Divorcing The CEO For My Secret Daughter

Out of sheer love for her billionaire husband, Easton Underwood, Chastity sacrificed her career and endured years of excruciating fertility treatments just to give him a child. Yet, as she lay on the delivery bed, literally bleeding to death in agonizing pain, the only thing the man she loved sent her was a cold, 50-50 financial split bill.

"The epidural is an unapproved out-of-pocket expense. Mr. Underwood insists on strictly adhering to the 50-50 marital financial split."

The assistant's voice was devoid of any human empathy.

Chastity clutched the sterile hospital bedsheets, trembling in agonizing pain. "I've been in labor for twenty-four hours... the doctor said I won't make it without the pain relief. But I... I don't have any money left."

"Call Easton. He can't be this heartless," the nurse whispered sympathetically.

The assistant didn't move an inch.

With no other choice, Chastity dragged her exhausted, shivering body off the bed and dropped to her knees on the freezing floor. With bloodstained fingers, she dialed her husband's number.

"Easton... the medical fees for the baby..."

"Everything goes strictly by our contract," Easton Underwood's icy baritone cut through the line.

Suddenly, a gush of scalding liquid tore through her body. Chastity looked down as thick, dark blood pooled onto the floor, rapidly staining her vision red.

"Easton, I'm hemorrhaging-"

Beep. Beep. Beep.

He hung up.

"Ah!"

Chastity gasped, her chest heaving as the phantom pain of that emergency C-section four years ago violently snapped her back to reality.

Her waterproof phone lit up in her palm. It was a video message from Switzerland. Elsie's sweet, pale face appeared on the screen, holding up a crayon drawing of a house with only two stick figures.

"Mommy," the little girl asked softly, "should I draw a daddy in our house?"

Chastity's heart ached. Easton didn't even know Elsie existed. When the doctors told him the premature baby was failing four years ago, he had simply left the hospital to attend a board meeting. For four years, Chastity had endured his coldness and worked herself to the bone to solely bear the crushing medical expenses for Elsie's congenital heart disease in a secret clinic.

Driven by the trauma of almost losing her own child, and to field-test the thermal imaging prototypes she secretly developed, Chastity spent her limited free time volunteering for an elite urban search-and-rescue team.

Right now, she was kneeling on the collapsed ruins of an abandoned warehouse by the Hudson River, braving the torrential rain. Her fingers steadily adjusted the dials of her handheld infrared scanner. On the monitor, cutting through layers of concrete and steel interference, a faint crimson life signal pulsed.

"Coordinates north fifteen degrees," Chastity spoke calmly into her tactical headset. "Viable respiratory trace confirmed. A child is trapped underneath. Dig here!"

As the rescue squad scrambled over the debris to start digging, Wyatt Tucker, the veteran team lead, approached Chastity, profound disgust written all over his face.

"You won't believe this, Chastity," Wyatt muttered, pointing toward the shadows outside the perimeter tape. "The kid wandered into this deathtrap because her mother was too busy getting intimately distracted in the backseat of an SUV. We found a discarded foil condom wrapper right outside their car door."

Chastity's amber eyes darkened with instant fury. Elsie had fought through countless life-and-death struggles just to breathe, and Chastity despised parents who neglected their children.

"That's absurd! Fooling around in a car while their child is missing-"

Chastity's words died in her throat.

A woman stumbled into the glaring floodlights.

"Kassie! My baby is in there!"

Chastity's face froze. She knew that woman.

Karis Estes. The widow of Nolan Jacobs-Easton's late best friend.

But Nolan had been dead for over six years, and Karis supposedly never remarried. What kind of man could make the haughty Karis so desperate that she would abandon her child for a quick hookup in a car?

Before Chastity could process it, the medics pulled a terrified little Kassie from the rubble.

Chastity stepped forward to help wrap the shivering child in a thermal blanket, but Karis lunged forward like a rabid dog.

"Don't touch my baby!" Karis shrieked.

Instead of showing gratitude, Karis slammed her shoulder hard into Chastity's chest. Karis's manicured nails dug violently into Chastity's forearm, ripping through the skin and leaving a bloody scratch. The look in Karis's eyes was not a mother's relief; it was the venomous, defensive panic of a woman caught doing something dirty.

"Watch it! She just saved your kid!" Wyatt shouted angrily.

Karis ignored him. Her face suddenly softened into a calculated, fragile mask of tears as she looked past Chastity.

"Easton..." Karis whimpered, her voice dripping with delicate vulnerability.

Chastity's heart violently skipped a beat. She turned around.

Easton Underwood strode through the rain. The towering, usually immaculate billionaire looked completely out of character. His bespoke tie was ripped loose, the top three buttons of his shirt were undone, and his collar was thoroughly rumpled.