CHAPTER 3 — UNSPOKEN TRUTHS

POV: Yessica | Location: New York

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She should have gone back to sleep.

She knew that. She was lying in the dark in the guest room with her hand on her stomach and her phone face-down and the silver box on the nightstand, and the rational thing — the self-preserving thing — was to put the pillow over her head and not hear any more than she already had.

She didn't move.

Catherine's voice again, carrying through the wall with the particular clarity of a woman who had never once considered that walls were thin:

"You married beneath yourself. I said it at the time. Your father said it. You were twenty-nine and flattered and she was pretty enough to distract you from that."

"Mother—"

"I'm not being unkind. I'm being accurate." A pause. "Three years, Lewis. Three years and what has she contributed? No connections. No business sense. No understanding of what this family requires. She throws dinner parties you don't attend and waits by the phone like a secretary."

"That's not fair."

"Fairness is a luxury." Catherine's tone sharpened. "You are about to close the largest deal Sterling Capital has seen in a decade. The Singapore expansion changes everything. And you need a wife who understands that. Who supports it. Not one who puts candles on a table and sulks when you're building something that matters."

Yessica pressed her fingers flat against the wall.

"She doesn't sulk—"

"She made you feel guilty for working." A beat. "That's worse than sulking. That's management."

Lewis said nothing.

The silence on his end was the kind that meant he was listening rather than disagreeing. Yessica had learned his silences. She knew this one.

"The question isn't whether your marriage has problems," Catherine said. "It clearly does. The question is whether you address them properly or let them fester until they become expensive." Her voice was measured. Deliberate. "Natalie Westbrook asked about you last month. At the Harrington gala. I thought you should know."

"I'm married, Mother."

"You're unhappy. That's different."

"You don't know that."

"Lewis." A pause that carried thirty years of certainty. "I know you better than you know yourself. I have since you were seven years old. And right now you're in your study at midnight defending a woman who just accused you of not caring, when what you actually need is someone who understands what you're building." Another pause. "Natalie understands. She always did."

The floorboard shifted. Lewis pacing.

"This isn't a conversation I want to have tonight," he said.

"I know. That's why I'm having it for you." Catherine's voice softened — not warmly, but strategically. "I'm not asking you to do anything tonight. I'm asking you to think. You have time. Handle Singapore first. Then assess your situation clearly, without sentiment."

"She's my wife."

"She's a mistake you made when you were lonely." A pause. "That's not a criticism. It's context."

The call ended.

Silence from down the hall.

Then footsteps. Lewis moving through the study, through the living room. Stopping outside the guest room door.

Yessica didn't breathe.

A long pause.

He knocked once. Soft.

She didn't answer.

His footsteps retreated toward the master bedroom.

---

She lay awake until four AM.

Not crying. She'd moved past crying somewhere around two o'clock, past anger somewhere around three, and landed in a place that was colder and clearer than either.

A mistake you made when you were lonely.

She turned the words over. Examined them.

The thing about Catherine Sterling was that she wasn't entirely wrong. That was always the most devastating thing about her — she took the piece of truth available and weaponized it with surgical precision. Lewis had been lonely. He'd been thirty-two and driven and emotionally sealed off, and she'd been twenty-five and genuinely interested in him and he'd mistaken that for compatibility.

She got it now. She finally got it.

Three years. A beautiful apartment and a platinum ring and a husband who was technically present but operationally absent, and a mother-in-law who had been running a quiet campaign since the wedding.

And a silver box on the nightstand.

Yessica looked at it in the dark.

The baby didn't know about any of this. The baby was eight weeks old and had a heartbeat and was completely indifferent to Singapore deals and Natalie Westbrook and Catherine's thirty years of certainty. The baby just existed. Stubbornly, quietly, impossibly.

She's a mistake you made when you were lonely.

Yessica pressed her hand to her stomach.

"You're not a mistake," she said. Quietly. To the dark. "Whatever else is happening — you're not a mistake."

---

She made breakfast at seven.

Not for Lewis. For herself. Eggs, toast, orange juice. She sat at the kitchen counter and ate all of it and didn't make his plate.

Lewis appeared at seven-twenty. Stopped when he saw the single setting.

He looked at it for a moment. Looked at her.

She met his eyes without expression.

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Went to the coffee machine and poured his own cup and stood at the counter with three feet of marble between them.

"About last night," he said.

"Which part."

"I was on the phone late. My mother—"

"I know," Yessica said.

He stilled. "What do you know?"

She looked at him over her coffee. "I know it was your mother. And I know it was late." She kept her voice level. "That's all."

Lewis studied her face. Looking for the shape of what she'd heard.

She gave him nothing.

"She worries," he said. "You know what she's like."

"Yes." Yessica picked up her plate. Rinsed it. Set it in the rack. "I know exactly what she's like."

She picked up her bag from the counter.

"I have a doctor's appointment this morning," she said.

"Everything okay?"

She looked at him.

At the face of the man who had called their baby complicated. Who had stood in his study with a phone in his hand while his mother called his marriage a mistake, and said nothing that sounded like no.

"Routine," she said.

She walked to the elevator.

The doors closed between them.

She pressed the lobby button. Watched the floor numbers count down.

Eight weeks along. A heartbeat already. A silver box still on the nightstand in the guest room.

Lewis hadn't asked what was inside it.

He hadn't asked once.

In the lobby, she pulled out her phone. Found the contact she'd saved two weeks ago from the business card she'd found in his coat pocket. Rafferty Montague. Montague Ventures.

She stared at the name.

Not for that. She wasn't calling for that.

She was calling because Rafferty Montague had handed her that card at a charity gala six months ago, looked at her with the eyes of someone who understood what a drowning person looked like, and said: "I have a colleague. Family law. If you ever need a referral — no pressure, no questions — just call me."

She hadn't understood why he'd said it then.

She understood now.

Her thumb hovered over the number.

The lobby doors opened.

She didn't call.

Not yet.

But she saved it to a new folder she labelled Edinburgh.

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