After Widowed Sister-in-Law's Pregnancy She Slapped Me, Then Regretted

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When some local thugs were harassing me, my widowed sister-in-law accidentally injured one of them while trying to save me, and she was sentenced to two years in prison.

Fortunately, she was carrying my brother's posthumous child, so she could serve her sentence outside prison.

Out of guilt, I brought her home and cared for her diligently.

And I promised to raise the child with her afterward.

My fianc, Aaron Rowe, had a lot to say about it:

"You brought this little empress into our house, fine, but why do you have to raise her kid too? Have you lost your mind?"

I looked at my sister-in-law, who was throwing up like the world was ending, and rebuked him coldly:

"If it weren't for her, I might have died that night! And what's more, she's carrying my brother's child!"

Later, the child was safely born, and my sister-in-law had to start serving her sentence.

I held my nephew and comforted her:

"I've got the baby covered. Just hang in there another ten months and you'll be out!"

Suddenly she pulled out a pregnancy test:

"No need to hang on. I'm pregnant again."

I couldn't help freezing:

"You're home every single day. Where did you get pregnant?"

She stroked her belly and slapped me across the face:

"Stop putting on an act. Didn't you tell Aaron to help me?"

I swallowed the blood filling my mouth, and it was a long while before I could speak:

"Help you with what?"

The moment I asked that, Serena's face went even redder than my swollen cheek.

She shook out her stinging hand and stared straight at me:

"Why are you asking for all these details? I know you meant well, that you didn't want me to go to prison, and you didn't want Maurice separated from me the moment he was born. I understand all of it!"

"Don't worry, I'll take this to my grave."

"If anyone asks, I'll just say I don't know who the father is! I'll never drag you or Aaron into it!"

"That slap just now, count it as one I gave you on your brother's behalf!"

The blood in my whole body kept surging upward because of those words.

I bit down hard on the soft flesh inside my mouth, and the sharp pain and the taste of blood told me I hadn't misheard.

And I hadn't misunderstood, either.

"So the child is Aaron's."

I said it as a statement.

Because Aaron really did dream of having a child...

Serena nodded.

The arms holding Maurice tightened without my meaning them to.

"Then this child can't be kept!"

My sister-in-law had always been good to me.

Since she'd brought this out into the open, surely she wouldn't want to keep the child either.

But she fell silent.

Her face was all smiles, yet the smiles didn't reach her eyes.

The way she looked at me held gratitude, held sympathy, and in the end turned into hatred.

"If I hadn't done it to save you, I wouldn't have gotten mixed up in any of this. Now it's already done, I don't have to go to prison, and you don't have to help me raise Maurice, but you're telling me to get rid of the baby!"

"Yolanda Sheldon, are you and your man playing games with me? All this suffering I've been through, wasn't it all for your sake in the end?"

Serena screamed the last sentence.

Her shrieking startled Maurice so badly that he burst into tears and wouldn't stop.

All I could do was hold Maurice and soothe him first.

As Serena watched me tend so carefully to the baby, a trace of guilt welled up on her face again.

"Yola, just now... I really didn't want to hit you, but you kept knowing full well and playing dumb... I couldn't take it and lost my temper, and with the postpartum depression on top of that..."

"Looking at Maurice, I keep thinking of your brother..."

Her tears came the instant she willed them.

As if she were still the same sister-in-law who loved my brother more than her own life.

But I didn't dare believe her anymore.

What did "for my sake" even mean?

Not wanting to go to prison that was probably what she truly felt inside.

"What exactly did Aaron tell you? Why would you agree to something so absurd?"

Serena was stunned for a moment before she caught that something was off.

"Last month, when I got up to pump milk, your Aaron suddenly pushed the door open and said you didn't want me to go to prison, that if I could get pregnant again I wouldn't have to suffer in there."

"And you just believed that? You didn't check with me? You didn't refuse?"

My sarcasm made Serena drop her head, not daring to look at me.

She said in a low voice:

"I refused at the time, because I'd thought of that method too, finding some random man outside, but he said outsiders couldn't be trusted and it would ruin my reputation."

"You know I love your brother. Even after he was gone, I never thought of leaving this family..."

"Maurice is still so little, I couldn't bear to be parted from him..."

I looked at the child in my arms, my whole body trembling beyond my control.

If she loved my brother, she never should have slept with Aaron.

Much less waited until she was pregnant and couldn't hide it any longer to tell me.

I slept right next door with Maurice, and I'd wake the instant he made the slightest sound.

If Serena had felt even a shred of reluctance, one cry from her and I'd have known something was wrong and stopped it all.

But the truth was, I hadn't even realized these two had made a baby right under my nose.

Thinking back to those few days last month, when I drank the milk my sister-in-law heated for me and slept like the dead.

What was there left to not understand?

It was nothing but a scummy man and a shameless woman carrying on right under my nose.

Before I could speak, Serena, her eyes brimming with tears, demanded of me:

"So this wasn't your idea. Aaron lied to me behind your back."

I gritted my teeth and threw the question back at her word by word:

"Was it him lying to me, or the two of you together?"

Her tears fell at once like beads off a broken string.

"Yola, how could you think of me like that?"

She took Maurice from my arms, went back to her room alone, and locked the door from the inside.

She left me with one line:

"Aaron said you couldn't eat or sleep over this, that you felt you'd wronged me, so he told me not to bring it up with you."

I knew perfectly well she was trying to sow discord, to make Aaron and me fight.

But driven by fury, I still hailed a cab and rushed to Aaron's company.

The moment I saw him, I slapped him twice.

"Why did you lie to your wife? Why would you do something so vile to her?"

If they wanted to put on an act, I'd just play along.

Aaron pressed a hand to his stinging face, his eyes calm.

"What's wrong with any of this?"

"She needs a child to avoid jail time, so you won't neglect me every single day over someone else's kid, and you won't wear yourself out and abort our child!"

"She killed one of my children. Isn't it only right she gives me another in return?"

When I lost my child, I was heartbroken too.

Because that was my and Aaron's first child.

It was also the one thing he needed to reclaim the shares of the Rowe family that rightfully belonged to his mother.

The Rowe family had always struggled to produce heirs.

His scumbag father had given him one year to produce an heir before I would be allowed into the family.

But not long after I got pregnant, I miscarried from sheer overwork.

Aaron gave me no end of grief over it.

And once my body had recovered, I did everything I could to conceive again.

I even suggested that we pretend Maurice was his and my child, so he could get back the shares his mother had left behind.

But Aaron refused.

"If my dad finds out I tricked him with someone else's kid, I won't get a single cent!"

I felt I had let him down, and that I had let Serena down too.

Every day after work I did the laundry, cooked, and looked after the child, waiting on the two of them like royalty.

And in the end, all it got me was the two of them having an affair behind my back.

"No matter what, that child cannot be born!"

The words had barely left my mouth when my phone buzzed.

It was a message from Serena:

Yola, I'm so sorry. Your brother's wife can only atone with her death!

All I could see in my mind was the hatred in Serena's eyes when she looked at me.

Remembering that Maurice was still in her hands, panic seized me, and I rushed back home.

I heard the baby crying nonstop inside, and my hands shook so badly I couldn't even fit the key in the lock.

In the end it was Aaron who opened the door.

And Serena lay collapsed in a pool of blood, holding Maurice.

Shocked and furious, I called 911.

Thank God I'd gotten back in time. She and Maurice were both fine.

I held my nephew, not daring to cry out loud.

And I put on a show of apologizing to Serena, in case she used her standing as his mother to turn against Maurice.

Serena, just like before, gently stroked the top of my head.

"Silly girl, it's not your fault. I'm just cursed with bad luck."

"That's why I brought death on your brother, and then did something that betrayed him."

At the mention of my brother, tears poured out of us both.

Aaron stood off to the side, his hands folded together, and suddenly spoke.

"Since you're not even afraid of death, then live properly and stop always dragging other people down."

His words sounded like he was scolding Serena, but they also drew a clear line between us.

I was the "other people" he meant.

I stood up and pounded on him like a madwoman.

He took every blow without resisting.

Only when I had no strength left did he hold me and say gently,

"Yolanda, this child has to be born. Once I get the shares that belong to me, I'll take responsibility for you both, including your brother's child."

I shoved him away hard, looked at Serena, and said flatly,

"Once you're feeling better, I'll have the doctor schedule the surgery."

But she closed her eyes and refused.

"Listen to your Aaron."

"Maurice needs me."

When she was killing herself, she hadn't thought about how Maurice needed her.

Aaron had promised to take responsibility, and yet she said Maurice needed her.

I dug my fingernails into my palm to keep from giving myself away.

She had ended up facing prison to save me, yes.

But now, to spare herself the suffering, she wanted to use a child to dodge her sentence and tangle herself up with my fianc, betting that guilt would make me soft.

But I didn't want to swallow that half-cooked mess.

I forced down my anger and made a decision.

"If you're keeping this child, then Aaron, we're through. You marry Serena, and Maurice comes with me."

But the two of them rejected my decision in the same breath.

The way they were in sync sent the anger crawling back up my chest.

To keep from saying something full of resentment, I carried Maurice off to the nursing room to rest.

Aaron didn't come out after me.

He stayed behind in the hospital room instead.

I didn't go back to the room until Maurice got hungry and needed to nurse.

And I took the phone that had been left there on purpose.

When I opened it, a notification popped up saying a recording had been saved.

I hesitated for a long time, and finally tapped it.

"Are you sure Yolanda won't get suspicious? If she loses it and blows this up, we probably won't be able to keep us a secret anymore."

"No. She loves me, she loves you, and she loves Maurice even more. How could she ever guess that we've been together for three years already?"

I didn't hear anything they said after that.

Only that one linetogether for three yearskept echoing in my ears.

My brother only passed away this year.

They'd been together for three years.

Once I came back to myself, I quietly took some hair from Maurice and Aaron and had a DNA paternity test done.

The results came back fast.

Maurice was actually related to me by blood.

But Serena had cheated on me long ago, so why would she save me?

If I died, the two of them could be together out in the open.

And she wouldn't have gotten herself tangled up in a criminal case just to save me.

There would have been even less reason for her to give birth to my brother's posthumous child.

Aside from objecting at first to Serena living in our house, Aaron had never had any problem with her having Maurice.

Was it because of lovethat he couldn't bear to see Serena serve her sentence, so he accepted her giving birth to my brother's child?

The thought of the inheritance my brother left behind made my heart pound.

I quickly dug up the notary office's phone number and asked about how the estate was being handled.

The person on the line answered me:

"Ms. Sheldon, the will your brother had notarized states that all his property is to go to his biological children. If his spouse, Ms. Whitney, does not have any biological children, the estate passes to you as the heir."

"At present, because Ms. Whitney has given birth to your brother's posthumous child, the inheritance has already been transferred to Ms. Whitney to manage on the child's behalf."

In that instant I understood that she'd kept Maurice for the sake of my brother's inheritance.

But I still didn't understand why Serena, pregnant as she was, would jump out to save me.

If I died, her affair with Aaron could stay hidden for the rest of her life.

And she'd have one fewer person competing with her for the inheritance.

I couldn't make sense of it, so I could only bring in a professional to investigate everything.

After Aaron finished filing Serena's application to serve her sentence outside prison, he pushed Maurice into my arms.

"Yola, Serena's carrying now, so from here on I'm leaving Maurice's care to you."

"Don't worry. Even if she had my child, I'll still marry you."

"What do you have to marry me with? Didn't your father say only someone who produces an heir gets through the Rowe family's door?"

Aaron suddenly turned to Serena with a smile.

"Serena's willing to give the child to you, and my dad won't have any doubts about the paternity test."

So that was ithe wanted to lock me down to raise their child for them.

I didn't expose it. I just said flatly,

"Let's talk about it after she gives birth."

It just so happened that I needed time to look into everything.

Including my brother's death.

I turned, packed my things, and walked out with Maurice in my arms.

Aaron stopped me, his expression grim.

"It's this latewhere are you taking the child?"

"The company's sending me on a business trip."

"Taking the child along on a business trip? Are you sure?"

"Then what about Serena?"

Aaron's eyes were full of suspicion.

I gave a slight tug of my lips.

"Aren't I here? Or are you saying you don't want to take care of your own woman and child?"

Our eyes met, and a flicker of panic crossed Aaron's.

A strange unease rose up in him.

Could Yolanda already know?

Otherwise why would she want to take away his little nephew who hadn't even been weaned?

When Serena heard I wanted to take Maurice away, she refused at once.

The woman who'd just been clutching her belly, claiming she felt unwell, snatched Maurice out of my arms quick and nimble.

"Yola, I know you hate me, but Maurice is your own nephew. Can you really bear to hurt him?"

"If you can't even stand to have Maurice around, are you going to go after the child in my womb too?"

Aaron's gaze turned icy the instant he looked at me.

"Yolanda, if you want to leave, I won't stop you, but you'd better drop your twisted little ideas."

Knowing there was no way to take Maurice from Serena, all I could do was leave for now.

I found a place in a run-down urban neighborhood where I could move in with just my bags and settled in.

I'd just finished washing up when my phone buzzed.

It was the private investigator calling.

"Miss Sheldon, we've got a lead on what you asked us to look into."

"Your fianc and his sister-in-law are truly despicable!"

The private detective, no stranger to filthy, sordid business, spent a full ten minutes cursing them up and down without holding anything back.

And as I looked over the documents he'd sent, tears streamed down my face.

Before I could work out my next move, HR called me again.

"Yolanda, you're getting married and starting a familythere's really no need to quit, is there?"

"Your promotion to manager was basically a done deal. Even the boss thinks it's a shame."

I froze, then asked in a hoarse voice:

"What marriage? I only took one day off. I never quit!"

HR sent me the stamped resignation letter.

"Your fianc came into the office today to process your resignation for you. He said you were pregnant and couldn't come in. Finance will settle your final pay tomorrow."

I'd only taken one day off to look for a place, and Aaron had pulled a dirty trick behind my back.

No wonder he'd looked so skeptical when I said the company was sending me on a business trip.

That lie I'd blurted out was probably enough to make him suspicious of me.

Serena had already gotten her hands on my brother's inheritance, but she still wouldn't let me take Maurice away.

Would she hurt the child because of this...?

The thought made me forget all about salvaging my job. I quickly changed and headed out.

But then Aaron called, and the background was full of Maurice's crying.

Aaron laid into me, frantic:

"Yolanda Sheldon! No wonder you ran off so fast! So you deliberately switched Serena's calcium tablets for abortion pills! How could you be so vicious? You knew how frail she is, and you still drugged herwere you trying to kill her?"

"Get back here right now! Serena's in the hospital trying to save the pregnancy, and Maurice has a fever again. I can't get him to settle no matter what I do!"

When I got to the hospital, Maurice's face was flushed red from the fever.

His voice was hoarse from crying.

My heart ached, and I quickly took him into my arms to comfort him.

Children aren't stupid; they know exactly who means it and who doesn't.

Once the doctor confirmed Maurice had no injuries and was only sick with a fever, my heart finally settled back where it belonged.

And Maurice fell asleep peacefully in my arms.

Aaron watched me from behind as I tucked the blanket around Maurice, and suddenly spoke:

"Yola, if that child of ours were still alive, he'd be due any time now..."

I cut him off:

"There are no 'ifs.' Since the two of you can't take care of Maurice, once his fever breaks, I'm taking him with me."

"Taking him? Is he your child, that you can just take him? Besides, you don't even have a job now. What are you going to raise him on?"

"And you nearly made Serena miscarry. In her grief and rage she threatened to jump off a building. To calm her down, I had no choice but to call the police."

"When they get here, own up to what you've done. Go in for ten days, maybe two weeks, and let Serena cool off. She still can't get over being sentenced for saving you. If you really care about Maurice, stop making trouble. When you come back, we'll go back to how things were..."

But from the moment my brother died, we were bound to be on opposite sides.

The next second, the police officers pushed open the door and came toward me:

"Yolanda Sheldon, you're suspected of intentional poisoning. We'll need you to come with us."

I stayed where I was, ignoring the wink Aaron threw me.

I lowered my head and looked at the new material the detective had just dug up.

Seeing that I still had the presence of mind to look at my phone, Aaron grew frantic:

"Yola, be good. As long as you smooth things over with Serena, I'll register the marriage with you the moment you get out."

I couldn't help but laugh out loud:

"Aaron, as long as you confess everything to the officers right now, it still counts as coming clean for a lighter sentence."

"Otherwise..."

Looking at how certain I was, Aaron felt deeply uneasy.

But without a moment's hesitation, he chose to keep up the tough act:

"What do I have to confess? All I did was make the same mistake every man makes..."

Before he could finish, I handed my phone to the officer in front of me.

In under two minutes, the officer turned to him, his face cold:

"Aaron Rowe, we'll need you to come back to the station with us for questioning!"