Auctioned While Pregnant: 99 Nights Of My Husband’s Betrayal Chapter 07
I drove. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking on the wheel, so I gripped it until the leather creaked.
My phone was pinned between my ear and shoulder. Dailed my lawyer.
Mr. Pearce picked up on the second ring.
“Yes. Collect everything. Every recording, every document, every—and the divorce papers. I need a draft by morning. That’s the priority. The divorce is—”
Metal screamed.
A black SUV launched out of a side alley and slammed into my driver’s side.
The impact threw me sideways. My seatbelt locked too late—my forehead cracked against the steering wheel. Something warm ran into my left eye.
Glass exploded inward.
A fist reached through the broken window. The door wrenched open from outside.
Hands grabbed my arm, my collar, and dragged me out. My knees hit asphalt.
“Take her around back. The room.”
A palm connected with my face. The ground came up fast.
I forced my head up.
My vision swam, but I saw enough. The tactical vests. The earpieces. The matching boots.
Julian’s men.
“What are you looking at?”
A boot drove into my stomach.
Not my stomach. Lower.
The pain was total. It started in my abdomen and radiated outward—up into my chest, down through my legs.
I curled around myself, around the life inside me.
“You think you’re somebody? You touched the tattoo. Ms. Carter’s name. You actually put your filthy hands on it.”
Another kick. Same spot.
“In ten years, anyone who even accidentally saw that ink got punished. You’re nothing but a used-up whore. You think you can scratch it?”
“You—” Blood filled my mouth. I spat it onto the concrete. “You’ll pay for this.”
Fingers clamped around my jaw. Yanked my face up.
“You think someone’s going to protect you here?”
A flat, heavy hand came down.
My skull bounced off the wall behind me. My ears filled with a high-pitched ringing that swallowed everything else.
After that, it was just impact. Fists. Boots. Knuckles against my ribs, my back, my arms raised over my belly—
“She stopped moving. She dead?”
“Nah. Orders were just to get rid of the kid. If she’s dead though…”
“Doesn’t matter. Julian doesn’t care. Compared to Ms. Carter, this bitch is nothing.”
Boots clicking away. Getting fainter. One voice, younger, asking the leader:
“Julian’s never been the type to hesitate. If he wanted it done, why wait? Why not do it at the auction?”
“Use your head. Ms. Carter faints at the sight of blood.”
“Oh. Right. Yeah, with all that blood… good thing she didn’t have to see it.”
So that was why he’d walked away at the auction. Not mercy. Not hesitation.
Claire doesn’t like blood.
I closed my eyes. Something hot and wet tracked down my face—from my forehead, or from my eyes, I couldn’t tell anymore.
Everything he did. Everything he didn’t do. All of it, calculated around one woman.
And that woman was never me.
…
When I opened my eyes, the fluorescent light above me buzzed at a frequency that lived inside my skull.
Hospital. Mr. Pearce sat in the chair beside the bed. He wouldn’t look at me.
“The baby.”
My lips cracked when I spoke.
Mr. Pearce’s gaze dropped to the floor. “I’m sorry.”
I closed my eyes.
The space below my ribs was hollow. Not painful anymore. Just empty. Like someone had scooped out everything that mattered and left the shell.
“Give me what you have. The evidence.”
“Ms. Vance, what we have so far isn’t nearly enough to—”
“I know. Give it to me anyway.”
I made the call to the States that night. Julian’s parents picked up on the third ring. The evidence was already in their inbox.
“Dad. Mom.”
My voice came out like gravel over broken glass.
“You saved my mother’s life once. I married your son. I followed him overseas. I carried his child.”
The line was silent. I kept going.
“He didn’t want any of it. That’s his choice.”
“Your debt to me is paid. We’re even.”
“Take care of yourselves. I’m leaving now.”
“Lena, wait—”
Mrs. Sterling’s voice cracked through the speaker, urgent, reaching.
I hung up. Blocked both their numbers before my hand could shake me out of it.
My palm lay flat against my stomach. The skin there was soft. Slack. Empty.
“The divorce papers, Mr. Pearce. Please.”