Cherry's POV
The elevator jolted as it stopped at the top floor of the Norman family house, the place I once called home before our parents left to work abroad. My hands trembled around the worn handles of the weekender. I held it with so much care because of what it represented. Every single bill inside had been gotten from my sacrifice, each dollar paid for with my eggs, which I had sold to pay off my fiancé's student loan.
Now, I had done it.
I had saved him.
My chest beamed with a kind of relief, the kind you feel only after dragging yourself through hell and finally getting what you always desired. Now I was going to free my fiancé from his debts, and then we would get married.
It was the only obstacle blocking him from getting another top paying coding job despite passing many interviews.
My Jed is gonna be happy again.
I grinned, dancing my way up to our room to surprise him.
He had no parents and had been doing well as an expert coder until some hackers hacked into his account and stole about four million dollars in savings. Before then, he had been doing so well, even assisting me through college.
That was one reason I had gone all out for him in gratitude, besides my deep love for him.
"Jed…" I called with excitement.
The weekender slipped from my shoulder and landed with a dull thud near the glass coffee table. The penthouse was dark, seeming as though no one was inside. Well, there were only two of us here—Jed and me. My parents had left this apartment for us after they traveled.
Nora, my stepsister, lived on campus as a scholarship student. She often visited when she had spare time. Being a medical student, she rarely had free time, one reason she got to live on campus. We were free—me, a law student, and Jed, a criminology student.
But now, we were graduates.
Right there in the living room, I slid off my shoes and walked into the bedroom where I hoped to meet my man.
I walked quietly, hoping to surprise him. But then I heard a strange sound. A laugh. A woman's laugh. High pitched. Sharp. Familiar. Nora's.
I paused.
What could she be doing alone with my fiancé?
I didn't want negative thoughts creeping in. I forced myself to believe perhaps it was just a video call—she was always calling him "brother in-law" anyway.
Once again, I returned my mind to surprising my fiancé because with this, he was going to get a high paying job. Both of us would be financially stable, and we would finally have the life we dreamed of.
I couldn't control my joy.
But then, another sound echoed.
A low groan.
I froze mid step. My heart skipped. I grabbed my chest. And then I heard it again—soft moans, lyrical, echoing with so much pleasure.
My breath stuttered. I knew that sound.
Rage burned through my veins. I wanted to see for myself. Without wasting a second, I shoved the door open.
The world stopped just right in front of me.
Jed's cock struck out through his unzipped trousers, thrusting into a girl, her mini skirt pulled up as she bent over the king sized bed. My gaze slowly drifted to her face.
Nora.
Both froze, glaring in shock as they noticed my presence.
My lips flew apart and stayed that way as I kept gazing at them, the bag in my hand dropping to the ground.
"Jed…?" My voice cracked into a whisper, hard to believe this was real.
Both their heads snapped toward me. Nora's smirk widened, like a shameless bitch caught but unashamed. Jed didn't even look embarrassed. His gaze was flat, almost bored, as if my presence was an unwanted disturbance.
Then I saw it.
On the nightstand, discarded among empty glasses and rumpled tissues, lay a syringe. The kind I knew too well. Ovulation meds.
My stomach dropped. My throat burned with bile. Nora's hand stroked her flat belly as if she were already cradling life inside her.
"I'm pregnant. Pregnant for him, and he's going to marry me instead," she said boldly.
My stepsister was pregnant…with him.
The weekender thudded again as I stumbled forward, my knees weakening. "I… I sold everything. For you. I gave you everything I had…" I burst into tears, finding it hard to believe he made me sell all my eggs, only to get another girl pregnant.
"For me?" His voice had no empathy or guilt in it.
Jed stood upright, breathing hard. His face was unreadable, without emotion, like that of a stranger. "Cherry, you can't tie me down to you. You've given me money, yes. But what else do you have left?"
Then it dawned on me.
He was showing his true colors after everything.
I couldn't believe this was happening in real life.
I had emptied all my eggs, shutting down my chances of being pregnant in the future.
Six months of selling every egg my body could produce to a faceless, cold clinic with bloodless doctors who hadn't looked at me as a woman, only as a supplier. They never discouraged me, even though it placed me at a risk of permanent infertility. I had done it until I finally got the total debt money completed. I had been emptied, piece by piece, and I hadn't asked questions because all I cared about was him.
For him to be free.
For us to be together.
It was the only thing I could sell, the only way I could raise one hundred and forty thousand dollars.
I shook my head violently, tears searing down my cheeks. "I gave you me. I gave you my body, my love, my…"
"Love doesn't build empires," he snapped. His eyes flicked toward Nora, who leaned into him like a queen already crowned.
"I'm about to step into the next level of my life, and I don't think you're fit to go with me."
"Urrghh?"
"Yes. You're not fit, and you would never be fit."
My legs weakened, my eyes dripping with tears. My lips parted, wanting to say something, but no words came out.
"No man loves a girl who's desperate to get a man up to the point of selling her eggs." He turned around to taunt me while Nora grinned.
"Was that the only thing you could do?"
He smirked, turning back to Nora.
"Nora is my future. You're my past. I've always loved her. I was just waiting for the best opportunity to let you know, and that's now."
"What? But you never said this while we dated. You always claimed to love me and promised to marry me after we graduated and got jobs. Here I am, helping you get one, so…."
"You know you're dumb, right?"
I stood still, gaping in shock, waiting for him to explain.
"I need a woman who will be a true queen. Besides, as a medical doctor, she'll be able to treat me in emergencies, like when I'm shot…" He leaned toward me, twirling his fingers in a mocking way.
Treat?
Shot?
"What will make you get shot?" I asked, but he brushed off my question with another taunt.
"Nora, my queen here," he pulled her closer, kissing her forehead, "carries what you can't. A legacy. You? You're just Cherry."
Now, he was abusing me with his words. But he had always told me all he wanted was me—that he wouldn't mind adopting children if I couldn't conceive. He said he was adopted as an orphan, and that he would give back to nature by building a family of his own. I hadn't cared much about children then, so long as we would be together and happy.
He coaxed me with his lies into selling my eggs, only to call Nora his queen, only to get her pregnant?
And in this part of the States, the custom was clear: whichever girl a man got pregnant, that was the woman he was expected to marry.
Nora. My own sister.
The one I never thought would betray me.
My mom had died giving birth to me. My dad remarried, and Nora was born two years later. We had been raised together, close as sisters could be. Unlike most stepsisters, we had no rivalry.
Until now.
This scene slammed into me harder than any fist could.
"Just Cherry." Jed's last words re echoed in my mind, hitting me hard.
I couldn't take it. As I watched my world crumble before me, my eyes clouded with tears. I turned around, racing out of the room and the apartment, out into the street. I didn't know where I was going, but I just wanted to move away. I wanted to leave and never return. I never wanted to see their faces again.
Until the day of my revenge.
Even though I didn't know how it would come, or when, I knew one thing for sure.
One day, I was going to have my revenge.