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Chapter 6
publish date:
2026-04-17 06:13:49Chapter 6
Aria's POV
"Please... don't let me be pregnant."
The words barely left my lips when my stomach turned again.
I gripped the sink harder and bent forward. Breathing through it.
Slow. Controlled.
The restroom was quiet and cold, all polished marble and muted lighting.
Outside, music drifted through the walls.
Laughter. Glasses clinking.
The clean, rehearsed sound of people closing deals.
Out there, everything was normal.
In here, my world was shifting beneath my feet.
I straightened slowly and looked at my reflection.
Pale. Composed.
I looked like a woman holding herself together by discipline alone.
Like one wrong word, one wrong thought, could split something open that I was not ready to face.
I turned on the tap and ran cold water over my wrists. The sharp chill of it snapped me back to the present. Grounded me just enough to think.
Stress could delay a cycle.
That was logical... that was fact.
This week had been nothing but pressure layered on pressure.
The divorce. The humiliation.
That house, with all its familiar silence.
That moment.
That look on Damien's face when he chose indifference over everything we had been to each other.
My body reacting made sense.
It had to be that.
I was still holding onto that thought when the knock came.
"Miss Vale?"
The investor.
I closed my eyes briefly. Breathed once.
"I'm fine."
A pause stretched through the door.
"We can delay the discussion if necessary."
The discussion. The expansion. The decision that half the people in that ballroom had been quietly circling all evening.
Something almost ironic settled in my chest.
They were waiting on me.
And I was standing in a restroom, calculating dates like my life depended on it.
"Please proceed without me." My voice came out steady. Practiced.
"I'll review everything tomorrow."
Another pause. Longer this time.
Then footsteps. Fading. Gone.
Silence returned.
I exhaled slowly and looked at myself again
"Get it together," I murmured.
Not a plea. An order.
I fixed my makeup carefully, piece by piece. Foundation. Lip colour. The small, deliberate acts of putting the mask back on.
By the time I picked up my bag and clicked off the light above the mirror, there was no visible crack left.
Only I knew the difference.
When I stepped into the corridor, the noise of the summit rushed back in, muted but alive.
Voices layered over voices.
Near the far end of the room, a man burst out laughing at something that clearly didn't deserve it.
I paused just outside the door.
I could go back in.
I could walk straight into that room, stand across from Damien Blackwood, and let him realise slowly and painfully that the woman he dismissed did not belong beneath him.
That she never had.
That option existed.
But so did something else.
My hand moved before I even decided to move it.
Slow. Quiet. Toward my stomach.
I felt the warmth of my own palm through the fabric of my dress and something tightened in my throat.
That small, unconscious movement decided it for me.
Not tonight.
I turned and walked toward the exit without looking back.
The night air hit me the moment I stepped outside.
Cool. Clean. Indifferent, the way cities always are.
I stood still for just a second and breathed it in.
Behind me, conversations continued.
Deals moved forward.
Names were mentioned. Mine included.
I knew it without needing to hear it.
I had spent enough years in rooms like that one to know exactly how it worked.
Let them wonder.
Let him wonder.
I drove without music.
The city blurred past in long streaks of light, red and gold and white, and I let my mind go still.
Not because I was calm.
Because I needed to be.
Because if I let one thought in, the rest would come rushing after i.
I wasn't sure I could handle what was waiting on the other side.
No emotion.
No panic.
Just the road. And my hands on the wheel.
Until I saw it.
The pharmacy.
Open. Bright. Ordinary.
The kind of place you drive past every day and never once stopped to think about.
My fingers tightened slightly on the wheel.
I kept driving.
Ten seconds.
Five.
Then I slowed.
Turned.
Parked.
I didn't get out of the car straight away.
I just sat there for a moment, long enough for the silence to close in around me.
Then I opened the door.
Inside, everything was too normal.
A cashier at the far counter scrolled through her phone, completely unbothered.
Like nothing outside that small screen could possibly matter.
A man near the entrance grabbed a bottle of water and headed straight back to the door... without ever lifting his eyes.
I walked straight to the aisle.
Of course... I knew where it was.
If I was honest, the decision had been made in that restroom.
That very moment I fixed my face and walked out.
I stood in front of the shelf.
One second.
Then I reached out. Picked one.
Put it in my basket.
Paid without making eye contact.
No hesitation.
No overthinking.
The cashier gave me my change... without even looking up from her screen.
I was back in my car in under four minutes.
****
Back in my apartment, the silence felt different.
Heavier.
Like it was waiting for something.
I set the small paper bag on the bathroom counter and stood there.
Just staring at it. Such a small thing.
White and unremarkable and completely unbothered by what it might be about to tell me.
I opened it.
The instructions were simple. Clear.
I followed them.
Without overthinking it or talking myself out of it.
Because thinking too hard would crack something I was still barely holding in place.
I placed it on the edge of the counter when I was done and took a small step back.
And waited.
Time stretched.
Time moved too slowly and the room felt too loud and too quiet at the same time.
The tap dripped somewhere behind me. I hadn't noticed that before.
I looked at the tiles.
The cabinet.
My own hands, resting flat against my thighs.
Something in my chest was very tight.
I thought about the gala.
About the investor's voice through the door, patient and polite.
About the way I had said I'll review everything tomorrow, as if tomorrow would show up the same way it always had.
Unchanged. Uncomplicated.
I thought about Damien.
About the look on his face when he signed those papers.
Not angry. Not sad. Just done.
Like I was something he had already filed away.
I pressed my lips together and tilted my head back, staring at the ceiling.
Then I couldn't wait anymore.
I looked down.
Two lines.
Unmistakable.
Final.
I did not cry.
I didn't move.
I just stood there.
Completely still, while something deep and irreversible settled inside me.
I picked it up once.
Looked again. Closely.
As if the truth might be different in a different light.
It wasn't.
I placed it carefully in the drawer.
Closed it.
Turned off the light.
I lay on the bed without changing.
My heels still on.
The city moved outside. Cars passing.
A door closing somewhere down the hall.
The soft, careless sound of the world carrying on without me.
Like nothing had happened.
Like everything was still exactly the same.
It wasn't.
My hand drift down before my mind caught up with it.
Resting against my stomach like it already knew.
This time, I let it stay.
I lay like that for a long time.
"What do I do now?"
My voice was barely there.
Just sound and breath and a question I had no answer to.
The silence answered me with nothing.
And somehow... that felt like the most honest response I was going to get tonight.
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