Jilted Wife Returns As A Billionaire Heiress novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Four Beds
Elsie gives birth to twins alone, is wheeled into a four-bed ward instead of the suite her ex promised, and calls the number she has not dialed in six years; Darius answers on the first ring.
Elsie Farragut's twins were born on a Thursday night, in a delivery room full of strangers.
The boy cried first. The girl answered him a moment later, louder.
The midwife laid both of them on Elsie's chest, and Elsie counted fingers because she could not think of anything else to do.
Ten on one. Ten on the other.
"A boy and a girl," the midwife said. "Both perfect, Elsie. You did that on your own."
Elsie nodded. She was crying too hard to tell the woman that she knew.
Out in the corridor, a nurse called through the open doors, "Family for Elsie Farragut? Is anyone here for Elsie Farragut?"
Nobody answered.
The nurse called twice more, and the hallway stayed quiet.
Elsie turned her face into the babies' hair so the midwife would not see it.
Before they wheeled her in, she had phoned Trent from the triage chair.
He was her ex-husband and the father of both children, and the divorce papers had said so in plain type.
He had not picked up.
Her phone was on the tray beside the bed. She reached for it with the arm that was not full of baby.
There were three texts from Imogen, sent an hour apart.
"Stuck at O'Hare, my flight is delayed and I'm losing my mind. I'm so sorry, love."
"I booked you the private suite on the top floor months ago. They'll move you as soon as you're out of delivery. Don't pay for anything."
"I called Trent myself. He's on his way. Breathe. I've got you."
Elsie read them twice and felt her shoulders loosen.
Imogen Crane was the only person in Chicago who knew whose daughter Elsie was.
Six years ago Elsie had told her the whole thing over cheap wine, the family name and the money and the fight that ended it.
Imogen had kept every word of it secret ever since.
That was why Elsie trusted her more than she had ever trusted her own husband.
A fourth text came in while she was looking.
"And please don't call your father, okay? Not like this. They don't deserve to see you like this."
Elsie typed back: "I won't. Thank you."
Two orderlies came for her at last. The babies rode in a clear plastic cart beside the bed, side by side under a blue blanket.
She waited for the elevator to take her up to the top floor.
It went down instead, and then along a corridor that smelled of floor cleaner, and the orderly turned the bed into a room with four beds and four curtains.
Three women were already lying in it.
Each of them had somebody. A husband with a thermos, a mother with a cardigan folded over her arm, a father holding a newborn and talking to it in a whisper.
Flowers stood on every windowsill but hers.
"Excuse me," Elsie said to the orderly. "This isn't right. I'm booked for the private suite on the top floor."
He checked the clipboard at the foot of her bed and shook his head.
"Says general ward, ma'am. Bed four."
"Then check again. The reservation is under Rafferty or Crane."
He stepped out and came back with a woman in a charge nurse's badge, who looked at a tablet for a long while.
"There's no reservation under either name," the charge nurse said. "And there's no deposit on file. The suite is at three thousand a night, and we need it paid before we admit."
"My husband was handling it."
"Your ex-husband," the nurse said, reading the chart. "I'm sorry. I can't move you without a card."
She went away, and the curtain swung shut behind her.
On the other side of it, one of the fathers laughed softly at something his wife had said.
Elsie dialed Trent again.
He picked up on the fourth ring. She could hear a restaurant behind him, cutlery and a piano and a woman asking for the check.
"Elsie. It's late. What?"
"I had the babies. A boy and a girl. They're healthy."
"Good," he said. "That's good. I'm glad it went fine."
"You promised me the suite. In the divorce, you promised."
"I promised a lot of things in that lawyer's office."
He said it lightly, and she heard him chewing.
"Trent, I'm in a ward with three other women and no one is here. Nobody came."
"Take the ward. People do it every day. I'll come see them when they're cleaner."
"You owe me four hundred and ten thousand dollars," she said. "You signed a note."
"Don't make a scene," he said. "You made your choice when you kept them."
Then he hung up.
She held the phone against her ear after the line went dead.
The boy shifted on her arm, and the girl began to cry again, thin and furious.
Elsie looked at her two children, and she did not call Trent a third time.
She did not call Imogen, either, because Imogen was in an airport, and Imogen had already said everything she could.
She had one number left in her head, and she had not dialed it in six years.
So she called home.
It was not her father's number. It belonged to the man who ran her father's company.
It rang once.
"Elsie?" Darius Ames said.
He did not ask who it was. His voice was rough, and he sounded wide awake.
"I need help," she said. "I'm at Lakeshore Memorial. I had twins."
There was a silence on the line, and then the sound of a door opening fast.
"Don't sign anything they put in front of you," Darius said. "I'm coming up."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend