I was the official, legal wife of Julian Vance, the undisputed boss of the city's criminal underworld. Normally, he treated me like royalty. He’d massage my feet, pamper me like a queen, and whisper that he wanted me to give him ten babies. But when my face was smashed in, bleeding like a torn punching bag from a brutal beating, and my amniotic fluid mixed with my blood, dripping onto the gym floor... He didn't recognize me. He turned his head and spoke softly to the woman standing next to him, Vanessa. "Using a pregnant woman as a live punching bag. Interesting. Hit her as hard as you want, baby. I've got your back." That was the moment I realized my husband had a mistress. As soon as the words left his mouth, he grabbed a pair of boxing gloves and threw a vicious punch directly into my swollen, pregnant belly. His words were freezing cold, dripping with disgust: "Don't worry. When you're dead, we'll notify your husband to come pick up your corpse!" Through my blurred, blood-filled vision, I stared dead at the man in front of me. He looked so familiar, yet like a complete stranger. Just last night, this man in his tailored suit had been holding my feet, kissing me endlessly, whispering sickeningly sweet "I love yous" into my ear. Today, he was brutally beating me to death. It hurt! My arms, strung up by ropes, felt like they were being torn from their sockets. Blood streamed down my face, stinging my eyes. The pain was so agonizing I could only grit my teeth. I couldn't even force a scream out of my throat. "This pregnant woman looks like she's about to pop, and she's getting beaten half to death! Serves her right for crossing Mrs. Vance..." "Who brought her in? Where's her husband?" The guys hanging around the gym shook their heads, their eyes full of a helpless, sick pity. None of them knew that the man who was currently trying to beat me to death with boxing gloves... Was my husband. I had only come here to bring Julian his signet ring, but I accidentally stumbled into a private anniversary party he was throwing for his mistress. The moment I saw Julian, I thought he would definitely recognize me. I thought he would save me from Vanessa's clutches. But he just glanced at me indifferently and turned away. She just casually remarked, "I ate too much for lunch, need to burn some calories. Her belly is so huge, she’d make a great punching bag, don't you think?" And so, without giving me a second glance, he grabbed the gloves, stood beside her, and landed blow after blow on my body. The heavy, metallic stench of blood pooling beneath me seemed to act like adrenaline for them. They hit me harder, a sick, bloodthirsty gleam in their eyes. I hung suspended in the air, half-dead, swaying back and forth like a broken ragdoll. Beneath me, a pool of crimson blood was spreading rapidly. Gritting my teeth, I used every ounce of strength left in my shattered body to force out a raspy scream: "Julian... Vance!" His eyes hardened, and he stopped mid-punch. My heart leapt. I thought he had finally recognized me. A wave of overwhelming, bitter relief surged in my chest. But the next second, he raised his leg and delivered a brutal kick to my stomach, spitting out in pure disgust: "You're half-dead and you're still trying to seduce me! You are absolutely disgusting! Beat her!" Countless punches and kicks rained down on me, mixed with his cruel orders. My body felt like it had been run over by an eighteen-wheeler a thousand times. The vicious, demonic look on his face made me shudder uncontrollably. I was supposed to be the treasure he held carefully in the palm of his hand. The baby in my stomach was the child he had prayed for day and night. I had stood by his side for five years, watching him rise from a low-level street thug to the man he was today. Legally and publicly, we were husband and wife. How did I suddenly become a random woman trying to seduce him? Why was he trying to beat me to death? The tearing agony radiating from my lower body felt like it was ripping me in half. I watched Julian and Vanessa walk away, laughing intimately. My breathing slowed, and the world faded into darkness. The guys running the gym were terrified of a murder investigation bringing cops sniffing around, so they anonymously called an ambulance for me. While we waited, they kept asking me: Who is your husband? I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. The man who just walked out holding Vanessa's hand... that was him. This morning, right before he left the penthouse, Julian told me he had a major contract to sign at an exclusive country club. He had softened his expression, kissed the corner of my mouth, and promised he’d be home early for dinner. He had business dinners like this all the time. I never gave it a second thought. When I turned around and realized he had forgotten his signet ring on the nightstand, I frantically rushed out to bring it to him. When my car pulled up to the gym, I thought it was strange. But I was in a hurry to give him the ring, so I didn't overthink it. I rushed inside, only to be grabbed by a woman named Vanessa. Without a single word of explanation, she had her men string me up by my wrists. I struggled violently, screaming at the top of my lungs that I was Julian Vance's wife. But Vanessa and the thugs behind her just laughed mockingly. "Julian Vance's official wife is named Clara. His second wife is Mrs. Vance, who is currently standing right in front of you." "Who the hell do you think you are? Don't tell me you're the official wife!" "Just another delusional psycho obsessed with my husband. Since you love him so much, let's have him personally send you to hell, shall we?" Vanessa grabbed my chin, her smile dripping with malice. As soon as she finished speaking, the entire room erupted in mocking laughter. It was only then that I realized... every single night Julian claimed he was out "signing contracts"... He was actually in bed, passionately entangled with this mistress, Vanessa. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't accept that the husband who loved me so deeply was nothing but an illusion. He had spent millions renting out the city's skyline for a massive fireworks display just to make me smile. Last year for my birthday, he bought me a private island, telling me it was just a "toy" for me to play with. This year, to celebrate my pregnancy, he bought two commercial high-rises overnight, telling me the rent would be "pocket money" for our child. He had even unhesitatingly donated his own kidney to me after a horrific car crash. All the evidence of his profound love was right there. How could he possibly be screwing around behind my back? I gritted my teeth, desperately shaking my head. But my absolute certainty crumbled into dust the moment I saw him intimately wrap his arm around Vanessa's slender waist. "Hubby, I want to use this pregnant cow as a human punching bag to practice on." "Of course, whatever you want, baby. As long as you're happy!" Julian affectionately stroked her hair, his eyes shining like a galaxy of stars just for her. Through my sweat-and-blood-soaked bangs, the blood in my veins turned to ice, inch by agonizing inch. Vanessa wasn't lying. She really was Julian Vance's "wife." Then, Julian put on the boxing gloves. Even then, I held onto a pathetic, flickering hope that he would recognize me. If he just looked closely at my face, he would realize the punching bag he was destroying was the love of his life. But his eyes were entirely focused on Vanessa. I was beaten down, punch after punch, bleeding profusely, every breath tearing at my ribs. Yet, my mind kept flashing back to the image of him pressing his ear against my pregnant belly, listening to the baby's heartbeat. "Wifey, I hope it's a girl. If she looks just like you, I'll make sure she's the most spoiled little princess in the world..." Only now did I realize that his "spoiled princess" was just another lie. My consciousness faded. Every inch of my body screamed in agony. I felt like I was floating on a ship adrift in a violent storm. A frantic voice shouted in my ear: "Ma'am, hold on! The baby still has a heartbeat!" Hearing that last sentence, I fought through the darkness and forced my eyes open. The EMT was a young woman. Seeing my massive, blood-soaked belly, she was terrified, helplessly repeating words of comfort: "Ma'am, we just have to get past the Vance family's outdoor banquet, and we'll be at the hospital! Stay with me!" I stared dead ahead at the lavish outdoor banquet. Vanessa, dressed in a stunning red gown, was held tightly in Julian's arms. The way they looked at each other... the sheer, undisguised romantic devotion. Tears rolled down my bruised cheeks. I closed my eyes. Then, I reached out and grabbed the EMT's wrist with an iron grip, my voice a raspy croak: "You have to save my baby!" The next second, a commotion at the banquet blocked the street. The ambulance was stuck, unable to move an inch. The blood pouring from my lower half felt like a busted dam. The panicked EMT jumped out of the ambulance, screaming at the crowd: "Someone is dying! Move out of the way!" But the crowd was completely drowning her out with cheers: "Congratulations to Mr. Vance and Mrs. Vance on their 5th wedding anniversary!" Every single word struck my head like a thunderbolt. No wonder he never celebrated our wedding anniversary with me. He saved this day specifically for Vanessa. It was hilarious. I was kept in the dark for five years, believing his excuse that a mob boss needed to keep a "low profile." It wasn't that he didn't want to celebrate. It was that I wasn't worthy of the celebration. My eyelids fluttered shut. My breathing grew weaker. The young EMT was crying in frustration. Seeing that I was about to bleed out and die right there in the street, she begged a bystander to lend her an electric scooter and sped me away from the blockade. We passed so close to the banquet that I could hear Vanessa's voice asking: "Hubby, what's that gross thing on the scooter? It's disgusting..." "It's just a dead pig, baby. Don't look at it, it'll ruin your mood..." Julian's voice was gentle, the exact same tone he used when he proposed to me years ago. Except back then, he had said: "Clara, I love you to death. Marry me! I promise I'll take care of you for the rest of my life!" Only now did I understand. Julian's "taking care of me" was a literal death sentence. By the time the scooter rushed into the emergency room, I had almost bled out entirely. I was on the verge of cardiac arrest. The trauma doctors grabbed bags of O-negative blood and sprinted into the operating room. "How much more blood do we need?" "1600ml, the hospital blood bank just barely has enough!" a nurse answered, wiping sweat from her forehead. The next second, the OR doors were kicked open violently. A swarm of men in black suits flooded the room, drawing their guns and pressing them hard against the doctors' heads. Julian strode in from behind the doors, his brow deeply furrowed, his expression frantic: "I want all the O-negative blood in this hospital brought to the operating room across the hall! Nobody touches my wife's blood!" My blood-stained hand reached out, wanting to grab his sleeve, to tell him his wife was lying right in front of him. But clearly, the "wife" he was talking about wasn't me. It was Vanessa. The doctors exchanged terrified glances. A brave nurse even spoke up to remind him: "Sir, that woman just has a small cut on her pinky finger. She doesn't need a blood transfusion..." He wasn't listening. He just waved his gun, demanding the blood. Thinking of the baby in my stomach, I swallowed the agonizing pain in my heart, struggling to croak out: "I am..." He backhanded me brutally, sending me crashing against the operating table, his eyes venomous: "Shut your mouth! One more word, and I'll drain you dry and use you as a live blood bag for my wife!" After hitting me, he looked down in disgust at his hand, which was now stained with my blood. He sneered, grabbed the blood bags, and stormed out of the room. I covered my face, lying there completely numb. I felt like I had been ripped to shreds. Three years ago, he was the man who spent three million dollars buying a rare blood source for me at a private hospital. Now, he was the man pointing a gun at doctors, robbing me of the very blood I needed to survive. The exact same man. The exact same situation. But the woman he was protecting had changed to Vanessa. The doctors were too terrified to breathe, but they couldn't just let me die. Just then, a nurse ran in, panting heavily, dragging a volunteer behind her. She yelled between gasps: "Found one! He's O-negative..." The entire surgical team let out a collective sigh of relief. They rushed to draw his blood and prep me for transfusion. As the fresh blood entered my veins, my ghostly pale face finally regained a little color. But just as the doctors were prepping to induce labor, the OR doors were kicked open once again. Julian glared at me with eyes colder than ice. He looked at me like I was already a corpse. "I want this pregnant woman's placenta. My wife is having chest pains, and she needs the nutrients!" I stared at him with cloudy, unfocused eyes. My lips trembled uncontrollably. I felt like a complete, absolute joke. After a long moment, I gathered every ounce of strength left in my broken body, pointed a shaky finger at the door, and squeezed out a single word: "Get... out!" He looked at me with pure revulsion, then kicked the operating table so hard that the bed—and me with it—slammed violently into the opposite wall. I crashed to the floor, vomiting a mouthful of blood. He didn't even flinch. He just cursed viciously: "You worthless bitch! It is an absolute honor for my wife to consume your placenta!" The doctors cowered in terror, clutching their heads, not daring to make a sound. "What the hell are you waiting for?! If anything happens to my wife, none of you are making it out of here alive!" Julian yelled, glancing anxiously toward the OR across the hall. One doctor, unable to stand seeing me lying in a pool of my own blood, mustered his courage. "Sir, this is Clara..." "Shut the hell up! Extract the placenta now! One more word, and I'll put a bullet in your head!" Julian's eyes burned with raging fury as he aimed the black muzzle of his gun directly at the doctor. Even though the doctors knew that performing a forced C-section to extract a placenta prematurely would result in the death of the infant... Faced with a loaded gun, no one dared to speak. As the OR doors slowly closed, I heard his voice echoing through the hallway, speaking into his phone, tenderly coaxing Vanessa: "Don't worry, baby. The placenta from a fresh birth is incredibly nutritious. It will definitely cure those chest pains you've been having." "I'll be right there. Wait for me, I love you..." Every word, every syllable, was a sledgehammer smashing my heart to pieces. The memories of his past affection now felt like a raging inferno, burning everything we had to ash. I stared dead at his retreating back. My soul felt like it was being carved apart with a rusty blade, over and over again. Sacrificing the life of his own unborn son to make a nutritional supplement for his mistress... Julian Vance truly was a devoted lover. The anesthesia worked quickly. A moment later, I lost consciousness. In the dark void of my coma, I thought I heard a faint, tiny whimper. It sounded like a baby crying: "Mommy, it hurts..." Tears slid silently from the corners of my eyes. I wanted to grab him, to hold him tight, but there was a thick fog, and I couldn't see anything... Maybe God took pity on me, allowing me to see my child one last time. The moment they removed the baby, my eyes snapped open. The doctor, feeling immense pity for me, gently brought the tiny, blood-covered infant—no bigger than a kitten—close to my face. "Ms. Clara... the baby was forcibly extracted. He's not breathing..." Looking at his silent, still little body, every organ in my chest twisted in excruciating agony. I desperately wanted to reach out and touch his soft, fragile skin. But my shattered arms refused to move. I had imagined his birth a thousand times. What name we would give him, the toys I would buy for him, the moment he would finally call me "Mommy." I had imagined it so many times, but I never, ever imagined he would leave me like this. Ordered to be cut out of me by his own father... reduced to medicinal soup for a mistress. He didn't even get the chance to open his eyes and see the world. I watched helplessly as he was taken away. The only sound I could make was a muffled, agonizing whimper from the back of my throat. At that moment, the surgeon preparing to suture my incision was violently grabbed by another doctor who rushed into the room: "Don't stitch her up! This woman is probably... going to need another incision..." The surgical team stared in horror. "She... if you cut her again, she'll die!" A freezing voice drifted in from the hallway: "Dying for Vanessa is the greatest honor this bitch and her bastard could ask for. Cut her!" "Besides, you idiots dragged your feet and ruined the freshness of the placenta." "Is that why Vanessa's heart palpitations are getting worse? Stop wasting time, prep her for the heart transplant!" The lead surgeon asked quietly, "Mr. Vance, we don't have a donor heart available in the hospital right now. If we take hers..." Before he could finish, Julian cut him off impatiently: "If there's no donor heart, put her on a mechanical pump! I'll pay whatever it costs." "If she doesn't survive it, then it's just her own bad luck!" Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of my face, stained with a grotesque mix of blood and tears. He pinched his nose and stepped back in disgust. A kind-hearted nurse gently brushed my sweat-soaked hair behind my ear, revealing half of my face. At that exact moment, he turned his head to answer a phone call: "Hey, Vanessa. I'm securing the donor heart for you right now. Wait for me, baby." His assistant, who had followed him into the room, suddenly went wide-eyed when he saw the exposed half of my face. He turned to Julian, trembling violently, and stuttered: "M-Mr. Vance... your wife... she..." It was as if a golf ball was lodged in his throat. He pointed at me, stuttering so badly he couldn't form a complete sentence. Julian hung up the phone and snapped aggressively: "Shut the hell up! You watch things here, I'm going to get Vanessa!" The assistant took one last look at me, shivering in terror, completely unable to speak. Listening to the fading sound of Julian's footsteps, the last tear I had left finally dried on my cheek. As the doctors implanted the mechanical pump into my chest, my actual, beating heart was being transplanted into Vanessa's body. We lay just two doors apart. Julian Vance's two "wives." My palms were a bloody, mangled mess. I forced my eyes open, glaring fiercely as Julian showered her with frantic concern: "Baby, this heart is a perfect match for you. You're going to be fine." "Don't worry about the baby. When Clara has her kid, he'll call you 'Mom' too." Vanessa agreed sweetly, but her eyes shot straight toward me, barely concealing a triumphant, gloating smirk. She had every right to smirk. Because of her, my baby and I had been utterly destroyed by Julian. One dead, one critically wounded. And that baby had stopped breathing right under his own father's nose. I struggled to breathe, my fists clenched so tightly my nails dug into the wounds. I really, really wanted to know what kind of face Julian would make when he realized he had ordered the death of the child he had been anticipating for so long. Would he still be able to maintain this sickeningly sweet, affectionate demeanor? Thinking of that moment, an uncontrollable, dark chuckle escaped my lips. Julian's face darkened, his eyes glaring at me as if he wanted to eat me alive. Just as he opened his mouth to curse me, the Vance family butler stumbled into the room, shoving the doors open, panicking: "Sir! Your wife... she's missing!" Julian's body went completely rigid. The next second, he violently shoved Vanessa's hand away and shot to his feet. "Where is Clara?!" His voice carried a microscopic, almost imperceptible tremor. The butler wiped the sweat from his forehead. "Madam said she was going out this morning to bring you your signet ring, and she never came back..." Instantly, an unknown thought struck Julian. He began to tremble slightly. A few seconds later, he forced his voice to remain steady. "Find her! Find her right now!" The butler nodded. He was just about to turn and leave, but as his eyes swept over me lying on the operating table, he let out a horrified scream: "Madam!" Julian frowned, annoyed. "What madam? I'm not talking about Vanessa, I'm talking about Clara!" The butler's hand shook violently as he pointed behind Julian, whispering in terror: "Sir... that is Clara..."

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