CHAPTER SIX: THREE MONTHS AND COUNTING

I put the photograph back exactly where I found it.

Slid it between the same pages. Pushed the book back into its gap on the shelf. Stood back and made sure nothing looked disturbed.

Then I sat in one of the chairs by the window and pressed both hands flat against my stomach and did the arithmetic I'd been avoiding since I walked through the front doors of this house.

Thirteen weeks.

Not a rough estimate. Not a maybe. Thirteen weeks confirmed by a clinic on a Tuesday morning I'd rescheduled twice because scheduling it made it real, and real was something I hadn't been ready for.

I'd taken the test alone in my apartment bathroom at six in the morning with the door locked even though I lived by myself. I'd sat on the cold tile floor after and looked at the result for a long time without moving. Then I'd gotten up, washed my face, made coffee, and gone to work because there was a deadline and the deadline didn't care what the test said.

That was three weeks ago.

I hadn't told anyone. Not Vesna, who would have driven over immediately and held my hand and cried harder than me. Not Lyra, who would have made it about herself within four minutes. Nobody.

Just me and the number and the quiet arithmetic of a situation with no clean solution.

Now I sat in Damien Cross's library with his family's torn photograph two shelves behind me and looked out at the Halvenmoor cliffs and did the calculation I'd been refusing to finish.

Thirteen weeks back from today landed on a masked charity gala.

A work event. A client I'd dressed up for and delivered mock-ups to and been immediately forgotten by. I'd stayed because Vesna told me to stop leaving parties early, and because the champagne was genuinely good, and because for one evening I was tired of being the responsible one.

There had been a courtyard. Dark, quiet, away from the noise.

A man had found me there.

We hadn't talked about much. He wasn't the kind of man who filled silence with noise just to fill it, and I wasn't either, and somehow that had been the whole thing — two people standing in the dark being quiet together in a way that didn't feel like nothing.

Grey eyes. Pale and very still.

I pressed my hands harder against my stomach.

The Cross family portrait hung on the library wall across from me. Marcus Cross — Damien's father, based on the plaque beneath it. Broader than Damien. Heavier in the jaw. But the eyes were there. Same pale grey passed down like a family debt.

I looked at that portrait and I looked at my hands and I thought about the photograph with the torn face and Damien at breakfast this morning asking about a scar I didn't have.

You don't.

He already knew something was wrong. He didn't have the full picture yet but he was collecting pieces and Damien Cross was not a man who left puzzles unfinished.

I had thirteen weeks of pregnancy and an unknown number of days before he put everything together.

I pulled out my phone and called Lyra.

It rang four times.

"You've reached Lyra. Leave a—"

"Call me back." I kept my voice low and flat. "Lyra. Call me back today. Not tomorrow. Today."

I hung up.

Sat there another minute.

Then I opened my messages and looked at the blank space where the unknown number's text had been. Don't get comfortable. You're not who they think you are. Gone. Deleted. Clean as if it never existed.

Someone in this house — or close enough to it — knew I wasn't Lyra. And they hadn't gone to Damien with it. They'd come to me instead.

Which meant they wanted something.

People who knew secrets and stayed quiet always wanted something.

My phone buzzed.

I grabbed it fast.

Not Lyra. A local number I didn't recognise. I stared at it through two more rings then answered.

"Mrs. Cross." A woman's voice. Crisp, professional, faintly familiar. "This is Dr. Reeves. Halvenmoor Maternal Health. We received a referral this morning for a new patient registration under your name." A pause. "I wanted to personally confirm your first appointment. We have Thursday at eleven available."

I went very still.

"I didn't make a referral," I said carefully.

"No," she said. "It was made on your behalf. By Mr. Cross's office."

The library was completely silent around me.

"He requested our most senior consultant," Dr. Reeves continued. "And full discretion. Those were his exact words. Full discretion."

I lowered the phone from my ear and stared at the wall.

Damien had booked me a maternal health appointment.

Not a general physician. Not a standard check. A maternal health consultant. Full discretion.

He knew.

He already knew.

And he hadn't said a single word to my face about any of it.