Chapter 3

He didn't speak for a full minute.

I watched the calculation happening behind his eyes — the billionaire algorithm running numbers, outcomes, possibilities. What do three heirs cost? What do three heartbeats mean for his company? For his dead mother's will?

Then he looked at me, and the algorithm died.

"My mother," he said slowly, "had a condition. A genetic one. She died giving birth to me."

The words landed like stones in still water.

"I was tested last year." He pulled off his wet jacket, draped it over my kitchen chair like he belonged here. "I carry the same gene. Any child I father has a forty percent chance of inheriting it. But only if the mother carries a specific marker."

He turned to face me.

"You don't have it, Isabella. I had my team analyze the blood from the hotel sheets. You're clean. You're rare. And somehow — against every odd — you're carrying three."

I gripped the counter harder. "You tested my blood without my consent?"

"I tested evidence from my own property." His voice was flat again, but his hands were shaking. Barely. Almost invisible. "You're not just carrying my children. You're carrying the only healthy heirs I will ever have."

The room felt smaller.

"You don't want me," I said quietly. "You want my womb."

"Yes."

"No. That's not how this works."

He stepped closer. Close enough that I could smell rain and expensive cologne and something underneath — something like grief.

"Then tell me how it works," he said. "Because I don't know. I've never done this. I've never wanted to do this. But those three heartbeats are the only thing keeping my mother's legacy alive."

"Your mother's legacy?"

"She built Black Industries. Not my father. Not me. Her. And before she died, she made me promise —" His voice broke. He looked away. "She made me promise I'd have children. That I wouldn't let her bloodline die."

I should have felt sorry for him.

I did feel sorry for him.

But pity wasn't the same as surrender.

"I'm not signing that contract," I said.

His jaw tightened.

"I'm not moving into your penthouse."

His hands curled into fists.

"And I'm not giving you my babies."

"Isabella —"

"I'll make you a counter-offer instead."

---

He tilted his head. Curious. Dangerous.

"What counter-offer?"

I walked to my tiny kitchen table, pulled out a chair, and sat down. My belly brushed the edge. Three heartbeats. Three lives depending on me to be smarter than this.

"You stay here," I said.

He blinked. "Here? In this... closet?"

"It's an apartment. And yes. You want to monitor the pregnancy? You want to be present? Then you live my life for the next seven months. No penthouse. No private chefs. No bodyguards driving you anywhere."

"That's absurd."

"That's the deal."

He stared at me like I'd just asked him to set fire to his own money.

"Why?" he asked finally.

"Because you don't know me, Alexander. You know my blood type and my family name and the fact that I was a virgin eight weeks ago. You don't know what I eat for breakfast. You don't know that I talk to plants. You don't know that I cry at dog commercials."

"I don't cry at anything."

"Exactly." I leaned back, crossed my arms over my belly. "You're a ghost. You've been a ghost since your mother died. And I will not hand my children to a ghost."

Something flickered across his face. Anger. Confusion. And underneath it — something raw and painfully young.

"You want me to live with you?"

"I want you to prove you're human."

The rain hammered against my window. The radiator hissed. Somewhere downstairs, a baby was crying — a strange echo of the three heartbeats between us.

Alexander Black looked at my secondhand furniture. My chipped mugs. My sad little succulent on the windowsill.

Then he looked at me.

"One condition," he said.

"I'm listening."

"No lies." His voice was barely a whisper now. "No secrets. You tell me everything about your family. About why you're hiding. About your father — the man who's supposed to be dead."

I went cold.

"How do you know he's not?"

Alexander pulled his phone from his pocket. He swiped once, twice, then handed it to me.

On the screen was a photograph.

A man. Grey hair. Grey suit. Standing outside a cafe in Switzerland.

A man who looked exactly like my father.

The father who'd died in a car accident six years ago.

"He's been watching you," Alexander said quietly. "For years. And now that you're carrying my children — he wants to meet."