The Price Of His Obsessive Betrayal

My husband of eight years had twins with another woman-a woman who looked uncannily like me. I soon discovered this wasn't just an affair. He'd been secretly feeding me birth control pills for years, treating me as a placeholder in his meticulous life plan.

He refused a divorce, moving his lover and their children into our home as the "nanny," where she delighted in humiliating me.

Then, during a house fire, he left me to die while he saved her.

But his ultimate betrayal came later, when I overheard him calmly planning to harvest my skin for a graft to heal a minor burn she'd received.

He didn't just see me as a placeholder; he saw me as spare parts.

That was the moment I decided to disappear. I faked my own death, leaving him to the ruins of his perfect plan while I built a new life from the ashes.

Chapter 1

Carmel Henson POV:

I found him celebrating the birth of twins with another woman-a woman who looked uncannily like me. My eight-year marriage to Augustine Herrera, the meticulously organized tech CEO, shattered under the fluorescent lights of the hospital waiting room.

Augustine had always lived by his "life plan." It was a thick, leather-bound notebook, filled with precise timelines and checkboxes. He started planning his life in meticulous detail when he was a teenager. I remembered him telling me about it on our third date. He' d smiled, a rare, soft curve of his lips, as he described charting out his education, his career milestones, his investments. Every major decision, from choosing his college major to the exact year he' d launch his first startup, was logged, analyzed, and executed.

He' d always been so disciplined. I admired that about him. He achieved everything he set out to do, always. When he said we would marry by age twenty-seven, we did. When he said he would list his company by thirty, he did. His life was a symphony of perfectly timed events, each note played exactly as intended.

The only part of his plan that hadn't fallen into place was having children. He wanted twins, a boy and a girl, by thirty-five. We had been trying for years, a shared struggle that felt like the deepest, most intimate part of our marriage. Every month that passed without a pregnancy was a quiet heartbreak we endured together.

"I'm so sorry, Carmel," he would say, his hand gently squeezing mine after another negative test. "I know how much you want this. I promise, we'll keep trying." His eyes would hold a distant sadness, a reflection of the disappointment I felt. I always believed it was a shared disappointment.

I would always comfort him, pulling him close, whispering that it was okay, that we had each other, and that our time would come. I truly believed his pain was as real as mine. I thought we were a team, united against this one unforeseen obstacle in his otherwise perfect life plan.

That belief evaporated the moment I saw him through the hospital glass.

He was laughing, a sound I hadn't heard from him with such unrestrained joy in years. His arm was wrapped around a woman I didn't recognize. She was petite, with long, dark hair, and a small, distinctive tear-shaped mole just below her left eye. She looked so much like me it was like staring into a distorted mirror. In her arms, she held a tiny bundle, a newborn swaddled in blue. Augustine leaned in, pressing a kiss to her temple, his face alight with an unfamiliar warmth.

A nurse, passing by, paused to smile at the scene. "Oh, Mr. Herrera, congratulations again! They're absolutely beautiful, those twins."

Twins.

My legs felt like they were made of lead. The word echoed in my skull, hollow and mocking. Twins. The very thing Augustine had always dreamed of. The very thing we had failed to achieve.

Another baby, swaddled in pink, was handed to the woman on the bed. Augustine took the blue bundle from her, holding it with a tenderness I had only ever seen him direct at his laptop. He looked from his secret lover to the two infants, then back again, a perfect, blissful picture of a family. His family.

The woman on the bed, my doppelgänger, whispered something to him. He nodded, smiling, then leaned down to her.

"What should we name them, love?" she asked, her voice soft, barely audible through the glass, but the words still reached me.

Augustine paused, looking at the babies. "How about Elias for our boy, and Elara for our girl?"

The world tilted. The hospital corridor spun. A cold dread seeped into my bones, a chill deeper than any winter night. Elias and Elara.

I remembered when we were first married. We were sitting on the couch, flipping through baby name books, full of youthful dreams. He had pointed to those names, his finger tracing them on the page. "These are perfect, Carmel," he' d said. "Elias and Elara. They sound strong, classic. They'll be our children's names."

I had loved them instantly, imagining tiny faces to go with those beautiful sounds. Now, those names belonged to different children, children born to another woman, children I never knew existed until this crushing moment.

"Mrs. Herrera?" The nurse was suddenly beside me, her voice kind, her hand on my arm. "Are you alright? You look a little pale."

I mumbled something, a choked sound that wasn't a word.

"You must be so excited for Augustine," she continued, oblivious. "He's been buzzing with excitement. It's been a long journey for them. Surrogate births always are, but so worth it, don't you think?"

My mind reeled. Surrogate. Twins. It wasn' t a spontaneous affair. This was planned. Just like everything else in Augustine's life. But I was never part of this plan. I was the placeholder. The substitute. The wife who was trying so hard to conceive while her husband was meticulously planning a family with his real love.

"Here," the nurse said, pressing a small, soft cotton shirt into my hand. "Asia asked me to pass this along. She thought you might want to see it. It's the first outfit the twins wore."

Asia. Her name. The name of the woman who shared my face and now, my husband' s life. The shirt was made of incredibly soft organic cotton, a pale yellow. My fingers tightened around it, the fabric suddenly feeling rough, abrasive against my skin.

I remembered Augustine giving me a similar shirt, the exact same brand, the exact same shade of yellow, for my birthday five years ago. He had said it was a symbol, a promise of the future children we would have. I had cherished it, keeping it tucked away in a special drawer, waiting for the day I could dress our baby in it. Now, I understood. It wasn't a symbol of our future. It was a symbol of his future, with her.

My head started to throb. I needed answers. My eyes scanned the corridor, looking for any clue, any piece of information that could explain this agonizing betrayal. A doctor walked by, his scrubs slightly rumpled. I knew him, Dr. Chen, our fertility specialist.

"Dr. Chen," I called out, my voice raspy. He turned, his smile faltering when he saw my face.

"Carmel. What are you doing here?" He glanced towards Augustine's room, then back at me, a flicker of understanding, perhaps even pity, in his eyes. "You know, sometimes, fertility issues aren't always what they seem. There are... many layers to a person's health." He said it so subtly, almost a whisper, but the implication was a thunderclap in my mind.

Before I could ask him to elaborate, Asia stepped out of the room, her elegant hospital gown complementing her delicate features. She caught my eye, a smirk playing on her lips. She walked past me, her body brushing mine, then stopped.

"Carmel," she purred, her voice dripping with false sweetness. "So good to see you. I just need a moment." She extended her hand, palm up. "Augustine left his wallet in the room. Could you lend me some cash? I need to pay the surrogate. She won't accept a transfer, you know."

My blood ran cold. She was asking me for money to pay for their children. The audacity was breathtaking. I stared at her, dumbfounded.

Asia leaned in, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Augustine is very particular about his 'vitamins.' And his 'vitamin' regimen for his wife." She met my gaze, a triumphant glint in her eyes. "You might want to check your own supplements, honey. You never know what surprises you might find." She winked, a cruel, knowing gesture, and then walked away, leaving me standing there, paralyzed by a fresh wave of horror.

My world, once so stable and predictable, suddenly felt like a house of cards collapsing around me. The pieces of the puzzle clicked into place with horrifying clarity. The subtle hints from Dr. Chen, Asia's veiled warning about "vitamins," the years of unexplained infertility, the chilling realization that Asia looked just like me, down to the tear mole Augustine had always been so fascinated by.

I stumbled out of the hospital, the cold night air doing little to clear my head. My hands trembled as I fumbled for my car keys. I drove home on autopilot, my mind a storm of accusations and terrifying possibilities.

The first thing I did when I got back was tear apart our bathroom cabinet. Hidden behind a stack of towels, in a small, unmarked amber bottle, I found them. Tiny, white, perfectly round pills. Not my usual iron supplements. Birth control pills. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat of betrayal. This wasn't some natural, tragic infertility. This was deliberate. This was orchestrated.

Asia's words echoed in my ears: "Augustine is very particular about his 'vitamins.' And his 'vitamin' regimen for his wife." He hadn't been giving me vitamins. He had been slowly, systematically, poisoning my chances of conception. For years.

I felt a guttural scream rising in my throat, but it never escaped. Instead, a cold, hard resolve set in. I remembered the small voice recorder I kept in my bedside table, a habit from my early journalism days, for jotting down late-night ideas. I pulled it out, my fingers shaking as I pressed play.

It was an old recording, from about six months ago. I had accidentally left it on after recording a note for myself, and I hadn't realized it had continued to record for hours. It was a hushed conversation, Augustine's voice, low and intense.

"Asia," he breathed, his voice raw with an emotion I had never heard him direct at me. "My love. It's finally happening. My plan. Our twins. You were always meant to be the mother of my children, the true partner in my life plan. Carmel was... a necessary placeholder. A temporary solution until you returned. I knew you'd come back to me. Now, everything is finally falling into place, exactly as it should be."

His words were a physical blow, each syllable a shard of glass tearing through my heart. Placeholder. Temporary solution. My body started to shake uncontrollably. The rain outside began to lash against the windows, mirroring the storm raging inside me. The thunder cracked, a violent punctuation mark to his confession.

I was nothing but a prop in his meticulously crafted life, a stand-in until his "true love" returned. My entire marriage, my love, my sacrifices, my dreams of a family-all a carefully constructed lie. I was a mistake he refused to acknowledge, a mere blip in his perfect plan.

I sat there, numb, the recorder still playing his echoing words of devotion to another woman. The rain poured, washing over the world outside, but it couldn't wash away the filth of his betrayal that clung to every fiber of my being.

I didn't sleep that night. I just sat, watching the first hesitant rays of dawn break through the storm clouds, painting the sky in shades of bruised purple and grey. When the sun finally rose, a cold, clear light, I picked up my phone. My fingers trembled as I dialed a number I hadn't called in years.

"Hello, Gus?" I said, my voice surprisingly steady. It was Augustine's father, Augustine Senior, a man I respected deeply. "I need to ask you something about Asia Whitney. Augustine's first love."

There was a long silence on the other end, then a sigh. "I knew this day would come, Carmel. What do you want to know?"

"Was it true that Augustine always planned to marry her, have children with her?" I asked, though I already knew the answer.

"Yes," Gus replied, his voice heavy. "They were inseparable in high school. He had his whole life mapped out with her. But she left him for another man after college. Augustine was devastated. You were there, weren't you? After the accident, when I needed help, when you practically saved my life. He saw you, how kind you were, how much you looked like her. He just... inserted you into the plan."

My heart clenched. I hadn't just been a placeholder. I had been a replacement, a convenient substitute found in a moment of his desperation and my unwitting kindness. I had been his father's nurse after a bad fall, and Augustine had seen me then. He had pursued me relentlessly, and I, naive and flattered, had fallen in love.

"Gus," I said, my voice breaking slightly. "I'm leaving him."

There was another pause, but this time, it was different. It felt like relief mixed with sorrow. "Come to me, Carmel. We'll figure it out." The line went dead, leaving me with the cold, hard certainty of my decision.