Matilda's Pov 

The cold of the hospital bed had long since seeped into my bones. Time no longer moved the way it used to, minutes stretched into hours, and hours into something that felt endless.

Losing the baby wasn’t just pain. It was absent. A silence that screamed inside me. A cradle that would never rock.

The doctor entered the room again with a clipboard tucked beneath his arm, his expression unreadable. I sat up slightly, every muscle in my body aching, bracing myself for more bad news.

“We’ve completed the tests,” he said, his voice calm but cautious. And I wanted to let you know your womb is healthy. No permanent damage. Physically, you’ll be fine.”

I blinked, stunned for a moment. “So… could I still have children?”

“Yes,” he said gently. “When the time is right, you can try again.”

I nodded slowly, the words floating around me like smoke. It was meant to be comforting. A sliver of light. But I couldn’t feel it. Not yet. Not when my body still remembered the ache of what was lost.

I thanked him in a voice I barely recognized as my own and stared out the window for a while, watching the shadows stretch across the parking lot outside.

And then, something inside me whispered: Leave.

I didn’t want to be here anymore. This place held too much. Too many machines that beeped while I cried into sterile sheets. Too many whispered condolences from nurses with sympathetic eyes.

I got dressed slowly, my movements were mechanical, stuffing the discharge papers into my bag. My steps echoed through the hallway as I moved toward the exit, trying not to collapse under the weight of everything I’d just endured.

I passed a room with the door ajar, about to keep walking, when I heard it—

A familiar voice.

“I’ve been nauseous for a few weeks now, and my period is late...”

The words came soft and uncertain, but I knew that voice. I knew it was like I knew my own now.

It was Aria.

I froze.

My hand hovered near the wall, my feet rooted to the floor. Slowly, I leaned closer to the doorway.

The doctor inside, a young man, flipped through a file as he responded. “Well, the tests confirmed it." You’re pregnant, Ms. Aria.”

I didn’t hear the rest.

The air was sucked clean from my lungs. The hallway tilted. My heartbeat roared in my ears like a freight train.

No.

No, no, no.

She was pregnant?

She, the woman I caught in my bed with my husband, was now carrying the child I had just lost?

I staggered backward, clutching the wall for support. My fingers trembled against the cold tiles. The room, the hallway, the hospital itself—it all spun around me.

I had nothing. Nothing left to hold onto.

Not even the hope of what could’ve been.

And Aria, Aria now had it all.

A sharp pain ripped through my chest as the world swayed violently beneath my feet. I tried to breathe, tried to ground myself. But the grief swallowed me whole.

Everything turned white.

The room was quiet when I woke up. The walls, pale and lifeless, offered no comfort, only silence. A machine beeped softly beside me, an IV needle pricked my skin, and a dull ache pounded in the center of my chest—not physical this time, but deeper, like something inside me had shattered and would never quite fit back together again.

It took a moment to remember where I was. Then the memory of Aria's voice—soft, breathy, pregnant—slammed into me like a car crash.

I closed my eyes again, wishing I hadn't woken at all.

They told me I’d only fainted, that it had been a brief episode caused by emotional stress. Emotional stress. As if grief, betrayal, and heartbreak could be summed up in two clinical words. I didn’t bother asking for more time to rest. There was nothing restful about lying in this bed while the world outside continued to mock me.

So I signed my release papers, refused the nurse’s offers of a wheelchair, and walked out with nothing but a bandaged wrist and a hollow ache in my gut.

The cab ride home felt endless. The driver kept looking at me through the rearview mirror, maybe wondering if I was okay. I wasn’t. But I didn’t need pity. I needed air. Space. I needed my home, even if it had turned into a place I no longer recognized.

As we pulled up to the house, something inside me stirred uneasily. There were more cars parked in the driveway than usual. Balloons floated lazily from the mailbox. I blinked, confused.

And then I heard it—laughter.

My stomach dropped.

I stepped through the front door, and what I saw made my blood run cold.

There they were. My husband Gabriel, Aria—her—and my ever-loathing mother-in-law. All gathered in the living room with wine glasses raised and smiles that didn’t belong in my house. A cake sat on the table with the words “Congratulations Mommy!” written in pink icing. Pink. The irony was bitter in my mouth.

They were celebrating. Laughing. Toasting to her pregnancy. To her child.

Gabriel, my husband, had his arm around her. His mother looked radiant—radiant—cooing over Aria as though she were the daughter she always wanted. The same woman who had never spared me a kind word, who once told me my cooking was embarrassing, was now handing Aria a glass of sparkling juice and rubbing her back like she was royalty.

I stood there, unnoticed at first, like a ghost.

And then, she saw me.

My mother-in-law’s lips curled into that smirk I’d come to hate. Her voice, falsely sweet, rang throughout the room. “Oh look,” she said. “It’s the barren one." Poor thing—her womb couldn’t even hold a child.”

I didn’t flinch. I didn’t scream or cry or throw anything, though every inch of me burned. I just turned my face away and walked past them, refusing to let them see me break. Not again.

I reached the bedroom—our bedroom—and the moment the door closed behind me, my legs gave out. I slid down to the floor, pressing a fist into my mouth to muffle the sob that tore from my throat. The pain came in waves, hot and cruel. I clutched the side of the bed, curled into myself, and cried like something had died inside me.

Because it did.

The door creaked open behind me minutes later. I didn’t need to look to know who it was. His scent still clung to the sheets. His betrayal still echoed in the silence.

Gabriel stepped in like he owned the world, like he hadn’t just shattered mine. He looked down at me, and for a brief second, I thought I saw something like guilt in his eyes. But it passed quickly, replaced by that distant coldness he’d perfected in recent weeks.

I wiped my face and asked, “Why, Gabriel?” My voice trembled. “Why are you doing this to me? What did I do to deserve this?”

He tilted his head like he was bored. “You want the truth?”

I nodded.

He shrugged. “You’re just… not enough for me.”

The words were daggers. Cold. Precise. Final.

I felt them slice through the last thread of hope I’d been holding onto.

I stood up, shaky but resolute. “Then I want a divorce.”

He laughed. Laughed. The sound of it made my skin crawl.

“If a divorce is what you want,” he sneered, stepping closer, “then a divorce you will get. I’ll kick your poor ass out of this house and onto the streets. Let’s see how you like it. A day out there, and you’ll come crawling back, begging me to take you back.”

His words rang out with venom. He was enjoying this. Watching me crumble.

But I didn’t.

I didn’t say a word.

I just looked at him, my face wet.

 With tears but my eyes dry. Dry and blazing.

That would never happen, Matilda thought to herself.

A mansion awaits me, you bastard.