All Chapters of Pregnant With My Twin Sister’s Fiancé’s Baby: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

I'd practiced this conversation a hundred times. None of those versions ended with him not hating me.The pregnancy test sat in my purse like a bomb. Tick. Tick. Tick.It was 7:00 PM. The NeXus offices were mostly empty, the hum of servers and the distant vacuum of the cleaning crew the only sounds breaking the silence.I stood outside the frosted glass doors of the executive suite, my hand hovering over the biometric scanner. My palm was sweating so much I was afraid it wouldn't read my print.I checked my phone one last time.Lily: He deserves to know. You can do this. Remember: You are Aria Stone. You don't beg.I took a deep breath, holding it in my lungs until they burned, trying to steady the frantic rhythm of my heart. I wasn't begging. I was informing. I was taking responsibility.But god, I was terrified.I scanned my hand. The light turned green. The door hissed open."Make it quick," a voice called out from inside. "I have a dinner reservation in an hour."Noah was standing

Sienna was waiting in my apartment. I should've known better than to give her a key five years ago.I walked in, exhausted down to my marrow. The emotional whiplash of the paternity test, the confrontation with Noah, and the drive back to Brooklyn had drained me completely. All I wanted was to curl up in a ball and sleep for twelve hours.Instead, I walked into a trap.My living room lights were dimmed. Soft jazz—Sienna’s favorite playlist—was playing from my Bluetooth speaker. And there she was, perched on my beige sofa like a queen on a throne, wearing a silk blouse that cost more than my rent.On the coffee table sat a bottle of expensive Pinot Noir and two crystal glasses. One was half-full. The other was empty, waiting for me."Sienna?" I dropped my keys in the bowl by the door, the sound harsh in the quiet room. "What are you doing here?"She smiled. It was the smile she used for paparazzi—bright, perfect, and not reaching her eyes."Can't a sister visit?" she asked, her voice l

The coffee shop was neutral territory. Or as neutral as anywhere could be when discussing your accidental baby with a man who hated you.I arrived twenty minutes early. I needed the time to fortify my mental defenses. I chose a table in the back corner, my back to the wall, with a clear line of sight to the entrance. It was a strategic position—one that allowed me to see him coming before he could ambush me with those devastating eyes.I ordered a decaf latte with oat milk. It tasted like warm, beige sadness. It was a bitter reminder of everything I couldn't have right now: caffeine, wine, and a complicated, messy love life without consequences.At 10:00 AM precisely, the door chimed.Noah walked in. Of course he was on time. He was probably the kind of man who calibrated his watch to the atomic clock.He looked tired. There were faint purple shadows under his eyes that hadn't been there at the masquerade, and his jaw was set in a line of granite tension. But he also looked unfairly h

Someone was leaking our projects. The question was who, and why now.I sat at the head of the boardroom table, the silence in the room heavy enough to crush bone. Marcus was pacing the length of the room, his usually immaculate hair looking as if he’d run his hands through it a dozen times."Three clients in two weeks, Noah," Marcus said, turning to face me. "Three major bids. We lost the Tokyo contract. We lost the Berlin expansion. And now the military simulation bid? That wasn't coincidence.""No," I said, my voice dangerously calm. "It wasn't."I stared at the tablet in front of me. The rejection emails were almost identical. ‘We have decided to go with a competitor who offered a remarkably similar proposal at a lower price point.’They weren't just undercutting us. They were mirroring us. Someone was feeding our proprietary data—our architecture, our price models, our launch timelines—to a rival firm before the ink was even dry on our proposals."I built this company from nothing

Marcus deserved better than a best man with secrets. He deserved the truth.The whiskey wasn't working. It was a twenty-five-year-old single malt, smooth as silk and burning like hellfire, but it wasn't doing the one thing I needed it to do. It wasn't drowning out the memory of Aria’s pale face when she collapsed in the boardroom yesterday.It wasn't silencing the voice in my head that screamed traitor every time Marcus smiled at me."To the groom!" James, my younger brother, shouted, raising his glass. "The man who finally convinced a Stone sister to settle down!""To Marcus!" the other groomsmen chorused.I raised my glass. My hand was steady—a lifetime of boardroom poker faces served me well—but my gut was twisting into a knot that no amount of alcohol could loosen."To Marcus," I echoed.We were in the VIP room of The Vault, one of the most exclusive clubs in Manhattan. Leather booths, low lighting, bass that vibrated in your chest, and a price tag that ensured privacy. It was exa