ManyWriters

I sold my body to my husband, Cade Sterling.
One hundred thousand dollars. That was his price for a night with me. The only thing keeping our son, Leo, alive.
My stepmother whispered lies in his ear, and he believed them. He forced another woman into our bed while I was forced onto an operating table.
"You're pregnant," the nurse said, her voice a sterile blade. "Mr. Sterling has requested a termination."
Then, I was forced to watch my son Leo, my only reason for living, leap from a cliff to save me from further torment.
He was gone.
My husband had murdered our first child, and now our second. There was nothing left to live for.
In the cold, scarlet water of the bathtub, I finally let go.
But as darkness claimed me, I didn't know the truth was a far more cruel and twisted thing than I could have ever imagined.
And that Cade Sterling, my tormentor, was about to pay a price far greater than money could ever cover.

His Ruinous Price

“Aria, you are not Coralie. You are my dear Aria.”


Cade leaned in and gently kissed away the tears at the corner of her eye. “Aria, please, just do a blood test with Leo, will you? The results can’t lie, and you’ll know that I’m telling the truth. I haven’t lied to you.”


Her heart hammered against her ribs when he kissed her, and in a blind panic, she shoved him away.


She placed a hand over her chest, feeling the frantic pounding. “Cade, what is wrong with you? Why on earth would I do a blood test with your son?” she snapped at him.


His own heart ached with the knowledge that she didn’t believe a word he said, a bitter irony given how skeptical he had once been. He finally understood the torment she had gone through when she pleaded with him to do the same test, and he had callously dismissed her with one cruel excuse after another.


He knew the truth, but his words were met with nothing but suspicion, and it was the most agonizing feeling in the world.


Chapter 34