All Chapters of The Replacement Wife : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

90 Chapters

TWINS

CHAPTER 71: TWINSMy OB's name is Dr. Reyes and she has been my doctor since three months before the wedding.I called her office twice last week. The first call was to the answering service from the car park. The second was when her receptionist called back and I explained that I had a positive test and needed an appointment and the receptionist said there was a slot Wednesday at two if I could come then. I said yes.It is Wednesday at two.The examination room is cool and smells faintly of the gel they use for the ultrasound. There are folded paper towels in a stack on the counter. A poster on the wall about prenatal nutrition that I have now read in full twice while waiting. I am lying back on the padded table in the way you lie when someone is about to tell you something important, with the paper covering crinkling under me when I shift and the ceiling lights very white above.Dr. Reyes runs the probe. She is quiet for a moment, which she is not normally. She is

Last Updated : 2026-04-07

DOMINIC'S RESPONSE

CHAPTER 72: DOMINIC'S RESPONSEWe finished dinner.Or we make the shapes of finishing dinner forks picked up, food moved around, Mrs. Chen coming through once to collect plates and leaving without a word because Mrs. Chen has the particular sensitivity of someone who can read a room through a closed door. Helena falls asleep in the bouncer between us at seven-fifteen, which is early for her, as though she has correctly identified that her parents are managing something and she should conserve her energy.Dominic is quiet through most of it.Not the closed-off kind of quiet. The working-out kind. I can see it operating in the same way I can always see it the particular quality of his attention that is directed inward rather than at the room, the occasional slight movement of his jaw that means a number is being turned over, the way his hands sit on the table between courses too still for someone who is merely waiting.He is running the math.At seven-thirty, after Mrs. Ch

Last Updated : 2026-04-07

MRS. CHEN'S REACTION

CHAPTER 73: MRS. CHEN'S REACTIONI haven't told anyone yet.This is not a deliberate decision. It is simply that everything has been moving fast and the first trimester is early and the standard advice is to wait until twelve weeks and I am currently at eight and there are several things that need to be confirmed before I begin adjusting other people's lives around information that is still preliminary. Dominic knows. Dr. Reyes knows. That is enough for now.It is a Thursday morning. Helena is asleep upstairs. Dominic left at seven. I am at the kitchen table with my laptop and my second coffee, working through the board update I need to have drafted by noon, when my phone buzzes with a message from Dr. Reyes's office.The follow-up appointment needs to move. The original slot they gave me three weeks out has a conflict with a visiting specialist who does twin monitoring, and they want to reschedule to the following week if I'm available. I call back immediately because the

Last Updated : 2026-04-10

TELLING ELEANOR

CHAPTER 74: TELLING ELEANORI don't tell Eleanor.This is not an oversight. It is a decision made with the same deliberateness as all the other decisions I have been making since November quietly, without announcing it as a decision, simply by doing it and then moving on to the next thing.I told James at nine weeks, because he needs to know that I will be managing a second pregnancy through the CFO responsibilities and we should talk about contingency structures now rather than later. He takes the news with the same practical acknowledgment he brings to everything, asks two questions about the timeline, and says he'll have a draft staffing plan by Friday. He does not make it personal. I appreciate that.I tell Felicity, who has been in the secured apartment for three weeks, by phone, on a Tuesday evening while Helena is eating. Felicity says: "Two?" I say: "Two." She is quiet for a moment and then she says: "Your body has appalling timing." I say: "I know." We both laugh a

Last Updated : 2026-04-10

THE FIRST HARD TRIMESTER

CHAPTER 75: THE FIRST HARD TRIMESTERThe first pregnancy was not easy.This one is harder.I understand, technically, why this is: two bodies instead of one, the additional hormone load, the particular exhaustion that twins produce in the first trimester because the body is doing twice the foundational work. Dr. Reyes explained it at the nine-week appointment and I wrote the explanation in my notebook and I understood it with my brain.Understanding something with your brain and experiencing it in your body are, it turns out, different categories of knowing.I am sick every morning between six and nine. Not dramatically not the kind that requires proximity to a bathroom at all times, though there are days when it gets close. The kind that makes the smell of coffee unbearable until ten, which is a particular problem because I have been drinking coffee since I was nineteen and my body is accustomed to it as a morning presence and now it objects to the smell of it from across

Last Updated : 2026-04-13

SOKOLOV'S LAST MOVE

CHAPTER 76: SOKOLOV'S LAST MOVEI know his name is on it before David Park confirms it.It arrives the way this kind of thing always arrives not as a call or a message from someone who matters but as a link dropped into an industry chat by someone who doesn't know what they're handling. My phone buzzes at seven-fifty-two on a Tuesday morning with a message from a contact at a sell-side firm who says: have you seen this and attached a URL.I am at the kitchen table. Helena is the bouncer. Mrs. Chen is making the tea that has replaced coffee from seven to ten. The ginger biscuits are in the tin beside my laptop. Everything is ordinary.I clicked the link.The article is published by a financial commentary site I recognize not a major outlet, not the kind that breaks legitimate stories, but the kind that aggregates and amplifies and has enough of a readership that when it says something, other people pick it up. The kind of site that a sophisticated operator uses when they want something

Last Updated : 2026-04-13

IRIS RESPONDS

CHAPTER 77: IRIS RESPONDSI keep records of everything.I have kept records of everything since I was twenty-two years old and doing freelance analysis under a pseudonym for clients who would have used my work without crediting me if I hadn't made them sign documentation first. I keep records because information is only as useful as your ability to produce it at the right moment, and the right moment is not always the one you plan for.The emergency board session is on a Wednesday morning. The article ran Tuesday. I requested the meeting Tuesday afternoon when the stock had dropped 4% and the board had three members calling to ask questions that deserved a proper answer rather than a quick call from a communications team.The chair called the session for ten AM.I arrive at nine-thirty with a presentation already printed, bound, and tabbed two copies for each board member plus the chair's copy, and the external counsel's copy and a digital version on the company server that

Last Updated : 2026-04-14

SOKOLOV DISAPPEARS

CHAPTER 78: SOKOLOV DISAPPEARSDavid Park calls on a Thursday afternoon with two minutes of information that will take the rest of the day to fully settle in my chest.I am in the kitchen. Helena is on the floor mat doing tummy time, which she now tolerates for increasingly long stretches before protesting. I have the phone between my ear and shoulder and a CFO report open on my laptop on the table and Mrs. Chen is somewhere in the back of the house doing whatever Mrs. Chen does on Thursday afternoons.Ordinary.David's voice is the same as it always is level, no performance, information delivered in the order of priority. He says: Sokolov left the country on Tuesday. He says: the destination is unknown and the departure was not announced. He says: his New York legal team has not heard from him in four days, which he knows because one of Sokolov's lawyers has a contact who called David's office looking for guidance, which suggests the legal team is as surprised by the dep

Last Updated : 2026-04-14

FELICITY IN DANGER

CHAPTER 79: FELICITY IN DANGERThe call comes at two in the morning.Not Felicity. David Park. His voice at two AM has the same quality as his voice at two PM. He does not carry urgency in his tone, only information but I have learned to read the speed of his delivery and this one is fast.Someone attempted to access the secured building's rear service entrance at one-fifteen. Not through the lobby, not through the main entrance with its cameras and its doorman and the cover identity David's team established. The service entrance. The kind of access that requires prior knowledge of the building's layout.Building security intercepted it before any penetration. The individual fled. They are on camera but the camera angle is partial. David's team is working on the footage.Felicity is unharmed. She is awake and in her apartment and has been in contact with her federal contact as of forty-five minutes ago.I am sitting up in bed. Dominic is awake beside me. I am doing the math re

Last Updated : 2026-04-17

THE SECOND TRIMESTER BEGINS

CHAPTER 80: THE SECOND TRIMESTER BEGINSThe twenty-week scan is on a Thursday morning.I have been counting toward it since the twelve-week appointment not obsessively, just with the particular attention of someone who has a number they need to be different from what it was. Ten percent discordance at twelve weeks. Measured and noted and filed in the back of my mind where I keep the things I am tracking without thinking about them constantly.Helena is five months old today, as of this morning. She is with Mrs. Chen. Mrs. Chen has had the details of this appointment for two weeks, in the same organized way she has all details.The sonographer's name is Mary. She has been with Dr. Reyes's practice for eight years, which I know because I asked at the twelve-week appointment when I was trying to understand the practice's twin monitoring protocol. She has the patient, practiced manner of someone who has delivered a great deal of news in this room, good news and bad news and compli

Last Updated : 2026-04-19

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