**CHAPTER 6: CONGRATULATIONS**

The study was so quiet that Adrian could hear the clock on the wall.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

"Mr. Vance?" Dr. Lin's voice came again. "Are you still there?"

Adrian could not answer. His hand was holding the phone so tightly that his fingers had gone white.

*Pregnant.*

The word did not make sense. He said it again in his head, slowly, like a man learning a new language.

*My wife is pregnant.*

"Sir?"

"How long?" Adrian finally asked. His voice came out rough, like it belonged to someone else. "How long has she known?"

There was a pause on the line. A long one. When Dr. Lin spoke again, his warm voice had gone careful and thin.

"Mr. Vance... I think I have said too much."

"How long, Dr. Lin?"

"I am sorry, sir. Mrs. Vance came to me as my patient. What she tells me belongs to her." The old man sighed. "I thought she had shared the good news with you. I see now that she did not. I should not have spoken."

"She is my wife."

"Then perhaps," Dr. Lin said gently, "you should ask her yourself."

The line went quiet. Then it clicked off.

Adrian lowered the phone. He stared at the desk, at the stack of old notes tied with the faded ribbon. At the gold ring lying beside them. It had looked so small this morning. Now it looked like it weighed a thousand pounds.

*Ask her yourself.*

He almost laughed. How could he ask her anything? She was gone. She had packed one small bag in the middle of the night and walked out of his house without a sound.

With his child.

Adrian stood up so fast that his chair fell over behind him. He did not pick it up.

He walked out of the study and down the long hallway. His steps were loud on the marble. Two maids were dusting a table near the stairs. When they saw his face, they froze and bowed their heads.

He did not stop for them.

He took the stairs down to the guest room at the end of the east hall. The door was still open. The bed was still made. The morning light still lay cold on the floor.

He walked in and looked around, really looked, for the first time.

The room was small and plain. One bed. One desk. One lamp. A wardrobe with a door that did not close all the way. There were no flowers, no pictures, no soft things. For three years, his wife had lived in a house with forty rooms. And in the end, she had asked for the smallest one, just so she could lock the door.

Adrian opened the wardrobe. Empty, except for a few hangers that swung and clicked together.

He opened the drawer of the desk. Empty.

He went into the small bathroom. The sink was clean. The towels were folded. On the edge of the sink, there was nothing but a bar of soap and a soap dish.

He remembered the first night. The papers on the table. The dead candle. The way she had dropped the pen and run, with her hand pressed over her mouth.

*The smell of the roast,* she had said.

He had believed her. No. That wasn't true. He had not cared enough to wonder.

Adrian put his hands on the cold edge of the sink and lowered his head.

She had been sick in this bathroom. She had been sick while he stood outside the door and told her to hurry up. *Come out and finish this. I'm not waiting all night.*

He had said that to her. To his pregnant wife.

His chest felt tight, like someone had tied a rope around it and was pulling hard.

*What else did I miss? What else did she carry alone?*

He thought about the soup. He had sent it up because she looked thin. That was the only kind thing he had done for her in three years, and it was a bowl of soup.

He pushed away from the sink and walked out.

---

He found Mrs. Carter in the kitchen.

She was standing at the long wooden counter, cutting bread. She did not look up when he came in. She just kept cutting, slow and steady, one slice after another.

The young cook saw Adrian and quickly found a reason to leave. The door swung shut behind her. Now it was only the two of them.

"Mrs. Carter."

"Sir." She still did not look up.

"Put the knife down, please."

She finished one more slice. Then she set the knife on the board and wiped her hands on her apron. Finally, she raised her eyes to his face.

They were red. She had been crying, and she was not even trying to hide it.

"You knew," Adrian said quietly.

Mrs. Carter said nothing.

"You took her to Dr. Lin. You helped her pack. You opened the back gate for her." He stepped closer. "I'm not angry. I just need you to tell me the truth. Just once."

The old woman folded her hands in front of her. They were shaking a little.

"Ask me your question, sir."

Adrian took a breath. It hurt.

"Is she carrying my child?"

The kitchen was silent. A pot hissed softly on the stove. Outside the window, a bird sang on the garden wall, as if nothing in the world was wrong.

Mrs. Carter looked at him for a long time. When she spoke, her voice was very calm.

"If she is, sir," she said, "then maybe she ran so that nobody could take that child away from her."

The words hit Adrian like cold water.

"Take it away?" He frowned. "Who would take it away? I'm its father."

"Yes, sir. You are." Mrs. Carter's chin lifted. "And for three years, you were also her husband."

He did not answer. He could not.

"I have worked in this house for twenty-six years," Mrs. Carter went on softly. "I know how this family treats the things it owns. A house. A company. A name." She paused. "A wife."

Adrian's jaw tightened.

"Madam was a good woman," the old housekeeper said. "She was kind to every maid in this house. She remembered my birthday when no one else did. She made your coffee every morning with her own hands, even on the days you didn't come home to drink it." A tear slipped down her cheek. "And this family made her feel like she was nothing. Like she was a guest who had stayed too long."

"I never told her that."

"You never told her anything, sir. That was the trouble."

The truth of it sat between them like a stone.

Adrian looked down at the floor. For the first time in his life, he understood something that should have been clear long ago. Celeste had not run from the house. She had not even run from him. She had run from all of them. From his mother's cold eyes, and Isabella's sweet smile, and the lawyers, and the money, and the name that ate up everything it touched.

She had run to protect the baby from the Vance family.

And he was a Vance.

"Where is she?" he asked, very quietly.

"I don't know, sir."

"Mrs. Carter."

"I truly don't." She wiped her face with the back of her hand. "She did not tell me where she was going. She said it was safer if I did not know. She said if anyone asked me, I should be able to look them in the eye and say I don't know." Her lips trembled. "She was thinking of me, even then. Even when she was so scared."

Adrian closed his eyes.

*Even then.*

---

He walked out to the back hall, where no one could hear him, and took out his phone. He called Dean Harper, his head of security.

Dean answered on the first ring. "Sir."

"I need you to find someone."

"Yes, sir. Who?"

"My wife."

There was a short pause. Dean was too careful to ask questions, but Adrian could hear the surprise in his silence.

"She left the house early this morning," Adrian said. "Before five. She took one bag. She would have used cash, not cards. Maybe a taxi. Check the back gate, the roads, the bus stations, the train stations. Everything."

"I'll start right away, sir."

"Dean." Adrian's voice dropped low. "Do this quietly. Use only your best people. People you trust."

"Understood."

"And one more thing." He looked down the long, empty hallway toward the main stairs. "My mother must not know. Not my mother, not Miss Moreau, not anyone in this house. If you find her, you call me. Only me. Is that clear?"

"Very clear, sir."

"She's..." Adrian stopped. His throat had closed up. He swallowed and tried again. "She might not be well. Find her fast."

"I will."

He ended the call. For a moment, he just stood there with the phone against his chest, breathing slowly.

*I will find you,* he thought. *Not to drag you back. Not to take anything from you. I just need to know you're safe. That's all.*

*I just need to say I'm sorry. Even if you never forgive me.*

It was a strange feeling. He had never begged anyone for anything in his whole life. And now he would have given everything he owned for five minutes in a room with the woman he had ignored for three years.

He put the phone back in his pocket and turned around.

His heart stopped.

Eleanor Vance was standing in the doorway at the end of the hall. Her silver hair was perfect. Her back was straight as a knife. Her cold eyes were fixed on his face.

She had heard.

Just behind her shoulder stood Isabella, in a soft cream dress, with one hand pressed to her chest as if she were worried.

But Isabella was not worried.

She was smiling.

"Adrian," his mother said slowly, her voice like ice cracking on a lake. "Find who?"