Home / Romance / Pregnant and Rejected, Now She’s Back! / Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

All Chapters of Pregnant and Rejected, Now She’s Back!: Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

220 Chapters

122

Adrian Cole's office was exactly what Lena would have expected from Seth's description, clean and spare, nothing on the walls that didn't need to be there, the particular order of a man who trusted substance over presentation. Adrian himself matched the office. Mid forties, unhurried in his movements, with the kind of quiet authority that never needed to announce itself the way some lawyers' authority did, all posturing and raised voices meant to fill a room. He read through everything Lena had brought him with careful, methodical attention, occasionally making a note in the margin, and didn't speak until he'd gone through the entire file twice. "Three things," he said finally, setting the last page down and looking up at her. "First, the NDA has vulnerabilities. It was drafted quickly, under pressure, by someone who prioritized speed over thoroughness. There are gaps in it I can use." Lena felt something shift slightly in her chest, the first real movement of hope she'd allowed her

123

Webb made his first public move within the week, and Seth read it at his kitchen table on a Tuesday morning with his coffee going cold beside him. It was a carefully placed item in an industry newsletter, the kind of publication most people outside the PR world had never heard of but that mattered enormously to the people inside it. The item was brief, almost throwaway in its phrasing, suggesting that Lena's departure from her previous firm had not been entirely voluntary, that questions remained about her conduct during a sensitive client matter that had never been fully resolved. It named no specifics. It made no direct accusation. It was vague enough to be entirely deniable if anyone pushed back on it, and specific enough to do real damage to anyone who read it and filed the implication away without ever needing it confirmed. Seth read it twice, and felt a cold clarity settle over him that he recognized immediately, the particular focus that had defined so much of the last five y

124

Clara's face filled the screen, the video connection slightly delayed the way it always was, and the baby on her hip had grown larger than the last photo Lena had been sent, big enough now to be reaching for things with real purpose rather than just gripping whatever came within range. "She has Mom's eyes," Lena said, before she could stop herself, before she'd decided whether she wanted to say it out loud. Clara's expression flickered, something complicated moving across it, the particular weight that neither of them could look at directly for very long without feeling the shape of everything underneath it. "I know," she said. "I see it every single day. I don't know if it comforts me or breaks my heart a little, honestly. Sometimes both at once." "Both at once sounds about right," Lena said. They hadn't spoken in six months, not properly, not beyond the occasional text exchange or a photo sent without much commentary attached. It wasn't estrangement exactly. It was simply the par

125

Webb contacted Seth directly, and the message told him two things at once. The first was that he'd underestimated how quickly Webb moved. The second, more unsettling, was that Webb already knew about him and Lena, knew enough to identify Seth as someone worth reaching out to directly rather than through Adrian or through Lena herself. The message itself was professional, almost aggressively so, brief and carefully worded, requesting a conversation about a matter of mutual interest. No specifics. No threats stated outright. Just the particular, practiced vagueness of a man who understood exactly how much implication could accomplish without ever crossing into something actionable. Seth read it twice at his desk, and didn't respond immediately, though every instinct he'd built up over years of protecting people he cared about was pushing him toward an immediate reply, something sharp and unambiguous that would leave Webb in no doubt about what he was dealing with. He showed the messa

126

Priya's story published on a Thursday morning, and it was more thorough than Lena had let herself anticipate, even after weeks of knowing it was coming. Three former employees of the firm were on record, named, willing to attach their reputations to what they were describing. Two additional sources remained anonymous but corroborated the same pattern independently, the particular architecture of NDA settlements used again and again over the years, not to protect people who'd been harmed but to protect the senior men responsible for the harm in the first place. And there, woven carefully into the middle of the piece, was a detailed account of the leak that had cost Lena her position. Names changed. Details altered just enough to avoid direct identification. But circumstances precise enough that anyone who actually knew the firm, anyone who'd been inside it during those years, would understand exactly what was being described and who it had happened to. The story didn't name Lena dire

127

Brynn called on Friday evening, and it had nothing to do with any of it. She didn't know the details yet, hadn't been told about Webb or the lawsuit or any of the past few weeks' quiet crisis, and Seth found himself grateful for that, grateful for one conversation that wasn't tangled up in strategy and legal exposure and careful, measured waiting. "How are you," she asked, the same way she'd always asked, the particular checking in she'd never once stopped doing, even now that her own life had settled into something steadier than it had been in years. "Things are complicated," he said, "but moving. In a good direction, I think." "Complicated how?" "I'll tell you the whole thing soon," he said. "It's not mine to tell yet, not entirely. It involves Lena more than it involves me. But we're handling it. It's under control." Brynn was quiet for a moment, and he could picture her exactly, sitting somewhere in the house she shared with Darius now, the particular stillness she brought to

128

Webb dropped the lawsuit, quietly, through his lawyer, with no public statement attached to the retreat. Adrian called her first, before she'd even finished her coffee, his voice carrying a note of satisfaction he rarely let show through his usual measured calm. "It's over," he said. "His attorney filed the withdrawal this morning. No settlement, no admission, nothing on the record beyond the simple fact that he's chosen not to pursue it." Lena stood in her kitchen with the phone against her ear, and for a moment she couldn't quite process what he was telling her, the words arriving somewhere just outside the shape she'd built her entire nervous system around for weeks now, the shape that had learned to expect the next blow rather than the absence of one. "He just dropped it," she said slowly, testing the words. "He just dropped it," Adrian confirmed. "The story did exactly what we hoped it would. Between the witnesses coming forward and the discovery exposure he'd have faced

129

The firm's first client came through Brynn, which he hadn't asked for and wasn't surprised by, given how thoroughly their lives had remained intertwined even now that both of them had built separate, settled happiness elsewhere. Brynn called on a Tuesday, her voice carrying the particular careful weight she used when something serious needed handling. "There's a young actress," she said. "Twenty two. I've met her a few times through industry circles, and something's been bothering me about her situation for months, but I never had anywhere to put the concern until you started this." "Tell me," Seth said, already reaching for a notepad, the old instinct rising up immediately, sharpened now by the years of exactly this kind of work. "Her name's Priya Anand," Brynn said. "No relation to the journalist, before you ask, I already checked. She's managed by a man named Curt Halloway, who's been in this industry longer than either of us have been alive, and something about the way he talks

130

Brynn called him one afternoon in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday, no particular occasion attached to it, and asked him if he was happy. She never used the question as a pleasantry. In all the years he'd known her, she'd never once tossed it out the way most people did, a reflexive greeting expecting nothing more than an equally reflexive fine. When Brynn asked if you were happy, she meant the question completely, and she expected you to actually consider it before answering. "Yes," he said, and found the word arrived easily, without hesitation. "Are you sure," she pressed, the same directness she'd always brought to anything that mattered. He laughed, surprised by how quickly the certainty rose up in him. "I'm sure." She was quiet for a moment on the other end of the line, and he could picture her exactly, somewhere in the house she shared with Darius now, the particular stillness she carried when she was working through something honestly rather than simply filling space. "I

131

Seth proposed on a Thursday evening, at home, with no fanfare attached to it at all. There was no restaurant, no carefully arranged evening designed to build toward a single dramatic moment, no waiter primed to bring out champagne on cue. Just their apartment, the city lights beginning to come on outside the window as the evening settled in, dinner already on the table, the ordinary rhythm of a Thursday night that looked, from the outside, exactly like every other Thursday night they'd shared over the past several months. She noticed the ring before she fully understood what was happening, catching sight of the small box in his hand as he came around the kitchen island toward her, and felt her whole body go very still, the particular stillness that arrived when you realized, all at once, that an ordinary moment had just become something else entirely. He didn't get down on one knee. She noticed that too, immediately, and felt a rush of gratitude for it, because some part of her had

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