HIS BABY, NOT HIS WIFE

POV: Myra Carter

I walked up the front steps of my childhood home with my mother's prescription folded in my palm, and the moment I pushed the front door open, two men in gray uniforms were already carrying our dining room chairs past me toward a large white truck parked on the curb.

"What is going on here?" I asked, stepping back into the doorway so the man carrying the heavy end wouldn't run into me, but he didn't even look at my face as he kept walking toward the driveway.

"Bank repossession, miss," the taller man said, pointing a clipboard toward the living room where my brother was standing near the empty center rug with his head down. "Everything on the list has to go today, so you need to move out of the way before someone trips over you."

"Leo, where is Mom?" I called out, rushing across the bare floor toward my younger brother, and he slowly pointed toward the back bedroom before wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

"She's in her room crying, Myra, and I didn't know what to do because I just got back from the campus office and they told me my registration was canceled," Leo said, his voice shaking as he grabbed my arm and looked at me with red eyes. "They told me Dad's check bounced two weeks ago, so I can't even go back to classes until the tuition for this term is cleared."

"Sit down on the stairs for a minute, Leo, because I need to see Mom first and then we'll figure out what to do next," I said, putting my hand on his shoulder before turning around to walk down the hallway to my mother's bedroom.

My mother was sitting on the edge of her bare mattress with her medicine bottle held tightly in both hands, and her chest was heaving so hard that I could barely hear the men talking in the living room as they cleared out the rest of the lower floor.

"Myra, your father left us," she sobbed, looking up at me with tears running down her cheeks, and her body was shaking so badly that the pill bottle was rattling in her grasp. "The bank agent came here an hour ago with court papers and told me that your father signed over the house as collateral for his company loan three months ago, and now the business has completely collapsed and he isn't answering his phone."

"Mom, look at me," I said, kneeling right in front of her and taking the medicine bottle from her cold hands so I could set it down on the floor. "I have a little bit of money left in my savings account from my last paycheck, and I'm going to take care of your medicine today while I call Uncle Richard and see if he can help us with a loan."

"He won't help us, Myra," she whispered, shaking her head as she leaned forward to rest her forehead against my shoulder. "Your father borrowed fifty thousand dollars from him last month and never paid it back, and now everyone in the city knows that his company went under overnight."

"I have to try anyway, Mom, because we can't just give up like this," I told her, helping her lie back down on the bed before standing up and pulling my phone out of my purse.

I walked back down the hall and out onto the porch, ignoring the moving crew as they loaded the last of our sofa cushions into the back of their truck, and I dialed my uncle's phone number while standing in the cold shade of the roof.

"Hello, Uncle Richard, it's Myra," I said as soon as the line connected, holding the phone close to my ear so I could hear him over the sound of the truck engine starting up in front of the yard.

"Myra, if you're calling about your father's mess, you are wasting your time," his voice came through the speaker, flat and completely devoid of any sympathy. "Your father dragged everyone down with him when he ran away, and I'm not giving your family another dime because you are trying to save a sinking ship that already hit the bottom."

"Uncle Richard, we don't even have enough money to cover Mom's monthly treatment and Leo got kicked out of his college today," I begged, walking down the steps toward the empty driveway as the truck pulled away into the street. "We just need enough to secure a small apartment for a few months until I find a second job."

"Your father owes millions to the bank and to private investors, Myra, and if people find out I'm helping his family, they will come after my company next," he said cold-heartedly, and before I could say another word, the line went completely dead.

I stood by the curb for five minutes, scrolling through my contacts and calling every single family friend, cousin, and former neighbor who used to come to our house for dinner, but every single call went straight to voicemail or ended with a quick excuse before they hung up on me.

By eight o'clock that evening, I was sitting on a bench outside the pharmacy down the street from the hospital, holding a tiny paper bag containing my mother's pills that had taken the very last dollar out of my checking account.

My phone screen was completely blank, my hands were numb from the cold, and I was staring at the dirty pavement under my feet when the screen suddenly lit up with a notification from an unknown private number.

I tapped the text message with a trembling thumb, expecting another collection agency warning me about my father's unpaid accounts, but the text contained a formal document header from a legal firm. 

The message read that a private agency was currently looking for a temporary surrogate candidate for a high-net-worth client, and the base compensation listed at the bottom was two million dollars upon the completion of the delivery.

I gasped as I stared at the line of zeros, reading it three times to make sure my tired eyes weren't playing tricks on me, because two million dollars was enough money to clear every debt my father left behind, pay off Leo's tuition for the rest of his degree, and buy my mother a small home where she could live in peace.

I scrolled further down the page to read the client details, and my heart completely stopped when my eyes hit the bold name typed across the middle section of the form.

The intended father was Aiden Blackwood, the billionaire owner of Blackwood Enterprises and one of the most powerful men in the entire state.

I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, rubbing my temples as I re-read the last section of the agreement, which stated clearly that the surrogate candidate would be required to sign a strict non-disclosure agreement, follow every medical mandate, and live under the same roof as Aiden Blackwood and his fiancée for the entire duration of the pregnancy.

My phone was down to two percent battery, my mother was waiting in a bare house with no furniture, and my brother was sitting on the floor of his empty bedroom with no future left to hold onto.

I opened my eyes, tapped the blue link attached to the bottom of the message, and typed my name directly into the application form before standing up from the bench.

"How bad can one year possibly be?" I asked myself, hitting the submit button just as my phone battery died completely, leaving me standing in total darkness on the empty street.