He Deceived Me, So I Destroyed His Family's Legacy novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Promise
Lawson has his brother dragged home before the staff and tells Annabel the truth about her wedding night; she says she will end the pregnancy and he looks to Marissa.
Lawson's bodyguards dragged his brother into our living room by both arms while the whole household staff watched.
Rowan was still in his dinner jacket, and somebody had let him keep his drink.
I stood at the foot of the stairs with a lab report in my hand.
That morning a doctor had told me I was eight weeks pregnant.
I had planned to tell my husband over dinner, with the good candles lit.
At breakfast, Lawson had slid his usual quarterly forms across the table, and I had signed all three pages without reading them.
He always turned each page over the second I finished, and I had never once minded.
Now he did not look at me.
He sat down across from his brother and rubbed his tired eyes.
"My wife is pregnant, Rowan. Tell me what you think we should call it."
Rowan sprawled on the sofa and grinned.
"Call it Plan B," he said. "Cheap things last longer."
Marissa Keane laughed, one short breath through her nose.
She ran the Draper Foundation, and she had brought me ginger tea that very morning when I was sick.
Now she sat on the arm of Lawson's chair, close enough to touch his shoulder.
"Rowan, that's a horrible thing to say," she told him. "What kind of man jokes about his own child?"
The room went quiet except for the ringing in my ears.
"What does that mean?" I asked.
Lawson finally turned his head.
"On our wedding night I was with Marissa," he said. "Rowan went to the bridal suite and let you think he was me."
"Every night after that, it was him."
"The baby you're carrying is his."
The butler studied the carpet.
Two maids stared at their shoes.
Only Jonas Rhinelander, the head of Lawson's security, kept his eyes on me.
He stood by the door with his hands at his sides and did not move.
Nobody in that room was surprised.
I put my hand over my stomach.
"Why would you do that to me?"
Lawson frowned at the question.
"I promised Marissa I wouldn't touch another woman until I gave her a public wedding," he said. "Yours was only paper. Hers will be real."
"I'm your wife," I said. "I'm your legal wife."
"I know," he said. "That's the reason I couldn't go to you myself."
He said it patiently, as the most reasonable thing in the world.
"The Wyndham name is worth nothing now," he said. "If you had spent that night alone, every house on this street would have laughed at you."
"I protected you from that."
My hands had gone cold.
"So I'm supposed to thank you?"
"I would think so," Lawson said. He sounded honestly puzzled.
I turned to Rowan.
He lifted his glass to me.
"Don't give me that face, Annabel," he said. "It was dark. You're the one who couldn't tell us apart."
Marissa tilted her head.
"Rowan, she always seems so proper," she said. "Is she really so stiff in bed?"
Rowan laughed until he coughed.
"She's a lot sweeter at night," he said. "Better than the girls at the club, honestly."
I looked at Lawson.
I wanted him to say stop.
For half a second, I saw disgust cross his face.
Marissa saw it too, and her mouth curved.
Then she made herself look worried.
"Lawson, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked," she said. "She must be so hurt."
"Still, I'd think a wife would know her own husband," she added softly.
"Maybe she did," Rowan said. "Maybe she just didn't want me to stop."
I crossed the room and swung at his face.
Lawson caught my wrist before it landed.
His grip was hard and exact.
"That's enough," he said.
"He did this to me, and you're protecting him?"
"You asked to hear it," Lawson said.
Something in me went flat and quiet.
"I want a divorce," I said.
"I'm going to the police. I'll report all three of you for fraud and rape."
Lawson's face closed completely.
"Annabel, think about your sister," he said.
My arm went still in his hand.
"Her specialist, her medication, her private suite at St. Alder's," he said. "Who do you think pays for all of it?"
"Behave, and she lives. Make trouble, and her treatment stops tomorrow."
He let go of my wrist.
I looked at him and tried to find the man I had married.
My father had died. Our family's company had gone under. Poppy had been sick for six years.
Lawson Draper could have married anyone in New York, and he had honored an engagement our fathers made when we were children.
I had thought that was love.
It was only that I was easy to control.
So I told him what he wanted to hear.
"All right," I said. "I won't go to the police."
Lawson's shoulders eased a little.
"But I am not keeping this child," I said. "I'm ending it."
The room changed.
Lawson did not look angry.
He looked afraid, and he looked at Marissa first.
She stood up, crossed the carpet and laid her hand flat over mine on my stomach.
"Oh, Annabel," she said gently. "You can't get rid of something that's already mine."
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