Part 3The Karma of Betrayal: My Ex-Husband's Fatal Mistake

Carter Sterling blocked the entrance to the operating room, flanked by four men in black suits.

His bespoke suit accentuated his tall frame, and his aura was suffocatingly oppressive.

"Sarah, did you hear me talking to you?"

"What? It's only been three months, have you forgotten your own ex-husband?"

His gaze moved past me, and before I could even answer, his face changed drastically the moment he saw Chloe on the operating table.

Chloe was hooked up to an oxygen tube, her face ashen.

Carter's eyes instantly filled with heartbreak. The chill in his voice was directed entirely at me. "Sarah, what did you do to her?!"

"She was perfectly fine when she left the house this morning! What have you done to her behind my back?!"

Chloe weakly raised a hand toward him. "Carter! She's trying to kill me!"

Her voice was hoarse and broken. "She was digging around inside my stomach with a scalpel! She said, 'After this cut, you'll never be able to have kids again!' I kept begging her, but she hurt me so much I thought I was going to die..."

Before she could finish, she started coughing violently, her chest heaving. The medical monitors began blaring sharp alarms.

Gasping for air, she used all her strength to scream, "It turns out she's your ex-wife!"

"Carter, she's just jealous! Jealous that I can give you children, jealous that I'm going to be Mrs. Sterling!"

I calmly tossed my blood-stained gauze into the biohazard bin, picked up the medical chart, and waved it slowly in front of Carter's face. "Mr. Sterling, a ruptured pelvic abscess triggered sepsis. If your fiancée had arrived forty minutes later, she'd be lying in the morgue right now."

Before Carter could take the chart, Chloe snatched it away. "Carter, she's lying! She's framing me!"

"Because she knows you divorced her for me, she's using her position to get revenge!"

Chloe aggressively ripped the IV needle out of her hand. "Look, Carter! She intentionally missed the vein, and she pinched me all over! Look at all these bruises, even on my neck!"

"She even threatened me! She said she was going to leak my medical records to the press, so everyone would know that Carter Sterling married a woman inferior to her!"

I turned my head to look at Chloe.

Her body was indeed covered in dark purple bruises and hickeys.

But those were there the moment she was admitted.

Obviously, they were the aftermath of a wild sexual encounter.

Carter pulled her into his arms, stepping heavily on the medical chart that had fallen to the floor. "Sarah, years ago you used my grandfather's life-saving medicine to force me to marry you. That failed, and now you want to destroy Chloe?"

He let out a scoff. "Mercy General Hospital? You think you're worthy of working here?"

"It seems I was too merciful when we divorced, allowing you to think you could touch my woman."

"Sarah, I guess you've never experienced the consequences of crossing Carter Sterling."

As his words fell, two bodyguards stepped forward swiftly, pinning my arms behind my back.

I was forced to bow in front of Carter and Chloe.

I looked up at him, my voice dripping with mockery. "Carter, aren't you curious why she refused to consent to the surgery even if it meant her death?"

The bodyguards tightened the leather restraints around my wrists, the straps biting into my flesh, sending sharp pains throughout my body.

My body hadn't fully recovered from the traumatic hemorrhage during childbirth, and I was still nursing. Being forced to bend over exacerbated the dull ache in my abdomen.

Cold sweat poured down my face. I enunciated every word clearly. "She has the contact info of seventeen different 'sugar daddies' in her phone, and she booked hotel rooms with three different men just last week. Call your private doctor right now and ask him just how severe the consequences of an extremely promiscuous lifestyle can be!"