But when he saw me standing there, swollen and exhausted, there was no guilt in his eyes. Only contempt.
He sneered and flung Bonnie's lace lingerie right into my face.
"Alice, do you honestly think you're my wife?" he spat. "You're nothing but a dog the Delgado family bought. What right do you have to interfere in my business?"
The humiliation burned worse than the slap of fabric.
"In the Delgado house, if I tell you to kneel, you kneel," he roared. "If I tell you to wash Bonnie's feet, you fetch the water! And if you can't bear for me to leave—sit in the corner and watch!"
I was young then. Still held naive hope. We screamed at each other, and in the chaos, I missed a step.
I tumbled down the stairs. Eight months pregnant. Massive hemorrhaging.
Three times that night, the doctors issued critical condition notices. Yet through the pain and terror, Evan never showed up. Not once.
I signed the surgery consent form myself, hand trembling as I gambled my life to save the child inside me.
But when Mandy was finally born, the elder Mrs. Delgado took her away immediately. I didn't even get to hold my daughter. Didn't even get to look at her.
Instead, I received a new command: Produce a male heir.
Before my stitches had healed, before I'd finished postpartum recovery, the old woman dragged me to the Delgado Ancestral Hall. Forced me to kneel on cold stone to "repent" for my failure.
"The Delgado family is a century-old dynasty. We need a male heir," she lectured, looking down at me with disdain. "I don't care who Evan plays with outside. But the legitimate grandson must come from your belly."
She threw a packet of herbs at me. "Drink this. And until you give birth to a son, you will come here every year to kowtow and beg the ancestors for forgiveness."
When Evan heard about it, he offered no comfort.
Instead, in front of his friends and the media, he lifted my shirt. Pointed at the jagged purple stretch marks on my stomach and laughed.
"Look at that," he sneered. "Hideous."
"Grandma scolded you again? Don't pretend you don't enjoy the attention." Evan's voice dripped with mockery. "Maybe you should bow to Bonnie instead. Call her your mistress. Let her teach you how to please a man in bed."
His contempt was suffocating. The media's ridicule had already stripped me bare. But in that moment, my heart finally hardened against him.