Chapter 6: I’m Pregnant

ALEX 𓆩♡𓆪

The Christopher estate was a different category of world.

I had looked it up on Mr. Adler’s borrowed phone before I came,  the address, the photographs, the scale of it, and his net worth. None of that preparation made it less overwhelming when I was actually standing in front of it.

 The gates were tall and dark and built to communicate, without a single word, that the world on the other side operated by rules entirely different from the one I was standing in.

I stood at the intercom with my bag at my feet and the test result folded in my pocket and thought about turning around.

I had come too far to turn around.

I pressed the button.

A voice came through , clipped, professional, asking my name and my business. I gave my name. For my business I said I was here to see Alex Christopher personally. There was a pause. Then another. Then the voice told me to wait.

I waited.

The street behind me moved,  a car passing, someone’s dog pulling ahead of its owner, the ordinary indifferent machinery of a city that had no idea what was happening at this gate. I stood with my bag and my folded test result and my fourteen dollars and I did not move.

The gate clicked.

And began to open.

A woman met me inside the compound, composed, elegant, with the quick assessing gaze of someone who made decisions about people at a glance and rarely revised them. 

She looked at me once, efficiently and completely, taking in the bag, the dress, the specific exhaustion that three weeks of hard living leaves on a person’s face.

Before she could speak I heard footsteps on the stone path behind her.

And then his voice.

“You again.”

I turned.

Alex Christopher was standing ten feet away with his hands in his pockets and an expression I remembered, controlled, unreadable, the face of a man who had already decided what he thought before the conversation began.

 He looked exactly as I remembered him and nothing like I had let myself imagine in the weeks since.

I straightened my shoulders.

“I need to speak with you,” I said.

He looked at me for a moment, my  bag, my  dress, my  face,  and something moved behind his eyes that I couldn’t name before it was gone.

“Come inside,” he said.

He took me to a sitting room off the main hall and remained standing while I sat and waited while I found the words. He didn’t offer me anything, not even water, not patience, not the smallest courtesy that might have made this easier. He just stood across the room with his arms folded and watched me with the specific attention of someone waiting to identify a problem.

“Say what you came to say,” he said.

I looked at him.

“I’m pregnant,” I said. “It’s yours.”

The room went very still.

He looked at me for a long moment. Then something in his face shifted not towards belief, toward the opposite of it. Something closed and hardened and became very, very cold.

“No,” he said simply.

“Alex…”

“No.” His voice was flat. “I don’t know who sent you or what you think this is going to accomplish but I have seen this before and I am not interested.”

“I’m not lying…”

“You came to my gate with a bag and a story,” he said. “You’re desperate. I understand that. But desperation doesn’t make something true.”

“I was a virgin,” I said. “You know that. You were there.”

“That doesn’t make the child mine.”

The words landed like something physical. I sat with them for a moment and breathed through the impact of them and kept my voice even.

“I have a test,” I said. “I can show you…”

“Tests can be bought.”

“Then arrange your own,” I said. “I’ll take whatever test you want. I’m not asking you to believe me without proof. I’m asking you to give me the chance to provide it.”

He looked at me. Something moved across his face, brief, unreadable,  and then it was gone.

“Security,” he said.

I stared at him.

Two men appeared in the doorway.

“Please escort Miss,” he paused. “Escort her out.”

“Alex.” My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to. “Please. Just listen to me. I have nowhere…”

“I’m sorry,” he said. And he did not look sorry. “Escort her out.”

The gates were closing behind me before I finished processing what had just happened.

I stood on the pavement with my bag at my feet and the test result still folded in my pocket and felt the full weight of every decision that had led to this moment settling onto my shoulders all at once.

I had no plan beyond this gate.

I had nothing beyond this gate.

My legs decided before my brain did, I  just gave way quietly and without drama, the way things give way when they have been holding for too long and the last reason to keep holding has just been removed.

I went down slowly. The pavement was warm from the afternoon sun. I pressed my hand against it and tried to find the instruction to get up and could not locate it.

The last thing I heard before everything went dark was the gate mechanism  clicking, reversing, opening again.

And a voice. Deep. Unhurried. Carrying the specific authority of someone who does not raise it because he has never needed to.

“What is the meaning of this?”