Delivering His Bastard: The CEO's Ultimate Ruin

When Julian brought his seventh pregnant mistress to my hospital for me to deliver her baby, his friends placed bets on exactly which second I would break down. But they waited.

Right up until the sharp cry of a newborn pierced the delivery room doors, they didn't catch a single hysterical scream from me. "Bro, this is number seven.

You sure she's not going to freeze you out for real this time?" Julian didn't even blink. "She can't have kids, and I have an empire to run.

I was always going to need an heir from someone else.

Might as well pump out a few early so she gets used to it." His words hung in the sterile air as I pushed open the double doors, a swaddled infant resting against my chest.

I delivered the standard clinical line. "Congratulations. Seven pounds, six ounces. Mother and son are perfectly healthy." Julian smiled, taking the baby from my arms.

With his free hand, he slid a divorce agreement across the counter toward me. "Sign it. It's just a show to humor the girl.

She refuses to give me a second kid unless I divorce you first. Once she pops out number two, we'll have eight kids total.

Nobody will ever dare say you aren't fit to be my wife." I had played this exact game with Julian seven times. This time, I picked up the pen.

The tip scratched against the paper as I signed my name in one fluid, irreversible motion. Then, I walked out and accepted another man's marriage proposal.

Julian must have forgotten one crucial medical detail. I wasn't infertile. Our genetics were simply incompatible. If I wanted a baby, all I had to do was swap out the man.

Why the hell did he think I would spend the rest of my life raising his bastards just to keep his last name?

Chapter 1 I slid the signed agreement back across the counter just as the nurses wheeled Aria out of the delivery room. Julian shoved past me, desperate to reach her.

His shoulder slammed hard into mine. The impact sent a vicious spike of pain through my unhealed abdomen. The blood instantly drained from my face. Nobody looked my way.

The entire hallway swarmed around Aria, drowning her in concerned whispers.

I braced my hand against the cold plaster wall, dragging my feet one agonizing step at a time back to my office. My gaze landed on the desk.

The medical report sat right where I left it. [Diagnosis: Threatened miscarriage.] A sharp stinging flared in my eyes.

Three days before Julian's seventh bastard took his first breath, my body rejected my pregnancy again. It was the third baby I had lost.

While I was writhing on the operating table, with a nurse frantically searching the empty waiting room for a family member to sign my critical condition waiver, Julian was busy.

He was sitting in the VIP box at the Grand Theater—the exact spot where he first asked me out—watching an opera with his heavily pregnant mistress.

And three days postop, at three in the morning, he hauled me out of my own hospital bed. All so I could deliver his new girl's baby.

He dragged me down the sterile corridor by my wrist. His grip bruised the bone, his chest heaving. He stopped outside the delivery room. "Eleanor, Aria is just a kid.

She's terrified. You're the only doctor I trust." I didn't scream. I didn't throw my pager at his head or curse his name until my throat bled, the way I had the first six times.

I didn't threaten to rip off my white coat and throw my medical license in the trash just to avoid stepping foot in that room. I just turned around. I scrubbed in.

I wheeled my husband's mistress into the delivery room, moving with the cold, mechanical precision of a stranger. Ten years with Julian taught me to read his microexpressions.

The way his hand hovered over hers—he cared about this one. I reached across my desk. My fingertips grazed the glass of the picture frame.

It was a photo of the two of us from college. Julian had a bruise on his jaw and a cast on his left arm, his good arm wrapped tight around my waist.

He was grinning like he owned the world. My fingers trembled. I slid the back off the frame and pulled the photo out. Black ink slashed across the back of the glossy paper.

Chapter 2 [Julian promises to protect Eleanor forever.] On my eighteenth birthday, my gambling addict father sold me to the redlight district to clear a debt.

To save me, Julian took a brutal beating. They shattered his arm so badly he could never play basketball again.

Yet, sitting in that sterile hospital bed with a heavy cast, he just grinned and pulled me in for a birthday photo. "Don't be scared," he had told me. "I've got you from now on." My thumb brushed over his smiling face in the photograph. "You saved my life once, Julian," I murmured to the empty room. "I paid you back with three of my own babies.

We're even." I tore the photo down the middle, then again, and dropped the pieces into the trash. A heavy knock echoed. Julian pushed the door open.

His eyes immediately flicked to the empty frame on my desk. "Where's our picture?" He didn't wait for an answer.

He shoved his phone screen in my face, his eyes bright with energy. "Eleanor, which of these names do you think is best for the baby?" My eyes locked onto the first name on the list.

My thumb froze over the screen. The air turned to concrete. It was the exact name he had spent nights poring over baby books to choose for our first child.

The name currently engraved on a small memorial stone at the local cemetery. He actually forgot the name of our first baby. I stared hard at his face.

At the upward curve of his mouth. At the soft, fatherly warmth crinkling the corners of his eyes. He was practically vibrating with the joy of new fatherhood. Yes.

He had completely wiped our baby from his memory. A little boy who existed in this world for exactly thirtyseven days.

A boy born with a fatal genetic defect, too weak to survive his first winter. "Eleanor?" My silence made his smile drop.

His jaw tightened, the lines of his face hardening. "I thought you were over this. I've explained it a million times. A man in my position needs an heir.

If you really loved me, you'd understand—" I didn't let him finish. "This one." I tapped the screen. Julian blinked, caught off guard.

He opened his mouth, but a commotion behind him cut him off.

His assistant hovered awkwardly in the doorway. "Sir, Aria is asking for you." Julian snatched the phone back. "I only changed my profile picture to keep Aria happy.

Don't read into it. I'll change it back later." He spun on his heel and walked out. I watched his back until he disappeared down the hall. Then, I pulled out my own phone.

I deleted the matching profile picture we had used for ten years. I unpinned his contact. He had no idea my lawyer had already filed the divorce papers with the court.

Thirty days until it was finalized. There was no later. After handing my shift notes to the oncall doctor, I dragged myself back to my own recovery room.

A fresh bouquet of lisianthus sat on my bedside table. The new nurse smiled as she checked my vitals. "Your husband is so romantic.

Fresh flowers every single day." I looked at her unfamiliar face and forced a polite smile. "You must be new here." Every veteran staff member in this hospital knew I personally delivered my husband's mistresses' babies.

I was the biggest walking joke in the cafeteria. Romantic? And the husband she saw wasn't even Julian. It was his assistant. Julian was all about optics.

Even while his newest girl was pushing out his kid, he remembered to have his staff wire flowers to the legal wife.

Before the nurse could say another word, I picked up the vase and shoved it toward her. "Throw them out. I'm allergic to pollen." Her smile vanished.

She grabbed the vase and scrambled out of the room. My phone buzzed on the bedsheets. A text from Julian. [Did you get the flowers?

I picked them out just for you.] Chapter 3 My thumb hovered over the screen. A memory flashed uninvited—his proposal.

The venue had been drowning in flowers, but he had painstakingly plucked the pollenheavy stamens from every single bloom so I wouldn't sneeze.

When he slid the ring onto my finger, his hands were covered in tiny, raw cuts from the stems. I had cried.

He just flashed that cocky grin. "Told you I'd give you a proposal you'd never forget. I don't bluff." I had seen Julian when he was desperately in love with me.

That made the distance between us stark. In the past, I would have fought it. I clung to him, watching him spawn bastard after bastard, too pathetic to let go. Now?

The exhaustion settled deep in my bones. He could breed an entire football team with other women for all I cared. It wasn't my problem anymore. I locked my phone. I didn't reply.

Sleep actually came, though it was heavy with nightmares. When I opened my eyes in the late afternoon, Julian was sitting next to my hospital bed. He held my phone in his hand.

His brow furrowed. "Since when did you change your passcode?" I ignored the question. "Why are you here?" The cloying scent of baby formula and breast milk clung to his designer shirt.

My stomach churned, and I turned my face to the wall. He caught the flinch. A muscle ticked in his jaw. "You didn't text me back." He dropped his gaze, shifting his weight.

I stared at him. Years ago, we made a rule: no matter what, we texted back instantly. I couldn't pinpoint the exact day our chat history turned into my own personal echo chamber.

The last time he actually replied to me was a month ago, and he used his burner phone to do it. "I was asleep," I lied flatly. "Didn't see it." He shifted in his seat.

He looked like he wanted to say something else, hesitating before finally dropping the bomb. "Aria wants a wedding." He leaned forward. "Eleanor… can you give her the wedding you planned?" The words hung in the sterile air.

We had been married for seven years. Thanks to his family's vehement disapproval, we never had a ceremony. He promised me we'd do it big for our seventh anniversary.

I spent months obsessing over every detail. The anniversary came and went. He delayed it. Over and over again. Strike one: He claimed he had an emergency business trip.

In reality, he was escorting his very first mistress to her prenatal ultrasound. That was exactly three months after we buried our baby.

Three months after the geneticist told us our DNA was incompatible. That was how long it took for Julian to stray.

Strike two: Three of his pregnant flings crashed the rescheduled venue, turning me into the laughingstock of our entire social circle.

Strike three: I unexpectedly got pregnant with our second child. The night before the third attempt at a wedding, he forced me to deliver another one of his bastard babies.

By the time I walked out of those operating doors, blood was pooling in my own scrubs. After that, the pregnant women just kept coming.

Screaming matches replaced our dinner conversations. Eventually, we both just stopped bringing up the wedding. I waited ten years for a wedding I never got.

Aria snapped her fingers and claimed it in a day. It made every tear I shed, every compromise I swallowed, look like an absolute joke.

I blinked hard, forcing the burn back down my throat. I pulled my lips into a smile. "Sure." Julian froze. He clearly expected a fight.

He reached out, his hand wrapping warmly around mine. "I know this isn't fair to you, Eleanor. But I swear, I'll give you a flawless wedding later.

Just give me time." I smoothly slipped my hand out from under his. "I'm tired." I closed my eyes, cutting him out of my sight, and didn't say another word.

Chapter 4 Maybe out of guilt, his usual scowl was absent. He leaned over and tucked the edges of the blanket around my shoulders. "Get some sleep.

I'm staying right here with you tonight." I didn't say a word. Less than five minutes later, a sharp ringtone shattered the silence.

Julian shot up from the chair without a second of hesitation. "Aria," he answered softly. The rush of air from his sudden movement brushed my face.

I opened my eyes just in time to watch his back disappear through the door. I looked down at my glowing phone screen.

A barrage of texts from Aria lit up the notifications. [Since you signed the papers, pack your trash and get out. Stop squatting in my house.] [Are you that pathetic?

Playing the sick, washedup wife to seduce another woman's man?] [Watch me.

One phone call and Julian comes running right back to me like a dog.] I stared at the empty doorway and let out a dry laugh. He definitely wasn't coming back tonight.

Aria updated her Instagram feed. In the photo, Julian was down on one knee, massaging her swollen arches. Her caption dripped with smugness. [Can't bend over anymore.

Had to make the big CEO do the heavy lifting.] She made sure to tag me.

In the comments, Julian's frat brothers and business partners were calling her sisterinlaw with sickening sweetness. I recognized every single handle liking the post.

Julian had already integrated her into his entire inner circle. I was the only one completely walled off. In the past, I would have torn the hospital room apart. Now?

I just doubletapped the photo and locked my screen. I didn't care about the man anymore. Why would I give a damn whose feet he lowered himself to rub?

The next morning, the door slammed open. Aria marched into my room and whipped a copy of the divorce agreement right at my face.

The sharp edge of the paper scraped my cheek. "Who the hell gave you the right to take half his assets?" she demanded. "Julian promised me everything goes to my son!

You aren't touching a single cent of my baby's money!" I calmly peeled the paper off the bedsheets. "Prepare to be disappointed." I met her furious glare. "The penthouse you're living in?

That's under my name too. I forgot to text you back last night. You're the one who needs to pack her trash." Aria's face flushed a violent red.

She jammed her manicured finger an inch from my nose. "You bitch!" she spat. "You're a barren freak!" "A cursed jinx who killed her own three babies! Why should you get his money?

You're so greedy, no wonder karma took it out on your kids!" I swung my arm and delivered a vicious crack across Aria's jaw.

But at the exact same second, a brutal backhand slammed into my cheek. The metallic taste of blood flooded my mouth. Julian pulled Aria against his chest.

His eyes were bloodshot. "Who gave you permission to touch her?" Then his gaze dropped to the dark red blood dripping from my split lip. His grip on Aria loosened.

He took a halfstep toward me, his pupils blown wide. "Eleanor… are you okay? I didn't mean to—" Before he could close the distance, Aria burst into sobs.

She dug her fingers into Julian's arm, shrinking against him. "Julian, I just came to say thank you to Eleanor for delivering our baby!" Tears streamed down her face.

She covered her stinging cheek, shrinking into his shadow. "I didn't know she was going to pull out the divorce papers and call me a homewrecker!

She called me a shameless slut!" She buried her face in his shoulder. "I told her we were truly in love, and she hit me!

She told me to get out of her house!" I watched the muscles in Julian's jaw tighten. His face darkened like a storm front. Aria caught the shift.

She tucked her face into his coat, leaving just enough room to shoot me a slow, calculated smirk. Chapter 5 Julian didn't hesitate.

He seized my arm and yanked me right off the mattress. "Eleanor. Apologize to Aria." I hit the cold linoleum floor.

I looked up at him and let out a dry laugh. "Which part wasn't a fact? Why the hell should I apologize?" I tilted my head. "Oh, wait. She's right about one thing.

She doesn't even rank as the other woman. She's mistress number seven." "You—" Aria collapsed against Julian's chest, her shoulders shaking.

I scrambled to my feet, shot Julian a deadpan look, and turned on my heel to walk out.

Aria's cries pitched higher. "If Eleanor won't apologize, what if people call our baby a bastard? I'd rather die!" A vice grip clamped down on my wrist, jerking me backward.

Julian stared at me like I was something scraped off the bottom of his shoe. "Apologize." He didn't even blink as he dropped the ultimate threat. "Don't forget your grandmother is rotting in the ICU on my dime." "She's only breathing because of my medical connections." He pulled out his phone and tapped his assistant's number. "Halt the supply of her targeted therapy drug." The air punched right out of my lungs.

My chest seized. He knew my grandmother was the only family I had left in this world. And he was weaponizing her life just to appease Aria.

Julian checked his Rolex. "If I recall correctly, without those meds, her condition rapidly deteriorates in three days." Lead weights sank into my boots.

I turned around, the movement agonizingly slow. A hot burn pooled in my eyes. I ground my teeth together. "I'm sorry.

I misspoke." Aria shrank against Julian's side. "She doesn't look sorry. Is that a real apology?

She hit me and gets away with it?" "My face still burns." A massive bodyguard appeared from the corridor. A heavy combat boot slammed into the back of my calves.

My knees crashed onto the hard floor. Cold sweat beaded along my hairline. Julian towered over me, his gaze flat and empty. "Kneel and apologize. A hundred slaps to your own face.

You can get up whenever Aria feels better." I froze. He hit dial on his phone and put it on speaker. My grandmother's frail voice filtered through the line. "Julian, dear?

Is Eleanor there?" "No!" I lunged forward, snatching the phone from his grip and smashing the end call button. "Don't tell her. Her heart can't take it. I'll do it.

I'll apologize." So I knelt right there in the open doorway. I raised my hand. Smack. I brought it across my own cheek. Smack.

Over and over. "I'm sorry." Nurses and patients crowded the hallway, buzzing with gossip as they watched the free show. I lost count of the hits.

The flesh on my face swelled tight and throbbed with a sickening heat. Aria covered her mouth, faking a yawn. "Julian, I'm tired." Julian immediately swept her up into his arms.

As he carried her past me, he dropped his final sentence like ice. "Consider this a lesson. Stop targeting Aria." I slumped forward, my palms flat against the cold tiles.

I didn't know how much time passed. Suddenly, a warm, foulsmelling liquid splashed down my scrubs. Piss. Someone dumped a bedpan over me. [That's the quack doctor! Zero ethics!

She slapped a woman who just gave birth three days ago!] [Oh, she's the CEO's wife! The one whose husband knocked up seven different women!] [Who knew she was this evil?

She's literally on the news right now.] My head snapped up. The blare of a newscast echoed from the TV inside a nearby patient room. I scrambled up.

My boots skidded on the wet floor. I bolted down the hall. I slammed into my grandmother's ICU room. Chaos. Doctors swarmed her bed.

The heart monitor flatlined into a piercing, continuous whine.

And mounted on the wall above her head, the TV blasted a crystalclear video of me kneeling in the hallway, slapping my own swollen face. My grandmother's eyes locked onto mine.

They went wide. Chapter 6 Her frail, skeletal fingers clamped down on my hand with a death grip. "Eleanor… leave him.

I can't be your burden anymore." Her eyes widened, locking onto the ceiling. The piercing whine of the heart monitor flattened into a single, continuous tone. She stopped breathing.

I sat there on the edge of the mattress. I held her stiffening body against my chest, not moving a single muscle. The warmth slowly drained from her skin.

A tall shadow fell over the bed. "I'm sorry. I'm late." My voice grated like crushed glass. "My grandmother is dead. I'm going to ruin their fucking lives." I tilted my head back.

I looked up at the man, a bloodshot smile stretching across my face. "You'll help me, won't you?" Across town, Julian quietly closed the bedroom door after coaxing Aria to sleep.

A jagged, relentless current of anxiety gnawed at the lining of his stomach.

He pulled out his phone and hit his assistant's speed dial. "How is she?" "Sir, it's bad!" Panic spiked the assistant's voice. "Eleanor dumped all her shares in the company at rockbottom prices.

The stock is in freefall—" Julian wasn't listening. He was walking through the hospital lobby.

His eyes locked onto the digital cremation ledger scrolling across the main bulletin board. [Eleanor's Grandmother.] The air hitched in his throat. His vocal cords paralyzed.

He hung up the phone and staggered toward the VIP elevators, his heavy boots scuffing violently against the tiles. Ten years. He knew exactly what that old woman meant to her.

Eleanor's gamblingaddicted father had beaten her mother to death. He did ten years in prison and never looked back. Her grandmother was the only one who stayed.

The old woman had scrubbed floors well into her seventies just to keep food on the table for Eleanor. She was Eleanor's sole anchor in this world.

That was exactly why Julian had weaponized her medical care to force an apology for Aria. His pulse hammered against his eardrums in a sickening, erratic rhythm. It was a mistake.

He forced the thought through his panicking brain. I just wanted to scare her. I didn't actually pull the targeted therapy meds. She's fine. The elevator doors chimed open.

Julian collided with the head ICU doctor. He grabbed the older man by the lapels of his white coat. "The old lady. Where is she?

She's fine, right?" The doctor stared at him in sheer disbelief. "She passed away. Dr. Eleanor was right here in the room.

You didn't know?" He pried Julian's whiteknuckled grip off his coat. "The research institute called. They ordered an immediate halt on her targeted therapy supply.

We had to pull the IV." "But that's not what killed her. She suffered a massive, fatal shock. We couldn't resuscitate her.

Her heart just gave out from the stress." The doctor shot Julian a look of pure, unadulterated disgust. "Everyone in this hospital knows what you put Dr. Eleanor through.

She begged every single nurse on this floor to keep the gossip away from her grandmother." "But yesterday… somehow, that video of Dr.

Eleanor slapping herself was broadcast on the television in her room…" The doctor let the sentence hang in the sterile air, shaking his head. Julian's pupils dilated.

A cold sweat broke across his neck. "What do you mean? What video?" But the doctor just brushed past him, citing a patient emergency, eager to escape the proximity of a monster.

Julian dragged his feet down the corridor, moving like a man underwater. He stopped at the doorway of the ICU room. It was completely stripped. The bed was empty.

The machines were powered down. The days of him and Eleanor sitting by that bed, peeling apples and making the old woman laugh—they were eradicated.

A crushing weight caved in his chest. He gripped the doorframe, his knuckles turning white. His hands shook as he ripped his phone from his pocket.

He hit Eleanor's contact. [The number you have reached is out of service.] He switched to his messaging app. Her matching profile picture was gone, replaced by a default gray icon.

He typed frantically. [Message failed to send.] A bright red exclamation mark mocked him from the screen.

A nurse brushed past him, shoving a crisp piece of paper against his chest. "Mr. Julian, perfect timing. Dr. Eleanor forgot to take the death certificate yesterday.

Give this to her." Julian stared down at the official stamp. The thin sheet of paper rustled loudly in his violently trembling hands.

Chapter 7 His thumb dragged over the crisp black ink, tracing the letters of her grandmother's name on the death certificate again and again.

He hit his assistant's speed dial for the second time. The line connected instantly. "Sir! Thank god you called back.

The company—" "Find Eleanor!" Julian cut him off. "But the board of directors is—" "I said find Eleanor." Julian's voice dropped to a flat, dead octave. "Right now.

Find her location and text me the exact address." He hung up before the assistant could formulate another excuse.

He leaned against the cold hospital wall, dragging a hand hard down his face. He forced the erratic spike in his pulse to level out. Something wasn't adding up.

He pushed off the wall and marched straight to the hospital's security office. He bypassed the guard and demanded the footage from the VIP recovery hallway.

When the video played, he watched the blackandwhite feed. He listened to the crystalclear audio of Aria backing Eleanor into a corner, taunting her.

The bones in Julian's knuckles popped. He gripped the edge of the metal desk until his joints turned white. He wasn't stupid. He had always known Aria was a spoiled brat.

He knew Eleanor wouldn't have thrown a slap without being pushed to the absolute edge. But Aria had just given birth to his son.

He had taken the path of least resistance, forcing his wife to her knees just to shut down the screaming match. He never calculated that his lesson would end in a body bag.

Julian kicked his chair back. It clattered violently against the tile. He drove straight to the luxury postpartum retreat.

He stopped outside the heavy double doors of Aria's VIP suite. He didn't have to turn the handle.

Aria's shrill, giddy laughter bled right through the wood. "That washedup hag is a joke," she sneered. "Did she really think I'm as dumb as the six bitches before me?

I know exactly how to play her. She has no idea I paid someone to record her kneeling and slapping herself like a dog.

I leaked it everywhere." "I had a guy hack the hospital's intranet! Every single TV screen in that dump was stuck on a loop of her pathetic apology!

Oh, and I dug up all those viral videos mocking her for taking in his bastard kids and blasted those too!

I'm going to make sure she can never show her face in that hospital again!" "Let everyone see her for what she is—a barren freak! A shameless squatter!

If she loves that old bat so much, I figured the old bat should see exactly what kind of trash her granddaughter is!

Those targeted therapy pills cost tens of thousands!" "They're divorced!

Why the hell should my Julian pay for that rotting corpse?" "She better pack her trash and get the hell out of the city. I'm sick of looking at her. Just wait, girls.

Once I'm officially Mrs. CEO, I'll hook you all up with trustfund babies." A flurry of gasps and cheers echoed from her friends. "Aria, you're a literal genius!

With the hag out of the picture, Julian is definitely putting a ring on it, right?" "Duh.

Julian is obsessed with me." Aria's voice dripped with smugness. "Didn't you see my Instagram? The man was literally massaging my feet!" "He's already planning our wedding!

He's begging me for baby number two! Who the hell does Eleanor think she is, getting in my way? She forced my hand!" The second her words dropped, the heavy oak door swung inward.

Julian stepped into the room. The oxygen instantly vanished. The girls froze, their smiles stiffening into masks of terror as they took in the tall, imposing figure in the doorway.

His face was a sheet of glacial ice