Chapter 5
Then Arthur looked through the glass at Sawyer and Quinn.
“They’re Blackwoods,” he said quietly.
“They’re Carters too.”
His jaw tightened.
“Not for long.”
I looked at him.
“I don’t want revenge to be their first inheritance.”
Arthur studied me.
“What do you want?”
I watched Quinn stretch one tiny hand beneath the wires.
“I want safety.”
He nodded.
“Then safety is what we build.”
By evening, the hospital had changed around us.
The twins were transferred to a private NICU suite reserved for critical neonatal care.
A recovery room was opened beside them for me.
A nurse named Maribel stayed with me through the night, checking my incision, adjusting medication, and whispering updates every time one of the babies moved.
At 2:17 a.m., Sawyer’s oxygen dipped.
I sat upright so fast pain tore through my body.
Doctors rushed in.
Maribel gently held my shoulder.
“Breathe, Mrs. Blackwood.”
I froze.
Not Carter.
Blackwood.
I hadn’t heard anyone call me that in years.
By morning, Sawyer stabilized.
Quinn gained three grams.
Three.
I cried over three grams like someone had handed me the world.
But the outside world did not stay quiet.
At 9:00 a.m., Arthur’s legal team arrived.
At 9:15, Nora Vale, the family attorney, placed a folder beside my hospital bed.
“Jade, Weston’s divorce filing contains a problem.”
I laughed weakly.
“Only one?”
She smiled.
“This one helps us.”
She opened the folder.
“He pressured you to sign while you were hospitalized, medicated, post-surgery, and under emotional distress near your premature infants.”
“So the divorce isn’t valid?”
“It can be challenged.”
I looked toward the NICU glass.
“No.”
Nora paused.
“I don’t understand.”
“I want the divorce.”
“Jade—”
“I want it finalized. But not on his terms.”
Arthur, sitting in the corner, smiled faintly.
“That’s my girl.”
Nora nodded.
“Then we file our response. Full custody. Medical decision-making rights. Child support. Recovery of joint funds. Protective order if necessary.”
“And Ashley?”
“Already gone.”
But she was not gone.
Not really.
Because that afternoon, as I was pumping milk for babies too small to nurse, Maribel entered with a serious face.
“Mrs. Blackwood, there’s someone downstairs asking for you.”
My stomach tightened.
“Weston?”
“No.”
She hesitated.
“A woman named Ashley Monroe.”
Arthur’s security team had already blocked her from the NICU.
But she had left something at the front desk.
A white envelope.
No return address.
Inside was a single photograph.
Weston.
Ashley.
And Derek Voss.
Together at a private dinner six months earlier.
On the back, written in shaky handwriting:
He knew. He always knew. He was never betrayed. He was part of it.
I stared at the photo until the room blurred.
Weston had not been fooled by Ashley.
He had not been a husband stupidly chasing a mistress.
He had been a man using a pregnant woman, fake paternity, and stolen money as part of a larger scheme.
Arthur slowly took the photograph from my hand.
For the first time since he arrived, I saw something colder than anger in his eyes.
“Laura,” he said to the investigator standing near the door.
“Find Derek Voss.”
Laura nodded.
“We’re already looking.”
Arthur’s voice dropped.
“Look faster.”
That night, while Sawyer and Quinn slept inside their incubators, I realized Weston’s cruelty in the NICU was not the beginning of his betrayal.
It was the mistake that exposed all of it.
And somewhere outside that hospital, a man named Derek Voss was holding the missing piece.
May you like
The piece that would explain why Weston had really married me.
And why he had been so desperate to leave before my grandfather came back into my life.
