He Gave My Ambulance to the Fake Heiress While I Was in Labor

### Chapter 2 My friend went quiet for two or three seconds, then her voice went sharp. "You're not joking, are you? Everybody knows you'd give your life loving Austin Yates." My chest was tight enough to hurt. When I spoke, I'd never been so certain of anything. "I'm leaving him. The sooner the better." Zoey didn't ask anything else. "Okay. I'll get the divorce papers ready as fast as I can." I'd barely hung up when Maya's Instagram update pushed to the top of my feed. "Turns out playing 'mommy' is so much fun. Thanks to a certain someone for humoring my little 'games.'" She'd posted a string of videos. In a luxury delivery room, Maya sat surrounded by specialists, legs spread, hamming up a laboring woman's screams. Austin waited on her hand and foot, peeling an orange, wiping her forehead, rubbing her feet. I carried our child for ten months, and he never once brought me so much as a basin of warm water to soak my feet. I stared at the newest clip. In the water, he held Maya from behind to "help her deliver," coaxing her gently. "Come on, almost there. Just a little more and you won't have to suffer anymore." I once told him I was scared of the pain and wanted to try a water birth. He'd asked coldly who was going to answer for it if it lowered the baby's IQ. Something wrenched hard in my chest. I let out a bitter little laugh. So it wasn't that he didn't know how much agony childbirth was. He just didn't care about me. That night, after I'd rocked our daughter to sleep, I picked up the phone to tell my family she'd been born. The room next door suddenly came alive with noise. "Austin really came through for you. He should've married you from the start, not that knockoff." That was my brother's voice. He'd once congratulated me on finally marrying Austin, saying it was me all along who'd been promised to Austin since childhood. My father picked up the thread. "That cheap little girl stole everything from Maya, and now she gets to be a mother too. My poor Maya only gets to play at it for a bit..." He'd once knelt in his study to thank me. Said if I hadn't handed over the billion my adoptive parents gave me, the Fox family would've been finished. My hands and feet went numb. Step by step, I made my way next door. Through the crack in the door, my mother stroked Maya's head with such tenderness, then rolled her eyes. "So calculating. Blood daughter or not, so what? Don't think for a second I'd take her side." She'd once bragged to relatives that she'd staked her own reputation to recommend my brother, and only then had he landed his government post. Said I was the daughter she loved most. But every kindness from the people I thought were closest to me had been an act. Behind my back, I was the knockoff, the cheap girl, the scheming slut who stole her sister's fiancé. Austin sat at the edge of the bed and didn't say half a word in my defense. "You should focus on Maya. She's been so brave these two days. I'm proud of you." My heart was already cramping with pain. Bang! The door slammed open under my hand. "The two faces on all of you. It's disgusting!" They all stared when they saw me, eyes wide. In his panic, my father knocked over the mountain of gifts they'd brought Maya. I'd had my baby, and not one of them had bought her so much as a little outfit. "Dorothy, listen to your father..." I didn't want to watch the fake performance a second longer. I turned and walked out. I hadn't even cleared the hospital when Austin came charging out of the building and threw an arm across my path. There was no delight in his eyes at the baby in the stroller. He didn't ask whether the birth had gone all right. He clamped down on my wrist, his face cold. "Come home with me." He gripped hard enough to crush the bone, and I fought against him. "Home? So you can all keep humiliating me?" Austin faltered, glanced down at the baby, and eased his grip a little. "You screamed at Maya and scared her into a panic attack. They're still working to stabilize her. Go back and apologize." "Having a baby doesn't give you the right to be rude." "Why should I apologize to her? She's the one who stole everything from me. She's the one who was rude, and she's the one all of you crowned with special privileges." I was furious enough to lose my head, but I was afraid of waking the baby, so I didn't even dare fall apart. Austin's brow creased. "Your family only favored her a little because she grew up with no real family to love her, and they slipped and misspoke. Don't be so unreasonable about the bigger picture." I laughed until my eyes were wet. "Then what exactly do you want from me?" He reached out, trying to stroke my face and calm me down. "Admit you were wrong. Make up with Maya." "She's had a hard few years. She feels like she stole half of your family's love, and the guilt has driven her into depression. But she never owed you anything." Rain fell from the night sky, and the biting cold seeped into my skin, into my heart, until even my soul was frozen. I laughed and lowered my head to avoid his touch. Tears mixed with rain and struck down into the cold night. "I'll mail you the divorce papers, Austin." His gaze tightened. Then a distinctive ringtone went off at his waist. He answered without hesitation. Maya sobbed something I couldn't make out, and he immediately turned his back to me, his voice going soft. "Don't cry. Dorothy's going to apologize to you. She's just petty, that's all."

### Chapter 3 "You're still doing the newborn-care class tomorrow, right? Get some rest tonight. Tomorrow I'll make you the prettiest mommy there." He kept coaxing until Maya finally laughed through her tears, and only then did he hang up. When he turned back to me, his face had gone cold again. "You just had a baby, so I won't hold tonight against you." He tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Divorce? Where do you think you'd go if you left me? You think the Fox family would take you in?" "Besides, you'd have died for me once. You think you can walk away from me?" Back then, in the crash, I'd shoved him out of the car with everything I had and gotten myself pinned behind the twisted metal door. The scar was still on my shoulder. And now he was using it as leverage against me. He went to keep Maya company without looking back. The rain came down harder. I quickly pulled off my coat and draped it over the stroller. Shivering, I dug out my phone to book a ride, and the next second an off-duty doctor pulled me into her car. "I saw the whole thing. Why would you want a husband like that?" She started the engine as she spoke. "When I had a hard labor, my husband stayed with me two days and two nights without closing his eyes. He cooked my recovery meals, got up in the middle of the night to take the baby on his own. He spoiled me and our child down to the bone." I took the towel she handed me and wiped my wet hair, my nose stinging in secret. Austin had gone three days and three nights without sleep for me once too. When I was eighteen, I was kidnapped by an enemy of the Fox family. By the time they got me back, I was soaked in blood from head to toe. The doctors said I might never wake up. Austin, who had never believed in anything, knelt before the statue of the Virgin Mary and bowed his head, praying over and over. In the dark, I could almost hear his prayer crossing every mountain and river, saying he would give up everything he had for me to open my eyes. That year the rain poured down just like this. Maybe God was finally moved by how sincere he was, because after three days and three nights, I woke. But Austin had knelt so long in the rain that his knees were nearly ruined. I cried and cried because it hurt me to see it, and he just held me in his arms. "As long as you're all right, it's worth it, whatever happens to me." There wasn't a single flaw in that young, honest love. Why, in only seven or eight short years, was none of it what it used to be? The doctor's sigh echoed through the car. Bitterness rose from the bottom of my heart. I wanted an answer too. Maybe everything changed the day Maya pulled out her medical records and announced, red-eyed, that she might never be able to have children. He missed our most important wedding anniversary to take her to an art exhibit. At my first prenatal checkup, in the middle of all that chaos, he left me there to go with her about a stye on her eye. He turned the nursery I'd decorated myself into a piano room for her, saying that even if Maya could never be a mother, she at least deserved something to lean on. When I got angry, he called me narrow-minded. I thought that if I just kept enduring, one day he'd be moved. I thought he'd finally see how much I'd swallowed. But every time I stepped back, what I got was him blocking me from getting into that ambulance with his own hands. When I sent Austin the divorce agreement my friend had drawn up overnight, all he replied was: "Knock it off once you've had your fun." He was too sure of himself. Back then it was me who'd cried and begged him to marry me, made a scene the whole city talked about, everyone telling him not to spoil me. He figured this was the same. I'd act out for a couple of days, then come running back to him, meek and sorry. But I didn't want to keep waiting for a turnaround that would never come. After I nursed my daughter one more time, I curled up on the bed, worn out in body and mind, and fell asleep. Half-dreaming, I thought I heard some movement over by the crib. I assumed it was a maid coming to change the baby's diaper. My eyelids were too heavy to lift. When I opened them again, the rain had stopped, and the sky was bright. My phone buzzed on the pillow. Maya had posted on Instagram again. In the photo, Austin and Maya were pressed close together, the two of them holding a little baby, lips puckered, kissing the baby's cheek at the same time. The lights of the high-end postpartum care center were warm to the point of glaring, like a promotional shot of a family of three. The caption. "Being a mommy for a day~ Before anyone gets petty about it, let me say up front: the baby wasn't my idea, Austin practically forced her on me. " My hand, about to lock the screen, went still. The heart-shaped birthmark on the baby's forehead, the position, the shape, was exactly the same as my daughter's.

### Chapter 4 My heart lurched. The baby was only two days old. I couldn't bear to imagine what would happen to her in Maya's hands. I dialed Austin's number, my voice shaking. "Why did you sneak our daughter over to Maya? She doesn't know the first thing about babies!" He paused, his tone flat. "Maya wanted to know what it feels like to look after a baby, so I lent her ours for a while. Relax, there's a professional nanny watching. Nothing will happen." My scalp prickled. "So because she wants to play mommy, my daughter has to be her toy?!" The call cut off, hard. I bolted out the door and flagged down a car straight to the postpartum care center. I made it to the building, and then Maya's new post froze me where I stood. In the video she had grabbed my daughter's soft little legs and hauled her up out of the crib, holding her roughly while she forced the bottle in. The baby choked, her whole face going red, and milk sprayed onto Maya's chest. Maya shrieked, and then she dropped my daughter onto the thick shag carpet. A dull thud. My daughter's screaming didn't come until two seconds later, raw and tearing. It shattered me. I ran up to the top floor faster than I ever had in my life. From inside the luxury suite came Maya's sniffling. "Did I do something wrong? Now she's going to yell at me again..." Austin's voice was impossibly gentle. "Every new mother's like this. It's not your fault." "Besides, a few little bumps are normal for a kid. She should learn to be more forgiving anyway." When I burst through the door, he had his arm around Maya, murmuring to soothe her, without so much as a glance at the daughter in the nanny's arms. The baby had cried herself hoarse, each sound cutting until my heart bled. Fury and hatred twisted together in me, and I slapped Maya across the face, hard. "Ah!" She screamed and fell into Austin's arms, fat tears rolling down her wronged little face. "I—I didn't mean to, she just wouldn't drink..." Austin's face darkened. "Dorothy, what the hell has gotten into you?" I snatched my daughter back from the nanny, looking at the tiny face gone blue from choking, my eyes burning red. "She almost choked my daughter to death, then dropped her on the floor. The baby's screaming like this, and you're blind? Deaf?!" Austin was silent for two seconds. "But Maya meant well. Do you have to make a scene?" I'd been done with him for so long. So why were the tears rising again now? The little island I'd spent countless days and nights finalizing for our wedding, Maya took a liking to and wanted for her prom, and he said prom happens once in a lifetime, a wedding could be held anywhere. After we married, Maya secretly swapped my prenatal supplements for vitamins, and he said she was just hurting inside, we could have kids a few years later. I waited three whole years. On my birthday, he smiled and said he'd give me a baby as a gift. That night under the stars there was no Maya, and I leaned on his shoulder and asked whether he wanted a boy or a girl. Austin ruffled my hair, doting. "As long as you're the one who has it, it's my most precious treasure." So the vow was a shooting star that night, plunging into the abyss in the blink of an eye. I lifted my tear-filled eyes and watched him scoop the still-sobbing Maya up crosswise, cradling her like something fragile and priceless. And my daughter was only the product of his passing whim, a thing he couldn't be bothered to look at twice. Before he left he stared at me, his eyes cold as ice. "Dorothy, do you think you know how you got that daughter?" "Maya was the one who talked me into it. Even though you shoved her into the icy lake and cost her the chance to ever be a mother, she said you were pitiful too. Only then did I decide to give you this child." I stared, my eyes going wide in disbelief. I shook my head, wanting to deny it, but he couldn't be bothered to look at me again. "Your family would rather humor Maya than go to the hospital to be with you while you gave birth. All because you're heartless." In that moment the pain reached a place beyond anything. But the tears stopped. Watching his back as he carried Maya away, the memory of that deep winter five years ago overlapped with it. That day I jumped into a lake at ten below zero and, on my last breath, pushed Maya back up onto the bank after she fell in. I saw my fiancé's car parked at the edge of the water, so I waved my arms and begged for help with everything I had. But he never looked at the water once. His whole gaze was on Maya. He took off his warm coat and wrapped it around her, and all he left me was the back of a car speeding off. When I opened my eyes in the hospital, my parents, my brother, and Austin were all there. Except they were all crowded around Maya in the next bed, fussing over her. Back then I didn't understand the way they looked at me, complicated, cold, even disgusted. Now I finally do.

### Chapter 5 In their eyes, I was never the girl who saved Maya's life. I was the one who pushed their darling daughter, their sweet little sister, their gentle childhood sweetheart, into that icy lake. I'd once refused my adoptive parents' and my brother's pleas to stay, telling myself that going back to my blood family was coming home to my roots. I was wrong. In the ride-share on the way to the hospital with my daughter, I took out my phone. My finger hovered over one number for a long time. Then, all at once, that number lit up on its own. I answered without hesitation, and my brother Carl Farley's voice came through. "Hey, sis. Your due date's around now, isn't it? Do you want us to come be with you?" Something tightened in my throat. He paused, and his voice went even gentler. "Mom and Dad stopped being angry a long time ago. Ever since they heard the baby was coming, they've been too worried to sleep at night." The next second he switched on the camera, and the familiar Farley estate garden filled the screen. Claudia Farley rose from the gazebo chair, tense, her eyes rimmed red. "Sweetheart, are you okay? Being pregnant is so hard, isn't it?" "Your father said some harsh things back then, but he never meant a word of it." Otis Farley stood beside her, watching the screen with an ache in his eyes. "It was only because that Yates boy chased all the way to the airport and shed a few tears that my girl went soft. I was angry because I wanted so much better for you, so I…" Claudia cried harder, wiping at tears that wouldn't stop no matter how she tried. "Your mom and dad don't ask for anything. We only want Austin Yates and the Fox family to treat you well. Then we can rest easy." Off-screen, Carl said softly: "If you don't want to see us, I'll have the gifts for my niece flown over instead. And Mom and Dad have already lined up the best obstetrics and care team. We won't let you or the baby suffer even a little." Five years without seeing them, and the two people who used to be so strong now had new lines carved across their foreheads. Looking at their worried faces, there was no question who my real family was. Every bit of hurt I'd swallowed broke loose in that moment. Crying, I turned on my own camera and lifted my daughter up to it. "Mom, Dad, Carl. The baby and I miss you so much." My adoptive parents and my brother burst out laughing, delighted. In that instant, the pull to fly back to the people who loved me hit its peak. "We're leaving right now. We'll be there tonight!" The doctor told me the baby was only frightened, that she'd be fine with good care. The weight lifted off my chest, and I held my daughter close, kissing her again and again. Sweet girl, tonight Mommy is taking you away. Back home, I packed my bags at top speed. Footsteps sounded downstairs, and I quickly hid the suitcase out on the balcony. Austin walked straight to the closet, dug out a clean set of clothes, and spoke while he changed. "Maya says she doesn't blame you. After all, she made a small mistake today too." "Didn't you want to throw a one-month celebration for the baby? Pick a plan and send it to me." He tapped a few times on his phone, then turned to leave. In his rush, he didn't even notice how much emptier the closet was. I caught his arm. "I want to buy the baby an insurance policy. It needs your signature and payment." I flipped the divorce papers to the signature page, and when I held them out, my palms were a little damp. But Austin never looked at the content. In a few quick strokes he signed his name. His back disappeared fast. I skimmed through his few bare-bones party plans, then opened Maya's latest Instagram post. He'd spent a million on her, throwing a lavish luxury-cruise children's party. In the photos Maya sat at the center of it all, my family circled around her, smiling sweetly. A cold little smile pulled at my mouth. That afternoon, a message from Austin popped up: "Did you pick a plan yet?" Night fell. I fed the baby, rocked her to sleep, picked up my suitcase, and headed out. Only once I was at the curb with my daughter, waiting for the car, did I type back. "Whatever you decide is fine." After a long wait, Austin finally got my reply. The strange unease that had gnawed at his heart all day finally settled. He couldn't help smiling as he typed: "You worked hard bringing her into the world. Dot, once I get through this busy stretch, the three of us will live the way a family should." I calmly blocked the number. Then I got into the ride-share. "To the airport." Sixteen to twenty-six. Ten years of giving, ten years of waiting, all of it came to an end in this moment.