warm glow of my cart’s lights.

They were a vision of wealth and glamour, arm in arm, a perfectly matched set. Their presence made my own worn coat and exhausted face feel like a costume for poverty.

Brooke looked me up and down, a hand flying to her mouth in mock surprise. “Wow. Who would’ve thought the great Sadie Miller, the debutante of the year, would end up looking like she sleeps on the street?”

I had a line of customers. I didn’t have time for this. “If you’re not buying, please move,” I said, my voice flat.

Brooke immediately crumpled against Rhys’s arm. “Rhys, see? She’s still so mean to me!”

Rhys, ever the protector, shot me a look of pure ice. “I’d advise you to be polite to Brooke,” he warned, his tone leaving no room for argument. “Otherwise, I can’t guarantee this little… venture… of yours will still be here tomorrow.”

It was a naked threat. And with the power he wielded in this city, I knew it was one he could effortlessly enforce.

I clenched my fists inside my coat pockets, biting the inside of my lip until I tasted blood. I said nothing.

Seeing my submission, Brooke’s smug smile returned.

Rhys looked down at her, his voice softening. “You said you wanted soup. Are you still hungry?”

“Starving,” she chirped.

A sale was a sale. I needed the money more than I needed my pride.

I took a deep breath and pointed to the Square reader taped to the counter. “It’s fifteen dollars. You pay first.”

A moment later, the transaction pinged on my phone. I turned to the griddle and began to cook.

3

I thought that night was just a fluke, a cruel twist of fate.

But the next day, two of Rhys’s men showed up. They didn’t say a word. They just overturned my cart, sending soup and bread spilling into the gutter, and smashed my equipment.

The official reason? Brooke had been hospitalized with food poisoning. And the only thing she’d eaten the night before was my grilled cheese.

It was an obvious, transparent lie. A setup.

I couldn’t understand it. She had Rhys. She had won. Why couldn’t she just leave me alone?

From that day on, it became a pattern. Rhys sent his men to harass me every single day. No matter where I moved my battered cart, they found me.

My business was destroyed. I didn’t know how I was going to make next month’s rent.

Finally, out of options, I called him. I begged him to leave me in peace.

“The food poisoning wasn’t me, Rhys, I swear it. Can you please, just this once, believe me?”

He didn’t. His voice was hard, unforgiving. “You want me to leave you alone? Fine. Get on your knees and apologize to Brooke.”

I was silent, stunned.

“You will kneel for twelve hours,” he continued calmly. “Then we’ll call it even. Otherwise, you can forget about ever selling a sandwich in this city again.”

This was the man who once claimed he would catch the stars for me if I shed a single tear. Now he was trying to break me, to humiliate me for Brooke’s amusement.

But even in poverty, even in desperation, I still had a spine.

I wiped away a hot tear of fury. “You know, Rhys, you’re a real piece of work. Tormenting a woman to soothe your girlfriend’s ego.” My voice shook. “I was so blind. I can’t believe I ever loved you.”

His breathing on the other end of the line hitched, becoming ragged and heavy, as if I’d struck him. “You think I give a damn about your love?” he snarled, the words tearing from him. “Sadie, you were nothing to me but a tool for my revenge.”

It was a vicious thing to say, but my heart was already so numb, so scarred over, that it barely registered.

I bit back with the first cruel thing that came to mind. “Good. Because to me, you were just a placeholder. Something to do.”

Before he could explode, I hung up the phone.

4

When I got back to our tiny apartment, Paige saw my red-rimmed eyes. She reached up and gently touched my face. “Did someone bully you again, Sadie?” she asked, her small voice full of concern. “I wish I could grow up faster, so I could protect you.”

Our mother had died of an illness not long after Paige was born. Our father… well, our father was never the nurturing type. Paige had always clung to me.

I forced a smile and smoothed back her hair. “What if we left this city?” I asked softly. “Just you and me. Would that be okay?”

She nodded immediately. “Anywhere you go, I’ll go.” Then she hesitated. “What about Dad? Is he coming with us?”

She was too young to understand the full scope of it. She knew something bad had happened, that we were poor now, but she didn’t know Dad was in prison.

I chose my words carefully. “Dad made a mistake, a big one. He’s being punished for it. He… he won’t be home for a very, very long time.”

She tilted her head. “What did he do? Was it really bad?”

Yes. It was really bad.

Twenty years ago, to force a sale on a valuable piece of land, he had set fire to the Caldwell family’s factory.

Rhys’s father had been asleep in the office that night. He never made it out.

So, of course, Rhys hated my father. He hated my entire family. His quest for revenge was the most normal thing in the world. He’d changed his name, hidden his past, and waited years to avenge his father. It was an act of filial piety.

My dad was a criminal. He deserved what he got. I would never defend him.

But I couldn’t not blame Rhys.

He could have chosen a hundred other ways to get his revenge. Why did he have to use my heart as his weapon?

And even now, with his vengeance complete, he wouldn’t let me go. He just kept pushing, kept tormenting me.

I was powerless against him. The only option was to run.

To save money, I booked tickets on a Greyhound bus to Madison. A slow, lumbering route away from my life.

But on the city bus to the station, Paige suddenly collapsed.

I rushed her to the nearest hospital in a blind panic, my world shrinking to the sound of sirens. And there, under the harsh fluorescent lights of the emergency room, my world fell apart completely.

Paige had leukemia.

The words echoed in the sterile room, shattering everything. I sat by her bed, the sobs ripping through me, unstoppable.

Paige, small and pale against the white sheets, squeezed my hand. “Don’t be sad, Sadie,” she whispered, her voice impossibly small. “I don’t feel bad. Really.” She looked around the room. “I don’t like it here. I don’t want shots. Can we just go home?”

I knew what she was doing. She knew I didn’t have any money. My brave, sweet, selfless little sister.

A fresh wave of guilt and self-loathing crashed over me. I was so useless. I couldn’t even afford to save her life.

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