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CHAPTER 22: STANDING INSTRUCTIONS
publish date:
2026-05-01 22:51:40
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PREGNANT BY THE CEO CHAPTER 22: STANDING INSTRUCTIONS
There was a leak inside the Hale Industries gala team. Someone was building a story, and I needed to find them before they found Isla. I moved fast and quietly.Within the hour, I had the meeting access logs pulled and cross-referenced with the exact time that gossip column dropped. Six of the nine regulars were out immediately. Three names left, all junior, all with full document access, and none with any good reason to be whispering to the press.By noon my assistant had run soft background checks on the three of them. Nothing heavy, just public stuff and social media. Two cleared themselves on timing alone, the third one? She’d made a secondary account go private exactly three weeks ago. That kind of clean, deliberate move only stands out when you’re already looking for it.I put every detail together…timestamps, access patterns, the column’s schedule lined up against our internal meetings. Then I called Sebastian, no small talk or a hello. Just business.“There’s a leak in the pla
PREGNANT BY THE CEO CHAPTER 21: AGENCY
My sixteen-year-old daughter read the letter from the father she’d never met, looked up at me, and said, “He was looking for us.” I had nothing to say back. We stayed right there on the kitchen floor. Neither of us made a move to get up. The tiles were cold and hard under us, but it didn’t seem to matter. Isla set the letter down carefully, like it was something fragile, then pulled her knees up to her chest and just… waited.That was so typical of her. She had this quiet patience that could loosen even the tightest knots in me. She’d learned a long time ago that pushing me for answers only made me shut down. So instead, she gave me space, and somehow that open, gentle silence was harder to hide from than any question she could have asked.So I told her everything. Not the clean, careful version I’d been feeding her for years, the one where her father and I simply made different choices and moved on with our lives. No. I gave her the real story, the one I’d never said out loud to a s
PREGNANT BY THE CEO CHAPTER 20: ON THE FLOOR
Victor had spoken to my mother before any of it even started. Before the pregnancy and the wedding. Before our whole life together blew apart, and whatever he told her that day, she carried it with her to the grave.I held myself together for the rest of the day the only way I knew how, by focusing on the next small thing in front of me. I sent the revised timeline to Patricia at three. Answered all the vendor emails by four-thirty and wrapped up a budget issue right before I left the building. I smiled at the right people, said the right things, and moved through the halls like everything was fine. No one would have guessed that just hours earlier I’d been standing in a boardroom, quietly realizing why my mother had kept certain doors closed for the last nine years of her life.I drove home, made dinner, and listened to Isla talk about her day. I stayed present enough that she didn’t hit me with that worried, searching look she sometimes gets. She headed to her room around nine-thir
PREGNANT BY THE CEO CHAPTER 19: HIS MOVE
Victor Hale wanted a private meeting. I walked into that boardroom like I’d been waiting for it my whole life, because, honestly, I had.Not this exact moment or this particular morning, but I’d known something like this was coming ever since that envelope showed up in the lobby. Men like Victor don’t take no for an answer. They treat it like the opening move in a game they’ve already decided they’re going to win. The boardroom was empty except for him.He sat at the far end of the long table, not in Sebastian’s usual spot but in a different chair, one carefully chosen so the bright morning light poured straight onto whoever walked in. A small, quiet power play. Victor was the kind of man who arranged the room before anyone else even stepped inside.I noticed it right away and sat down anyway without moving the chair, adjusting it would’ve told him I’d caught on. I wasn’t ready to hand over that kind of information. He looked exactly like I remembered, silver hair, sharp suit, sittin
PREGNANT BY THE CEO CHAPTER 18: NOT YET
Seven whole months, Sebastian had been writing to me for seven months, and I’d never known a single one of them existed. I sat down at the table and just stared at the shoebox.It sat there between Jade and me like something that already knew it was going to hurt. I wasn’t exactly scared of it, more like I was bracing myself, the way you do when you know something is going to cost you. Jade didn’t push, she just sat there, watching me quietly. All her usual sharpness had dialed down, leaving behind something calmer and steadier. That was how I knew she understood how serious this was. I reached for the top envelope. His handwriting, my name, the letters looked rushed, a little uneven, the way they always got when something was weighing on him. I used to notice little things like that back when I still loved him in silence. My fingers tightened around it for a second, then I set it back down, picked it up again, then put it down.“You don’t have to open them tonight,” Jade said soft
PREGNANT BY THE CEO CHAPTER 17: THIRTY-ONE
I opened the folder. Eight pages of clean, clinical surveillance. My address, my office, the Tuesday coffee shop, Isla’s school schedule, her after-school activities, even which door she used every morning. All of it written down like it was nothing.Victor had read every word and done nothing. I turned the page and my stomach dropped. There was Isla at thirteen, standing just outside the school gates, bag slung over one shoulder. She was looking up at something off-camera, her grey eyes wide and soft, completely unguarded. The way she only looked when she thought no one was watching.I stared until the edges of the room went blurry. My throat closed up, I gripped the table hard, forcing air into my lungs so I wouldn’t break right there. When I finally looked up, Sebastian was watching me.His face was calm, but it was the empty kind of calm that comes after you’ve already fallen apart somewhere private. His eyes were red-rimmed.“How did you find out?” I asked quietly.“He sent me a
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