Conditions

**Colette**

Victor returned an hour later, a thick stack of documents under his arm. He set it heavily on the table in front of me.

“A contract,” he explained. “You agree to carry this pregnancy to term and hand the child over to us at birth. In exchange, your father’s company will be saved. All his debts will be wiped clean, and you will personally receive six million dollars.”

Six million. More money than I would ever see in a lifetime.

“And if I refuse?” I asked, though the answer seemed obvious.

“Your family loses everything. You stay here, but without any compensation.” His gaze turned icy. “My employer will have this child one way or another. This arrangement simply allows you to profit from it.”

I glanced at the pages covered in dense legal jargon. Yet one detail struck me as I skimmed the clauses.

“It says ‘the child.’ Singular.” I looked up at him, my heart racing.

Victor nodded. “Yes. The child you’re carrying.”

I lowered my eyes to the papers again, carefully rereading every paragraph. Every mention specified: “The child.” “The baby.” Always singular.

They didn’t know.

The doctor had told me three days earlier, during what was supposed to be my pre-abortion consultation. I had gone there to end it, and the verdict had fallen: “Colette, you’re expecting twins.” The shock had left me frozen in front of the ultrasound, staring at those two tiny lives. I had left the clinic dazed, canceling the appointment, the world collapsing beneath my feet once more.

But I hadn’t told anyone. Not my roommate, not my father. Only Dr. Martinez and I knew the secret. And Victor’s employer clearly hadn’t investigated that far.

“I need time to go over all of this,” I said, forcing my voice to stay neutral. “Can I give you my answer tomorrow?”

Victor narrowed his eyes slightly. “You have two hours. I’ll be back then.”

The moment he left, I read every line three times. The document was legally airtight, but it only concerned one newborn. One baby to surrender.

Which meant he would never know about the second one.

My hand settled on my stomach in a fierce protective gesture. Signing this contract meant abandoning one child, and that certainty tore at my heart. But refusing, trying to run with nothing, meant losing them both. I couldn’t raise two newborns on the streets with no money and no medical care.

This way, at least one of my babies would grow up in wealth and safety. And the other… the other would be mine. I could keep him, protect him, and love him. It was a horrible, unfair prospect, but it was the only way out.

When Victor reappeared, I took the document.

“I have one condition,” I said, pointing at the text. “I want impeccable prenatal care from the best specialists. I want to make sure the baby is developing properly.”

“That’s completely legitimate. My employer wants to guarantee…”

“And I want an absolute confidentiality clause,” I interrupted. “No one except the doctor I choose will examine me or look at my file. I refuse to have your employer’s men present at my appointments.”

Victor hesitated for a moment. “That’s acceptable, provided you send us regular reports on the child’s health.”

“The child’s health,” I repeated, staring straight into his eyes. “Agreed. After the birth, I take the money and disappear from your lives. No contact with your employer or with his child. Ever.”

“That’s exactly what’s planned. Sign here, here, and there.” He pointed to the spots marked with small sticky notes.

My hand trembled as I picked up the pen. This was madness. It was deeply immoral. But I no longer had a choice. I signed three times, selling one of my children for six million dollars and my family’s survival.

“Excellent.” Victor gathered the pages. “I’ll have your things transferred here. The medical team will come tomorrow for an initial check-up.”

“Can I call my parents to reassure them?”

“No outside contact. That’s the rule. The fewer people who know, the better.” He headed for the door. “Dinner will be brought to you shortly. Rest. The next seven months are going to be long.”

The door closed. Alone at last, I curled up on the luxurious bed and finally let the tears come, my hands pressed against my stomach.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered through a sob. “I have to let one of you go… But I swear I’ll find a way to protect the other. They’ll never know anything.”

I had no idea how I was going to hide a twin pregnancy or arrange a secret birth. But I had seven months to figure it out. And I would. I had to. Losing one child was agony, but abandoning both was beyond what I could bear.

Months later, rain hammered violently against the suite’s windows, punctuated by the low rumbles of thunder. I clutched my enormous belly, trying to match my breathing to another contraction that twisted my insides.

“They’re getting closer,” I managed to say to Dr. Reyes, the obstetrician who had been monitoring me.

She checked her watch. “Contractions are four minutes apart. We need to get you to the delivery room immediately.”

These past eight months had felt like a century, locked in this gilded cage, watching my body expand dramatically. My belly had grown far too large for a single baby, but I had spent my time wearing loose clothes and loudly complaining about water retention and bloating so Victor wouldn’t suspect a thing.

The medical staff had been attentive, especially Dr. Reyes. It was to her that I had been forced to confide my secret in the third month, when the twin pregnancy became impossible to hide during the mandatory ultrasounds.

I remembered how she had frozen when she discovered the second heartbeat on the screen, her face shifting from shock to dread as she grasped the legal implications.

“Colette… there are two…” she had whispered.

“Please,” I had begged, crushing her hands. “Don’t tell them. If they find out, they’ll take both. But the contract only mentions one baby.”

“I can’t lie to my employer, Colette…”

“They destroyed my father’s company!” I had cried, tears in my eyes. “They ruined him. He had a heart attack from the stress two weeks ago. I have nothing left—no family, no home. If I break this contract, they’ll finish destroying me. But let me save one. Let me keep one of my children.”

My distress and the story of Owen’s betrayal had finally swayed the doctor. She had taken me in her arms.

“I had a daughter,” she had confided in a voice heavy with old grief. “I lost her to leukemia when she was three. I couldn’t do anything to save her. But you… you have a chance to protect yours. I won’t take that away from you.”

From that day on, she became my accomplice. At every exam she carefully angled the screen so the room’s surveillance cameras only captured one fetus, and she systematically falsified the medical reports.

But Dr. Reyes couldn’t handle the delivery alone. Over the weeks, two nurses, a midwife, and the night guard had eventually discovered the pink elephant during routine shifts. I had approached them one by one, fear in my stomach, to offer a deal.

“Two hundred thousand dollars total. Forty thousand for each of you.” I had shown them proof of an inheritance account from my grandmother, held in a trust that Owen’s lawyers hadn’t been able to touch. “All I ask is that you stay quiet and help me hide the second baby for a few hours after the birth.”

Some had hesitated. Léon, the guard, feared retaliation from his boss. Nurse Marie worried about losing her license. But my story had eventually awakened their humanity.

“No child should be torn from his mother like that,” Marie had said, whose own husband had won sole custody of their children years earlier. “I’ll help you.”

Eight months later, the conspiracy numbered six people. Dr. Reyes had scheduled my C-section for an evening when Victor was supposed to be away on business. Léon had arranged to be on duty, and the medical team was ready.

The plan was precarious in its simplicity: deliver the twins, but officially declare only one. The second child would be immediately hidden in the medical supply room, where a makeshift bassinet and supplies had already been set up. He would have to be kept quiet until Victor and his men collected the first baby and left. Then the staff would smuggle my second child out, concealed in a medical laundry bag.

My friend Sarah had agreed to pick him up outside the property without asking questions. I had invented a dark story about a highly contentious custody battle with a violent ex. She knew nothing of the truth, only that she was to look after the newborn until I was free to join him.

It was risky. A thousand details could make the operation fail. But it was my only chance.

“Three more weeks,” Dr. Reyes had murmured during our final consultation. “And you’ll walk out of here with your baby.”

With one of them, I had corrected silently. The other would be handed over to a stranger, that shadowy man who had bought my blood like a simple commodity. My heart broke at the thought, but saving one life was better than losing both.

They had all agreed to help me, whether out of pure greed or out of humanity. I didn’t care about their real motivations, as long as they kept their word tonight.