The Butcher Fiancé, My Saving Angel novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Toast
At the Stockwell gala Kenneth toasts Suzette's pregnancy, and in his study she overhears why he wanted a child, records it, and messages his rival.
Three men dragged me out of my own engagement party and raped me for three days and nights.
When I crawled home, Preston did not even look at me.
He cancelled the wedding the same afternoon.
The papers had the story by dinner.
Eight days later he married my little cousin Lillian.
I watched the wedding photos from my bed, because my body would not let me stand.
The whole city laughed.
"Used goods," they said at charity lunches, loud enough for me to hear. "Who would touch her now?"
A woman I had known since childhood moved her chair away from mine at a funeral.
Another one asked the waiter to reseat her, "somewhere cleaner."
Nobody asked who had done it to me.
Nobody asked why the police never found them.
I stopped leaving the house.
Then Kenneth Stockwell, Preston's uncle, the most powerful man in the state, knocked on my door.
He put a ring in my hand and a wedding on every front page.
Eight hundred guests, a cathedral, a ten-million-dollar night, and the laughing stopped overnight.
The same women who had moved their chairs now sent me flowers.
I cried in his arms and thought, he is the only decent man alive.
He never pushed me, never raised his voice, never let me carry a bag.
I loved him for five years.
Three months ago, I finally got pregnant.
Tonight he stood up at the Stockwell charity gala and toasted my belly in front of three hundred people.
The room clapped until the chandeliers shook.
He kissed my forehead in front of all of them and said into the microphone, "My wife is the bravest woman in this room."
The women who had moved their chairs stood up to applaud.
I looked at every one of their faces, and I memorized them.
I could not stop smiling.
Lillian squeezed my hand and cried happy tears.
Preston raised his glass at me with a smirk.
"To my uncle's little miracle," he said.
Nobody laughed, and he drank alone.
Lillian's boy fell asleep on the sofa beside me, one shoe off, a tiny bow tie crooked under his chin.
Kenneth scooped him up before anyone asked and checked his watch for the medicine time.
He knew the dose without being told.
Preston did not look up from his phone.
I thought, that is why I married a good man.
At nine I climbed to the family wing with my ultrasound, to leave it on Kenneth's desk like a love letter.
His study door was open an inch.
"Sir, that night was your best work," his assistant said. "Paying those animals to wreck Suzette was the only way Lillian got Preston without a scandal."
I froze with my hand on the wall.
Kenneth laughed, low and pleased.
"Preston and Lillian belonged together. Suzette was the obstacle with a signed contract. I removed it."
My hand shook so badly I almost dropped my phone.
I hit record.
"You already own her," the assistant said. "Why put a baby inside her?"
Kenneth's voice went soft.
"Lillian's boy is dying. He needs cord blood from a perfect match."
"Lillian can't carry another child. Suzette is her blood cousin. Her baby is the match."
"And if it fails?"
"Then she tries again. And again. I only care that Lillian never has to cry."
They shared a warm little laugh.
The floor tilted under my shoes.
I slid down the wall outside the door and put my fist against my mouth so they would not hear me breathe.
The man who saved me had paid for everything I needed saving from.
Five years of his hand under my elbow.
Five years of thanking him.
The baby I loved was a spare part for his favorite's son.
I tore the ultrasound in half and let the pieces fall on the carpet.
Then I opened a message to the one man Kenneth feared.
*I have a deal worth billions. Do you want it?*
Behind the door, the assistant was still laughing.
"Tell her kids are your dream. Women like her swallow anything that sounds like love."
"She already has," Kenneth said.
I stopped the recording at forty seconds.
Downstairs, three hundred people were still applauding him.
I wiped my face on my wrist, and I walked down those stairs with my chin up and my husband's baby in my belly.
I kissed his cheek when he found me.
I let him put his hand under my elbow.
My phone buzzed against my ribs before the band started again.
*Mrs. Stockwell, this is Quincy Crane. I have waited five years for someone inside that house to write to me. Midnight. Come alone.*
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