2. AND HE HAD A BROTHER

🌹TESSA🌹

Ten months ago I was still Tessa Hart, billionaire heiress to the Hart Group of Companies.

I was twenty-two years old and I still believed that if I was good enough, patient enough, quiet enough, the people around me would eventually see me the way I wanted to be seen. I still believed that love was something you earned through obedience and that if I just did everything right, someone would finally choose me.

I was wrong about all of it.

The day everything fell apart, I walked into Lucien's penthouse and found him in bed with another woman.

He told me my body did not appeal to him.

My mother told me to lose weight.

My father told me my feelings did not matter.

That night, I went to a club and met a man. He told me I was beautiful and the rest happened so fast.

A month later, I found out I was pregnant. Before I could tell anyone, my fiancé found out and called off our engagement. And my parents disowned me for bringing shame to the family.

I walked out of my family home with two hundred dollars in my wallet and nowhere to go.

Two weeks after that, I stood in front of Raymond Reddington's estate and told him I was carrying his child.

He offered me a contract—“This is what is going to happen,” he said, and his voice was calm and matter-of-fact, like he was discussing a business deal. “You are going to give birth to the baby. And you are going to hand it over to me. And you will take the money I give you and you will disappear. You will never contact me again. You will keep your mouth…”

"Ms Hart? Are you alright?"

I blinked and the hospital room came back into focus. The nurse stood in front of me with a concerned expression, a clipboard in her hand, and I realized I had been staring at the empty bassinet for God knows how long.

"I am fine," I said, but my voice came out wrong, thin and scratchy like I had not used it in hours.

The nurse looked at me for a moment longer, like she was trying to decide if she believed me, then she nodded and consulted her clipboard. "You are physically stable, but we are going to keep you here for the next five to seven days just to monitor you. Make sure everything is healing properly."

I nodded. I did not care about monitoring. I did not care about healing. I did not care about anything except the empty bassinet beside me, the envelope on the table, the way my chest felt like someone had reached inside and scooped everything out.

"The bills have been paid," the nurse added, and I felt the words land somewhere in my stomach, heavy and cold. "You do not have to worry about that."

I nodded again. Of course they had been paid. That was the point, was it not? He paid and I disappeared and now I was sitting here with nothing but an empty bassinet, an envelope full of money that I did not want to touch.

I looked at the nurse. I opened my mouth, I closed it and I opened it again.

"You can bring him now." I said with a shaky voice.

The nurse's face softened. She nodded and left the room. I sat there with my hands in my lap and my eyes on the door and I waited. I did not know what I was going to do when they brought him back. I did not know how I was going to look at him without falling apart.

The door opened and the nurse came back in carrying him. He was wrapped in the same blue blanket, so small, so perfect, and I felt something inside me crack open when I saw him.

She handed him to me and I held him and I pressed him against my chest. I felt his warmth through the blanket. I felt his heartbeat against my own. I could not stop the tears that came, the hot tears I had been holding back since the door closed behind Raymond, since the lawyer had taken the contract, since I had signed my name.

"He is healthy," the nurse said. She smiled at me and left the room.

I sat there with my son in my arms and I cried. I held him. I breathed him in. I memorized every part of him. The curve of his nose. The softness of his skin. The way his tiny fingers curled around nothing.

He was so small. So fragile. So perfect.

And he had a brother.

I had given birth to twins. I had not known until the moment they came out, one after the other. The doctors had looked at me with surprise. The nurses had moved quickly. I had lain there with my body screaming and my mind reeling and I had thought, two. There are two.

I had not told Raymond. I could not tell Raymond. I had already agreed to give him one child. I had signed the contract. I had taken the money. I cannot give him both. I cannot give away both of my children.

So I made a choice. I told no one.

I begged.

I do not remember everything I said.

I remember crying.

I remember telling them that if they took both of my babies, there would be nothing left of me.

I remember a doctor looking at me for a very long time. She saw the desperation in my eyes, the way I was barely holding myself together.

And then she looked away and said quietly,

“The second child will remain off the paperwork.”

I looked down at the baby in my arms. His eyes were closed. His chest rose and fell in that fast shallow way newborns breathe and I watched it like I was counting every single one.

He looked like his father. That was what made it hurt the most. The same gray eyes. The same sharpness in his features. I looked at him and I saw Raymond and I felt my chest tighten because I knew this child would grow up looking exactly like the man who had paid me to forget about his brother.

The other one looked like him too. They were identical. Two perfect little boys with their father's eyes and their father's face. I had given one away and kept the other. No one would ever know.

I pressed my lips to his forehead. I breathed him in. The tears fell onto his blanket and I did not wipe them away.

"I am sorry," I whispered. "I am so sorry. I could not keep you both."

He made a small sound, a coo, and I felt it in my bones.

The money I had been paid for his brother sat on the table in that cream envelope. The money that felt like blood on my hands. But what else was I supposed to do? I had nothing. I had no one. I had been disowned and discarded. I was sitting in a hospital room with a baby in my arms and no idea how I was going to survive tomorrow, let alone the next eighteen years.

I had made a choice. The wrong choice, maybe. The only choice I had.

I pressed my lips to his forehead one more time.

Nobody would ever find out. I would make sure of it. No one would ever know about the second son. No one would ever know that Raymond Reddington had twins and one of them was hidden away with a mother who could barely take care of herself. I would protect this child with everything I had. I would keep him safe. I would give him the life I could not give his brother.

I looked down at him and I smiled through my tears. I pressed him closer to my chest.

"Welcome to the world, Wayne Hart."