After she read the news report, a strange, triumphant smile spread across her face. “I knew it.”
“I knew he wouldn’t abandon us,”
“The family is forcing him into this.”
“He’s being threatened.”
“It just proves how much he loves me!”
I shook my head, a profound sense of exhaustion washing over me.
She was truly, irrevocably insane.
I knew she would do something reckless.
So when she appeared, cradling her newborn, at Donovan Croft’s lavish engagement party, I wasn’t even surprised.
The event was meant to be private, but Jenna had contacted that same sleazy tabloid
reporter, feeding him photos and a live location.
The entire fiasco was being broadcast online,
MY COWOrkare warn nath.
11:12 Thu, Jul 31 BOY
D
My coworkers were gathered around a computer, their work forgotten. “Carys, that woman… she looks a lot like you,” one of them remarked. I quickly stepped back.
“I don’t see it.”
“Just a common face, I guess.”
Their attention was quickly drawn back to the screen.
Jenna, holding the fragile, premature baby, was sobbing at Donovan. “Donovan, I know you’re being forced to marry this woman!”
“I’m here to save you!”
She then turned to Donovan’s stunned parents.
“Father, Mother, don’t force him!”
“We already have a child together!”
“Please, respect his love for me!”
“Oh my god,” a colleague muttered, cringing.
“What does a guy like Donovan Croft see in her?” “She’s so… plain.”
“Right?”
“His fiancée is Isadora Belmont, the city’s ‘It Girl.“”
“That one paparazzi shot of her profile broke the internet.”
“This is like comparing a goddess to… that.”
Everyone debated whether Jenna’s claims could be true.
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But anyone with eyes could see the Grand Canyon–sized gap between her and Donovan’s fiancée.
I remembered from my first life: Donovan and Isadora were childhood sweethearts. He was supposedly devoted to her.
Wait.
A jolt went through me.
If he was so in love with his fiancée, where did his first, sick child come from? Before I could process the thought, a scream erupted from the screen.
In the span of two minutes, Isadora Belmont had fled the party in tears.
Donovan, his face a mask of incandescent rage, slapped Jenna across the face. “Where the hell did you crawl out from?”
“I have nothing to do with you.”
“Get out!”
He bellowed for security.
Jenna, still believing this was all an act for his parents, clung to his leg.
“Don’t be afraid, my love!”
“True love conquers all!”
“The baby and I are here to fight with you!”
“Are you insane?”
“Who loves you?” Donovan roared, his composure shattering.
“If you don’t love me, why did you have a baby with me?”
“Why did you keep me in your house for months?” Jenna wailed, her grip tightening on his
leg while the baby in her other arm cried.
11:12 Thu, Jul 31 DO
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ity wine the papу 111 ICI ULIICI alli viicu.
“As long as our family of three is together, we can overcome anything!”
An aide whispered something in Donovan’s ear.
His face went white with fury.
He kicked Jenna in the stomach.
“Who told you to bring the media here?”
“I did it for you, Donovan!” she gasped, clutching her belly.
“Don’t worry!”
“The whole world is watching live!”
“Your parents will have to accept our child now!”
Even through the grainy livestream, I could see the veins bulging in Donovan Croft’s neck. He looked like he was about to chew through steel.
“Who said I have a child with you?” he said, his voice dropping to a dangerously calm level. “This child isn’t mine.”
“I’m giving you one last chance.”
“Turn off the broadcast and get out of here.”
Jenna, seeing his cold eyes, felt no fear.
“He is our child!”
“And I have proof!”
In front of millions of viewers, she played two audio recordings: one of Donovan’s drugged, heavy breathing, and another of their conversations at the villa.
“Everyone, this is proof that Donovan and I are together!”
“Please, help us!”
“Help my child get the recognition he deserves!”
The livestream chat exploded, condemning Donovan as a deadbeat father.
My coworker sighed.
“Wow, I guess it really is true love.”
But I was terrified.
Silas had warned her to keep this secret.
Now, she had broadcasted it to the world.
There was no turning back.
On the screen, Donovan’s face, which had been pale with rage, suddenly smoothed into an unnerving calm.
He let out a long breath, a faint, almost pitying smile on his lips.
“Miss Rowe, I believe you’ve misunderstood.”
“I took care of you not because you were carrying my child, but because that child… belongs to a friend of mine.”
“Impossible,” Jenna stammered.
“Donovan, are you being threatened?”
He shook his head and snapped his fingers.
An assistant instantly appeared with two documents.
Two paternity tests.
One showed that the baby had no genetic relation to him. The other showed a 99.9% match with another man. Jenna was stunned.
11:12 Thu, Jul 31
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Jenna was stunned.
“No… it can’t be…”
“The housekeeper sold me *your* specimen!”
Donovan’s smile remained.
“You’re saying someone is trafficking my genetic material?” “Then I’m afraid you were scammed.”
“You see, I had a vasectomy several years ago.”
Another assistant brought forward a medical file.
Jenna’s face was a deathly white.
“Lies!”
“Then what about your older son?”
“How was he born?”
“My older son?” Donovan feigned a moment of realization.
“Ah, you mean my ward.”
“The child wasn’t adopted; he was the son of a fallen friend who died saving my life.” “I became his legal guardian to repay that debt.”
Jenna looked as if she’d been struck by lightning.
She just kept shaking her head, convinced it was all an elaborate lie.
The livestream abruptly ended.
Minutes later, Croft Enterprises issued an official statement, releasing all three documents: the two paternity tests, the vasectomy record, and the legal guardianship papers for the other child.
It was accompanied by a detailed file documenting Jenna’s harassment and deranged behavior.
Simultaneously, Donovan posted a public, passionate declaration of love to his fiancée, vowing he would only ever love her.
Isadora Belmont responded in kind. The scandal was over.
The narrative was set.
Jenna was a deranged, obsessive lunatic poisoned by trashy novels.
No one seemed to notice that in the aftermath, both she and the baby had simply vanished.
I knew Donovan had dealt with her.
I just never expected to see the proof.
A few weeks later, an anonymous email appeared in my inbox.
It contained a single video file.
The woman in the video was beaten beyond recognition, but her voice was sickeningly familiar.
“How dare you do this to me!”
“I am Mrs. Donovan Croft!”
The men surrounding her roared with laughter.
“Mrs. Croft?”
“Lady, he publicly disowned you.”
“You’re in a place like this and still acting high and mighty?”
“Looks like you haven’t learned your lesson.”
allowed
11:12 Thu, Jul 31 D
K
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H
Her screams that followed were inhuman.
Jenna had been sent to some lawless corner of the world, where torture was a sport.
I couldn’t watch the rest.
But I felt no sympathy.
Not a shred.
Still, I sent a final message to Silas Finch.
‘What happened to the baby?`
His reply was prompt.
[The baby was a fragile premature infant.]
[Miss Rowe forcibly removed him from the hospital.] [He didn’t survive the night.]
I felt a strange sense of relief.
IN
With a mother like that, life would have been a curse.
And the baby’s real father
I believed Donovan’s story.
It wasn’t him.
The entire plan was to save his friend’s child.
My sister was a willing, if deluded, participant who walked right into his trap.
Even if someone investigated, the law could never touch him.
I never thought I would see Jenna again.
But a year later, she was “rescued” by international police.
Her body was a wreck, not a single organ left unscathed.
She kept screaming that Donovan Croft was behind it.
But the evidence showed she’d been abducted by a random kidnapper on her way home from the hospital.
A kidnapper who, coincidentally, turned himself in the day after she was found.
“It was him!”
“He ordered it!” she shrieked at me from her hospital bed, her mind finally cured of its delusions and filled only with a burning hatred.
“Carys, go to the police!”
“Get them to arrest Donovan Croft!”
“Jenna, don’t you get it?” I told her, my voice devoid of warmth.
“The kidnapper isn’t an idiot.”
“The police aren’t idiots.”
“I told you from the beginning, we are not in the same league as him.”
“He would never do something like this without leaving a hundred scapegoats to take the fall.”
“To him, destroying you was like stepping on an ant.”
“So I just have to suffer for nothing?” she sobbed.
“Carys, don’t you feel sorry for me at all?”
Sorry?
My heart had died the moment her knife pierced my skin.
Her fate was her own making.
I looked at her broken form and felt nothing.
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I looked at her broken form and felt nothing.
“Take care of yourself, Jenna,” I said, and walked out of the room. “Carys, don’t go!” she cried out behind me.
“You can’t leave me!”
“What will I do?”
“I was wrong, please, don’t leave me!”
I didn’t look back.
Jenna died in the hospital a few days later.
After handling her funeral, a final, heavy weight lifted from my soul. This life would have no debt.
No nightmares of being hunted by Donovan Croft.
I would live for myself, in the light.
Over the next few years, I worked relentlessly.
I climbed from a junior accountant to a senior financial manager.
A new, promising tech firm poached me with an incredible offer.
On my first day, I was led in to meet my new boss.
He looked just as impossibly handsome as I remembered, a polite, knowing smile on his lips.
“It’s been a long time, Miss Carys Rowe,” Silas Finch said.
And in that moment, I understood.
Billionaire romance novels weren’t entirely fiction.
But you don’t become the heroine by waiting for a prince.
You become the heroine by surviving the game, and proving you’re a player worth having on the board.
And that was a lesson you could never learn from a book.
