Chapter 3

Iris POV

When I returned to the villa, Adrian was already waiting.

He sat on the sofa, his gaze pinning me like an ice pick. "Gone all afternoon. Where were you?"

He couldn't reach me. These few hours had exhausted his patience.

I looked at him, my mind filled with images of him kissing Luna on the yacht.

"Why aren't you speaking?" Seeing my silence, Adrian stood and approached step by step. His long arm reached out, gripping my waist. "Want me to punish you again?"

My body stiffened.

I remembered when I was twenty. We'd argued. I'd run to the beach to surf in defiance. Adrian went crazy, deploying helicopters to search the whole city. After finding me, he locked me in a beach villa for two whole months. Only after I cried and swore never to disappear again did he release me, eyes red.

I feared him, feared that crazed need for control.

Right now, I couldn't let him see through me, couldn't expose that I was planning to leave.

"I..." I clenched my fingers, forcing myself to calm down, my voice trembling. "I went to the hospital."

I couldn't tell him I was pregnant.

Already three months along.

Adrian's expression changed immediately, his hand on my waist loosening slightly.

He thought I'd gone behind his back again to try those painful fertility tests.

He immediately switched to a distressed expression, bending to kiss my forehead, his voice low and husky. "Didn't I tell you not to go anymore? I've said it before-you're enough for me. I don't want to see you suffer like that."

If this were yesterday, I might still have been moved by this performance.

But now, I only found it ironic.

Adrian's phone rang. He took a call, gave brief instructions, then turned and left.

Half an hour after he left, my phone received a file from an unknown number.

It was an audio recording.

I clicked it. Adrian's familiar voice came through, mixed with the clink of glasses.

"Luna's four months pregnant. I need to give her a title."

A friend asked, surprised. "What about your wife? I thought you were crazy about her?"

"Iris can't have children." Adrian's voice was tired. "The board is breathing down my neck. The Chase family needs an heir."

My face slowly drained of color.

In the recording, the friend let out a sigh. "Can't blame the old man, I guess. If he hadn't made you give Iris that infertility drug back then, and forbidden you from marrying her, you wouldn't be in this mess now."

Infertility drug...

I was struck by lightning. My blood turned to ice.

I remembered the wedding night five years ago. Adrian had personally fed me a cup of warm liquid, gently coaxing, "Good girl, these are vitamin supplements the doctor prescribed. They're good for your health. We'll have a baby soon."

So from the very beginning, he never intended to let me bear his child.

That marriage certificate he claimed was lost and never replaced-it had been forged all along.

At the end of the recording was Adrian's low murmur.

"I love Iris. That will never change. But when I'm with Luna, my heart is peaceful-the kind of peace Iris can't give me."

The friend snorted, cutting straight to the point. "You're just greedy. You want a passionate lover and an obedient wife both."

The recording ended there.

Gripping my phone, I could no longer hold myself up and slid to the floor.

Love me?

Love me through bigamy and deception?