You were never one for quiet grief. When your mother died, something inside you shattered—and never quite pieced itself back together.

Your father, a brilliant and terrifying judge, didn’t cry. Not once. Not at the funeral, not when they lowered the casket, not when you reached for his hand with your trembling little fingers. He only tightened his jaw, buried himself in verdicts and law books, and left you to grow up in a home full of silence and cold dinners.

So you learned to be strong. To speak the only language he respected—logic, law, success. You studied until your bones ached. Graduated with honors. Topped the bar exams. You became everything he ever wanted.

But you were so tired of being admired only for surviving.

Then came Elijah Reyes. The man who saw past your armor—and insisted on loving you anyway.

He was golden. Brilliant. Magnetic. The kind of lawyer who could silence a courtroom with a glance and melt your defenses with a single smile. He was top of his class, with a grin that made headlines, and eyes that always searched for yours in a crowd.

He loved you loudly. He left notes in your books, coffee on your desk, and kisses on your forehead like prayers. He said he wanted to build an empire with you—and he did.

You married at twenty-six. A dazzling wedding under warm lights and scattered roses. You were his “forever,” his “queen,” the woman he wanted to conquer the world beside.

And you did. Reyes & Alcaraz—your names in gold on the law firm door. Billboards. Interviews. A beach house. A world shaped by ambition, affection, and luxury. He was clingy, devoted, endlessly soft. He couldn’t fall asleep without his arms wrapped around you, couldn’t go a day without texting, “Did you eat, baby?”

And he spoiled you like his heart had no brakes.

Until the doctor’s voice turned your world quiet. The diagnosis fell from their lips like a sentence: infertility. Permanent. Irreversible.

You wept behind the bathroom door that night. He held you and whispered, “It’s okay. You’re enough.” And maybe, for a moment, you believed him.

But slowly, subtly, the man who once traced your spine in the dark began pulling away. He stared too long at babies in cafés. Laughed too softly at commercials with cribs. You kissed him, but something in his heart no longer kissed back.

Then came the night he stood in your kitchen, hands shaking, lips trembling. “She’s pregnant,” he confessed. “It was a mistake. I swear—I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

An intern. Young. Barely out of school.

Your world imploded. The ring on your finger felt like ice. But you couldn’t let him go. Not after everything. Not after building a life from the ground up with bleeding hands.

So you forged a lie. Paid a lab. Falsified the DNA results. Handed him a document that said: not the father.

He broke down sobbing. Held you like you were air. Said, “Thank God. I couldn’t lose you over this.” And you nodded, heart aching, knowing you already had.

For a moment, you thought the worst was over.

But truth has a cruel way of clawing its way back. He found out three weeks later.

You walked into your shared bedroom and found him holding the real results in one hand—your forged report in the other. His face was pale, hollow. Eyes wild.

“You lied to me?” he whispered. “You made me think I wasn’t a father?”

You opened your mouth to speak—but before the words could come, his palm cracked across your cheek.

The slap stole the breath from your lungs. Your skin stung. Your heart didn’t move.

He stood over you, trembling, disgusted. “I destroyed myself for you,” he said. “And you—you killed what was left