Twins

Damian didn’t move, and he didn’t breathe.

The words both of them echoed through his skull like a struck bell, refusing to settle into anything he could understand.

“Twins,” Elena said quietly, watching his face with the wary caution of someone bracing for impact.

“Sixteen weeks. I found out the day you divorced me.”

“You knew.” His voice came out hoarse. “In that boardroom — you already knew, and you said nothing.”

“You told me I couldn’t give you an heir.” Her eyes flashed, grief sharpening into something fiercer. “In front of Vivian. In front of your board. You didn’t deserve to know yet.”

He sank into the chair across from her desk like his legs had simply given out.

“Elena…..”

“Don’t.” She held up a hand, steady despite the tremor underneath. “Don’t apologize, not yet. Apologies don’t undo nine months of believing I was unfaithful because Vivian forged photographs you were too angry to question.”

His head snapped up. “How do you know about that?”

“Because I had my own investigators the moment the divorce was filed,” she said. “I wanted to know exactly how thoroughly I’d been destroyed, and by whom.”

The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on.

“I want to see them,” Damian said finally. “The babies. I want to be there, for everything.”

“You signed papers ending us, Damian. You don’t get to simply decide you want back in.”

“I’m not asking to come back as your husband.” His voice dropped, raw and unguarded in a way she hadn’t heard in years. “I’m asking to be their father. That’s not something I’m willing to let Vivian’s lies take from me too.”

Before Elena could answer, the office door swung open without a knock.

Margaret Cole — Damian’s mother, sharp-eyed and immaculately dressed — stepped inside like she owned the building.

“I came as soon as I heard,” Margaret said, eyes flicking between her son and Elena with calculating speed. “Twins. How convenient, given everything currently at stake with the loan.”

“Mother….” Damian tried to speak but was interrupted by his mother.

“I’m only asking what everyone will ask, Damian.” Margaret’s gaze settled on Elena like a blade. “How can anyone be certain those children are even yours? You and I both know about the fertility results from your physical four years ago.”

The room went cold.

Elena’s hands curled into fists in her lap. “Say what you’re implying directly, Margaret. I’d rather you embarrass yourself to my face.”

“I’m simply saying,” Margaret continued smoothly, “that a doctor once told my son conceiving naturally would be extremely unlikely. And now, suddenly, after a humiliating divorce and a multi-billion-dollar inheritance landing in your lap — you’re pregnant with twins. Forgive me for finding the timing remarkable.”

Damian’s face had gone pale. “Mother, that report was years old. Inconclusive.”

“Was it?” Margaret’s smile was thin as paper. “Or are you so desperate to believe you’re not the failure your father always feared, that you’ll claim any child handed to you?”

Elena stood, fury blazing through every careful line of composure she’d built over the past two months.

“Get out of my office.”

“Not until……” Margaret tried to speak

“I said get out.” Elena’s voice cracked through the room like a whip. “And when you do, you can tell whoever sent you that paternity tests exist for exactly this reason. I’ll have results within the week, and when they come back exactly as I already know they will, I expect a public apology.”

Margaret’s confident expression flickered — just slightly, just enough.

“We’ll see,” she said, and swept out of the office without another word.

Damian stood frozen in the wreckage of the conversation, staring at Elena with an expression caught somewhere between devastation and disbelief.

“She’s wrong,” he said quietly. “Isn’t she? Elena — tell me she’s wrong.”

Elena opened her mouth to answer and her phone rang loudly. The screen displaying a name that made her blood run cold.

Dr. Whitman — Fertility Clinic.

The same clinic that had run Damian’s results four years ago. The same clinic where she’d had her own prenatal testing done six weeks prior.

Her hand trembled as she reached for the phone.

“Elena?” Damian’s voice had gone tight with dread. “Why is the clinic calling you directly?”

She didn’t answer. She simply answered the call, lifted the phone to her ear, and felt the entire room tilt sideways at whatever the doctor said next — her face draining of color as Damian watched, helpless, terrified, waiting to learn whose lie was about to be exposed……..