Lahat ng Kabanata ng Divorced While Pregnant with the Billionaire's Twins : Kabanata 11 - Kabanata 20

Ethan's POVI didn't move from my desk for almost two hours.The photograph was still open on my screen. I had zoomed in and out countless times.I set my phone face down on the desk and pressed both palms flat against the surface, forcing myself to breathe slowly — the kind of breathing meant to convince your body it is on fire.I picked up the phone and called Reeves. He answered on the second ring."The photograph," I said without greeting. "I need you to confirm what I'm looking at.""Mr. Hayes—""Confirm it, Reeves.""Based on the visual assessment and the timeline of her departure," he said carefully, "and cross-referenced with the clinic visit I reported previously — the assessment would be consistent with an advanced early pregnancy. Possibly into the second trimester at time of photograph."Second trimester.The words landed in my chest with weight, and the memory rebuilt itself piece by piece: she had been pregnant when she signed the divorce papers, pregnant when she stood a

Bella's POVThe apartment was small.Deliberately so.I had chosen it that way—two rooms, a narrow kitchen, a window that looked out onto a street busy enough to feel safe. The kind of place that exists in the middle of a city without being part of it.I had been here four months.Four months of learning how to sleep on a mattress that was not the Hayes family's imported Italian linen. Four months of grocery shopping without a household account and cooking without a staff.Four months of being nobody's wife.It felt like the first real air I had breathed in three years.I was at the table when the discomfort started.The particular weighted fullness that had become my constant companion over the past weeks, the feeling of carrying something enormous in a body that was quietly rearranging itself to accommodate what it had been given.I pressed both palms against the sides of my stomach and breathed through it.The doctor here had been thorough. Careful. She had looked at the scans with

Williams' POVMy father arrived on a Thursday.Clara had flagged the flight details two days earlier, forwarded by his assistant abroad.I didn't go to the airport.I told myself I was busy with work. The kind of thing a man running a company was supposed to prioritize over airport arrivals.I was in my study when I heard the car pull into the drive.Samantha had organized dinner.I came downstairs at seven to find the table set with the kind of careful attention that communicates effort — the centerpiece she had bought last week and placed with the authority of someone furnishing a space that belonged to them. She was in the kitchen speaking quietly to the cook.She looked up when I walked in."He's in the sitting room," she said. "He's been there for an hour."I said nothing."Ethan." She set down the wooden spoon. "Whatever this dinner is, I need you to tell me how to handle it.""There's nothing to handle," I said. "It's just a dinner."She looked at me for a moment with an expres

Ethan's POVI knew about this event in the abstract way you know things that are happening around you when you aren't paying close enough attention. Calls behind closed doors. A publicist appearing at the house. Conversations that stopped when I walked into the room and resumed after I left.I didn't bother asking her questions, and she also doesn't tell me about it.The venue was a rooftop space in the center of the city. She only called my number at work and told me to start coming. By the time I arrived, it was already full.Industry people. Press. The particular mixture of cameras and smiles.Samantha was at the center of it in a red dress. She moved through the room the way she always moved through rooms—with the ease of a woman who had learned very early that attention was a resource and she knew how to manage it.When she saw me arrive, her smile widened.She crossed the room and reached for my hand, and I gave it to her.The speeches started at nine.Her publicist spoke first—

Bella's POV The labour started at two in the morning. Not the easy way it happens in movies. It started as a slow, building pressure that woke me from a shallow sleep and sat me upright in the dark with my hand pressed against my stomach. I lay there for a moment. The apartment was very quiet around me. The street outside had gone to its nighttime self. The lamp on the nightstand cast a small circle of light. I pressed my palm flat against the side of my stomach and felt restless. Alright, I told them silently. Alright. I hear you. I had prepared for this alone. I sat up slowly and swung my legs over the side of the bed, and I breathed through the first real contraction with my hands braced on my knees and my eyes on the lamp's small circle of light. Then it passed after some minutes. I reached for my phone and called Adaeze, the midwife. She arrived forty minutes later with a bag over each shoulder and the unhurried efficiency of a woman who had done this many tim