Chapter 10: Shattered Truth

"Back then," Pete continued, his voice calm as though he was explaining something ordinary. He slipped one hand into his pocket and looked around casually, not noticing the heavy silence his words had created around him. "Zoe wanted a baby but couldn't raise one herself. As her friend, I was just helping her. What's wrong with that?"

He spoke without the slightest hint of guilt. His tone carried confidence, almost pride, as though he believed he had done something noble.

Eric stared at him, stunned.

Martins, who had been lounging comfortably on the couch, slowly leaned forward with interest. A crooked smile appeared on his face as if the story had suddenly become more entertaining to him.

"You're something, Pete," Martins said, shaking his head slightly while chuckling under his breath. "But what happened to your baby with Petra?"

Pete paused.

For a brief second, his face tightened as if the question annoyed him. Then he released a slow sigh and looked upward toward the ceiling, as though the topic was nothing but a small inconvenience.

"Don't bring it up," he said nonchalantly.

His voice carried impatience, as if he had already grown tired of the conversation.

********************

Petra struggled to remain standing.

Her legs had begun to tremble so badly that she could no longer feel the ground beneath her feet with any certainty. The boutique around her had dissolved into a kind of meaningless blur.

The only thing that existed now was the sound of Pete's voice and the devastating weight of every word it carried.

Her breathing came in shallow, uneven pulls, each one harder to manage than the last. Her chest felt impossibly tight, as though something had wrapped itself around her ribs and was slowly, deliberately squeezing.

She moved without fully thinking, her hand reaching blindly to the side until her fingers found the cold metal of a clothing rack pole.

She grabbed it and held on, gripping it with both hands as if releasing it would mean sinking entirely.

A sharp, involuntary gasp escaped her throat.

Hot tears welled up and spilled over without permission, tracing long, quiet lines down her cheeks.

Beside her, Malcolm had been watching her closely. The moment he saw her body begin to sway, he stepped in without hesitation, his hand wrapping firmly around her arm to steady her, grounding her in a moment that felt anything but real.

But Petra's eyes remained fixed straight ahead, her gaze cutting through the racks and the distance between her and the man she had built her life around.

Inside the boutique, Pete continued speaking with the same easy, unbothered confidence he had carried all afternoon, completely unaware that each word leaving his mouth was landing somewhere like broken glass.

"Petra's baby was a stillborn," Pete said casually. "How off-putting."

Those words hit like something physical.

Petra's entire body jerked as though she had been struck. Her mouth fell open, her jaw trembling, and for one long, terrible moment no sound came out at all, just the silent shape of a cry that her body couldn't yet release.

Then it came, fractured and breathless, escaping through her lips in broken gasps as her chest heaved rapidly up and down.

The pain was unlike anything she knew how to name.

Because she remembered that day. She remembered every unbearable detail of it — the cold brightness of the hospital lights overhead, the sterile smell of the room, the sounds that had surrounded her while her body was still recovering from labor. She remembered the nurses moving around her with careful, practiced efficiency. She remembered the moment the baby had been taken away, wrapped and silent.

She remembered the quiet, devastating words someone had spoken to her; words that had told her the child had not survived.

She had believed them without question.

She had carried that grief home.

She had mourned that baby, privately, completely, and for years, while continuing to get up every morning and function as though the world still made some kind of sense.

And now, standing behind a clothing rack in a boutique on an ordinary afternoon, she was being asked to understand that none of it had been true.

Inside the mall, Pete had already moved on from the topic entirely, his body angled toward Zoe with warmth replacing the brief flicker of irritation the question had caused.

He lifted his hand and curled it gently around the back of her neck, drawing her a little closer with the ease of someone who had performed that gesture a thousand times.

"So I simply let her raise our child," he said smoothly, the faint trace of amusement still resting in his voice.

He looked at Zoe with something almost fond in his expression.

"Raising a child is messy and exhausting. How could I ever let you go through that?"

Zoe responded with a soft, delighted giggle. She tilted her head slightly and gazed up at him, admiration sitting openly in her eyes. Her hand drifted up and rested lightly against his chest as her lips curved into a slow, contented smile.

"You always know how to take care of me," she said softly.

Watching the two of them from where he stood, Eric felt the discomfort he had been quietly managing since the very first confession finally rise past a level he could swallow down.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his expression tightening as he looked between them.

"That doesn't seem fair to Petra," he said quietly.

The words were barely out before the atmosphere changed.

Zoe's smile vanished as though it had never been there. Her expression hardened with swift, sharp precision, the softness in her eyes replaced immediately by something cold and irritated.

She had barely drawn breath to respond when Martins cut in ahead of her.

"Fairness?" he scoffed, the word leaving his mouth with open contempt.

He leaned further forward on the couch, his elbows dropping to his knees, his gaze sliding toward Eric with obvious disdain.

"She'd have to earn it herself," he continued sharply, his tone leaving no room for disagreement. "She's dependent on Pete."

He sat back slightly and rolled one shoulder in a careless shrug.

"She's lucky he didn't divorce her."

Behind the clothing racks, Petra's grip on the metal pole gave way completely.

Her fingers slipped. Her knees buckled. The last reserves of strength she had been fighting to hold onto simply ran out, and her body tilted sideways with nothing left to stop it.

Malcolm moved instantly. His arms came around her shoulders quickly and pulled her against him before she could reach the floor, holding her weight with both hands as he steadied her against his chest.

And that was the moment Petra finally, completely broke.

The cry that came out of her was not loud; it was the other kind, the kind that comes from somewhere too deep for volume, raw and fractured and full of years.

"My baby…" she wept, her voice shaking so badly the words barely held their shape. Her hands found Malcolm's shirt and grabbed hold of it tightly. "Malcolm… my… my baby is dead!"

Each repetition of the words seemed to crack her open further, her body trembling without stop inside his arms.

Malcolm held her firmly, his voice dropping low and urgent.

"Petra… Petra…" he said, trying to reach her through the grief. "Hold yourself together."

Slowly, with tremendous effort, her sobbing began to quiet. Her breathing remained jagged and fast, her face swollen and wet, her eyes seeing nothing clearly.

For several long seconds she was silent.

Then her voice returned, barely a whisper, hoarse and hollowed out.

"The child I've been raising isn't my own."