Pregnant For The Wrong Brother

Ana's POV I had three weeks, one red dress, and one last plan to save my marriage. And I used all of it on a man who was already inside another woman.But I didn't know that yet.I checked my reflection one last time and smoothed the dress down over my hips. Deep red. The one Sebastian used to love, back when he still looked at me like I was the only door in a room full of windows. It still fit. I told myself that was a good sign.Two years. We can fix two years.The table at Lavelle was perfect. Corner by the window, the whole city glittering below us like something I had paid for. Two bottles of his wine, chilling. The lamb he always ordered without reading the menu. I had even called ahead and asked them to play our first-dance song the moment we sat down.I sat alone instead.Forty minutes. The candle burned down a full inch while I kept my chin level and my hands folded and my smile bolted on. The waiter came by three times with that soft, pitying face people make at a woman who

Ana's POV I looked at the floor he wanted me to kneel on.Then I looked at my husband, sitting there so sure of himself, and I almost laughed."No," I said.His smile slipped. "Ana.""I will never kneel to her." My voice was steady now. The shaking was gone, burned clean out of me. "Keep your signature. Keep your house. Keep her. The marriage is dead whether you sign or not, and we both know it." I picked up my bag from the stairs where I had left it packed since dawn. "Nicole can go to hell. And so can you."I walked out before he could find a single word.Emily took me in without one question. She just opened her door, pulled me inside, and held me while I finally let three days of tears fall where no one cruel could see them."You can stay as long as you need," she whispered into my hair. "Forever, if you want."I didn't want forever. I wanted my own life back, the one I had handed away when I let Sebastian talk me out of working. So the next morning I sat at Emily's kitchen table

Ana's POV I had been at my desk twenty minutes when HR walked in and shut the door behind her."Settling in?" she asked, but her eyes were doing something her smile wasn't."It's going as planned." I kept my voice light. "The launch timeline holds. I'll have the full rollout deck ready by Friday.""Good. Good." She sat on the edge of the chair across from me, like she didn't plan to stay, like she only had one thing to say and wanted it gone from her mouth. "Can I ask you something, off the record?""Of course."She leaned in. "What is going on between you and Mr. Strauss?"My pen stopped moving. "Nothing.""Ana." Her voice dropped. "I have worked here for four years. That man flies in, signs things, flies out. He doesn't learn our names. And yesterday he canceled his entire schedule and announced he is staying. The day after you started." She studied my face. "And the way he looked at you in that conference room. Like he already knew you. So I will ask again. Have the two of you met

Caspian's POV I don't chase.I want to be clear about that, even if the only person listening is me. Men who chase are men who have already lost. They run after a thing with their hands open and their chest exposed, and the world takes one look and knows exactly where to put the knife. My mother taught me that before I was old enough to spell it. You don't reach. You acquire. You take the thing apart until you understand every screw, and then you own it, and then you are safe.So this… this wasn't chasing.This was a problem on my desk, and I solved problems on my desk."Everything you can find," I had told the man two days ago. He was the best in the country at finding things, paid enough to forget he ever looked. "Anastasia Voss. All of it. The boring parts especially."He was good and he was quick. By Thursday night the file was in front of me, a plain folder on a black desk, and I poured myself two fingers of something old and opened it like a man opening a gift.I expected the

Caspian's POV "You haven't signed the Larsen contract," my secretary said. "It's been on your desk for three days.""Leave it.""Sir, legal needs it by…""I said leave it."She left it and she also left, quietly, the way people learn to leave a room when they sense the weather in it has changed.I looked down at the Larsen contract and couldn't have told you a single word inside it. I had read the same line four times. But the line was about Anastasia. Every line lately was about Anastasia, no matter what the page actually said.‘This isn't control. This is the opposite of control.’I read people. That is the talent under all the other talents. Put a man across a table from me and within a minute I have his fear, his price, the lie he tells himself in the mirror. They open like books under the right pressure, every one of them, because everyone has a seam and I find seams for a living.But she has no seam.Two dinners. Hours of her voice. And I came away knowing the diner with the p