ログインSelene
He stopped for a moment and turned, “What?" he asked, confusion written all over his face.
I smiled seeing his reaction, I stepped forward, speaking as I moved. "I said I'm pregnant.” I paused looking down to my tummy, the baby that would save my marriage.
"With our child." I finished looking up to him. He shook his head, his face going through different phases of emotions.
“How is that possible?" He finally blurted out after a while and I smiled, looking down to my belly.
“I just found out about it a few days ago, I was still contemplating…" I stopped my words immediately he spoke over me, his words leaving my hands tightly placed over my belly.
I turned, wanting to stop him but he still spoke of the harsh truth I was unwilling to face. “I still can't be with you. I love her, and I want to be with her."
My face fell. The feeling of despair I had washed away returning quickly. “I can't let the kid grow up without a father." He said and I couldn't help but scoff.
He was so fast to erase himself from our lives. He, who had always been gentle with me, preached to me about how important I was and how he would never in a million years trade me for anything, was now shamelessly leaving me with a baby.
He sighed, rubbing his temple like I was the problem. “I'm sorry. I can give you money to terminate it if you want but I can't stay." He said, and this time, I didn't stop him.
Tears welled up in my eyes, and I soon found my self gasping for air. The entire room felt too suffocating for me to breath in.
The pictures of us on the walls suddenly looked mocking, I had thought that a child was what we needed to make our family perfect but I was wrong, so wrong.
I bit hard on my tongue until I felt a metallic taste coated in my mouth. I fell to the floor, tears streaming continuously down my face, finally accepting the reality I had refused to face—he never loved me.
Shoes clamped against the marble floor, and he descended from his room, a big luggage in his hands, obvious enough that he wasn't coming back.
I stared at his retreating figure, a tiny part in me really hoping for him to turn back but he didn't.
He rather paused and shattered that little hope. “You can call me whenever you're ready for the abortion." He said before walking out the door without even looking back once.
I lowered my head yet again, hot tears streaming down my face. I tried to deny it but the reality was glaring hard at my face. He was gone, forever.
My phone buzzed, and I paused immediately. I raised my hand, and cleaned my tears with the hem of my sleeve.
I answered the call, and I put it on speaker, raising my voice slightly to give a steady impression. I spoke. "Hello?”
“Selene." I heard my mom’s voice from over the phone.
“We've finally seen your sister! She seemed quite happy. “she wanted the party moved up. The date we had chosen couldn't be used.” Mom paused, waiting for my response.
"Oh…Okay." I trailed off and she continued. “The party is now tomorrow, we called to ask if you could come to help with the decorations. Of course, if your husband is cool with it.”
I cut her off immediately. "Okay, I'll be there soon.” I said, hanging up before she could hear the crack in my voice.
I rushed upstairs, changing into a casual wear, and rushing downstairs to my car. I pushed off the thought of Xavier and ignited the car, swerving off.
***
"Thanks a lot. You can go to get dressed now, the party will be starting soon.” Mom said, now fully dressed in an elaborated style.
I nodded at her words, giving some final instructions to the servants before finally turning to go upstairs.
My hands moved towards my zipper when my phone suddenly rang.
Rubi, my assistant. I picked expecting some usual rant about work but rather she said omething else.
“Ma’am did you work on the 10th of August?" She asked.
“ No”. I said automatically. “Why?”
“The portal was updated, it says here that you operated on someone that day”. She paused. “I called because I remembered taking care of you on that same day. You were barely conscious.”
“A glitch. It has to be. Tell the technical team to adjust it immediately." I said
"No, ma'am it's not that simple” Rubi's voice slightly lowered. The surgery written here was the one performed by Dr. Gordon. The one we tried to cover up by revoking his licence.” She said, and the memory immediately popped up but before I could say a word, a knock came on the door.
“Selene, are you ready yet?" My mom’s voice came from outside.
I moved towards it “Almost." I said before pulling down my outfit. I returned towards the mirror for a final glance. “Let's talk about this later. I need to go"
"No, wait”…I hung up. I changed into the new clothes and walked downstairs.
My mom waved at me from a distance and I smiled, walking forward but someone suddenly pushed past me and went directly to hug her. Not roughly, but with the confidence that came with knowing exactly where they belonged.
Mom laughed joyfully, hugging her back tightly.
The woman turned around.
Aurora
My breath caught.
Those eyes, that smile. No! It couldn't be
My head snapped
I turned my headctowards my mother but she only confirmed my suspicion. “Selene, meet your sister."
Damien's POV“I've rewritten this letter four times already, which will not surprise anyone who actually knows me. I am, by every reasonable definition, a controlling man. I like outcomes I can predict. I like rooms I've already mapped before I walk into them. And here I am, writing to someone I haven't even met yet, whose face I can't picture, whose name we can't agree on, about a life I have absolutely no ability to control the shape of. It's terrifying, I'm telling you that honestly, in the first paragraph, because I don't intend to lie to you in this letter, and I've decided the least I can do is start as I mean to go on.I should also tell you, honestly, that I will probably be a difficult father in some very specific ways. I will want to know where you are, what you're up to…I mean always. I will want a name and a number and an estimated return time, and I will try, God help me, to negotiate curfews the way I negotiate acquisitions…thoroughly with contingencies. Your mother is a
Xavier's POVThe office doesn't echo anymore. I used to think that was the marble, turns out it was the people in general… forty floors of them, gone now, and whatever's left just swallows sound instead of returning it.Four boxes by the door. My whole life, itemized and cardboard. I've been staring at box three for twenty minutes and I don't remember what's in it.“Note it. File it under things you no longer control.”The new landlord… a junior partner, rival firm, a haircut I resent on principle ... .has given me two weeks and called it a "professional courtesy," said it with a straight face, like courtesy was something he had any right handing to me instead of the other way around. I didn't correct him. There's no version of correcting a man like that which doesn't end with security escorting you out of a building you used to own outright.My phone buzzes. Richard. Another SEC update I've stopped reading past the first line.‘There was a version of you six months ago who'd have had
Selene's POVThe house is quiet in the way it only gets after a day like today. Not peaceful, just…well spent. Like even the walls are exhausted and finally allowed to exhale.I'm still in my coat. I haven't taken anything off, just walked through the front door past Damien loosening his tie in the hallway and into the bathroom, because apparently the only place left where I can stop performing composure is behind a locked door with good lighting and a mirror that's already seen me fall apart once before.The pregnancy test sits on the counter where I left it three minutes ago. I haven't dared to look. I've been staring at my own reflection instead, and underneath the woman who stood in a courtroom few hours ago without blinking, I can feel the other one stirring….the one from one year ago, the one who sat on a counter edge like this in Xavier's penthouse and watched a different test turn positive in a different life, in a marriage that still had a floor under it. I cried that day too
Aurora's POVThe cell smells like bleach losing a fight it was never going to win. Underneath it, something older. Sweat, maybe…Fear, probably. Several months and my body still remembers this specific stench well enough to make my stomach turn before my brain catches up and reminds me why.Second time's the charm, apparently. Nobody tells you that. Nobody warns you that the universe keeps a tab, and that eventually, it comes to collect with interest.I sit on the edge of the bunk with my wrists still throbbing where the cuffs bit in, and I laugh. One short, ugly bark of it, because the alternative is crying, and I refuse to give this room the satisfaction. Wrong choice of shoes. That's what I'm thinking about. I planned an entire decade of ruin and I never once considered I might need shoes I could sit in a cell in comfortably. I've always had excellent priorities right up until I didn't.I gave him everything. That's the part nobody in that courtroom cared to hear, the part that nev
Xavier's POvThe clerk's stamp came down like the world's smallest gavel. Somewhere in that thud was the sound of a five-hundred-million-dollar empire being reclassified as a cautionary tale. . I'd have respected it if it weren't happening to me.“Breathe. You've closed harder rooms than this, Adrian” Except I hadn't. I'd never closed a room where the collateral was my own wrists.The cuffs were still on… cheap steel, government-issue, a stark insult next to the Patek sitting in an evidence bag somewhere down the hall with my name misspelled on the tag, probably. Twenty-six years old, I'd bought that watch to celebrate my first nine-figure close. Forty-one, and it was being inventoried next to a confiscated belt like I was a man who'd been caught shoplifting his own life.Richard was still talking. Something about press strategy, about narrative control, about "getting ahead of the cycle." I wanted to tell him the cycle had already lapped me twice and was currently doing donuts on my
Damien's POVThe gavel hadn't fallen yet, but Judge Vance's hand rested on it like a man deciding whether a thing was worth killing."Mrs. Aurora." His voice dropped a register, the way voices do right before they take something apart. "I'll ask you once more for the record. How did you obtain access to those private debt ledgers?" I set my folder down on the podium and squared it to the edge. One corner, then the other….small motions. The kind of thing that makes a room wait on you instead of the other way around.Aurora's fingers whitened around the railing. She looked at Elliot who was currently studying the ceiling tiles like they held the verdict he needed.Beside me, Selene shifted in her seat, and I felt it before I saw it…the brush of her knee against mine under the rail, closer than she'd been sitting an hour ago. I didn't turn my head…well, I didn't need to. I could map the exact geometry of her without even looking. Her spine straight, hands folded too carefully on her lap







