Semua Bab She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife: Bab 41 - Bab 50

(Sonia)I stare at the ceiling of my bedroom and replay the night on a loop.Julian's voice. The crowded room. The way Chase said nothing.Is this some new kind of pregnancy diet, where the fetus makes you lose weight and doesn't grow?The words have burrowed under my skin.Every time I close my eyes, I hear them again, delivered in that lazy, amused drawl, loud enough for half the room to hear.He humiliated me.I pressed my hands over my flat stomach and told a roomful of Los Angeles' most powerful people that I'm carrying small because I'm petite.Nobody believed me.I could see it on their faces.The polite frowns. The exchanged glances.The way Chase looked down at my waistline, just for a second, with something flickering behind his eyes that terrified me.Doubt.The plan is still salvageable. It has to be.Losing Chase now means losing everything.The future I've spent years building inside my head, brick by painstaking brick.I pick up my phone and dial Dr. Evans.He answers o

(Chase)Hendrik Morton fills a doorway the way very few men can.He doesn't need height for it.He isn't particularly tall.He just carries himself with the absolute certainty of a man who has never once walked into a room and wondered whether he belonged there.My mother greets him in the foyer with her most practiced smile.The one she reserves for people whose wealth she respects even when she doesn't like them.Hendrik accepts the pleasantries with a short nod and hands his coat to the nearest staff member without looking at them.His eyes are already scanning the room.I watch from near the fireplace, scotch in hand, as those eyes find each of his children in turn.Piper first. He gives her a brief nod, his expression radiating approval at her perfect posture and composure.Julian next. A barely perceptible flicker of something between wariness and resignation.It’s gratifying to see Julian has that effect on even his own father.Then Nathanial.Hendrik’s gaze settles on his step

(Sonia)The dress is perfect.A deep emerald wrap style, soft enough to drape naturally over the prosthetic without pulling, structured enough to look intentional rather than concealing.I practiced the angle of my walk in front of the mirror until the slight forward tilt of my hips looked effortless.I enter the foyer of the Warren estate with my chin up and one hand resting lightly at the curve of my stomach.The bump is subtle. The kind of barely-there roundness that makes people look twice and then feel certain.The triumph lasts approximately ninety seconds.The sitting room is in the grip of something entirely unrelated to me.My step-father is radiating the particular cold fury of a patriarch who has been disappointed and is deciding how to punish the guilty.Nathanial is across the room with a glass in his hand and the hollow expression of a man who has said something irrevocable and isn't sure whether he regrets it.Eleanor glides toward me with genuine warmth and both hands

(Natasha)The dining table looks like a very happy disaster.Dad outdid himself this year.He always does when he has a real kitchen to work in and an audience willing to eat.The remnants of our dinner are spread across the table in various states of destruction.A picked-clean roast, the ghost of a potato gratin, half a loaf of his famous pull-apart bread that nobody could stop taking more of.Mom is already making hot buttered rum in a pot on the stove, filling the townhouse with the smell of cinnamon and brown sugar and something so deeply Christmas that my chest physically aches with happiness.This is it.This is the thing I missed while I was living inside that cold, beautiful estate.Not a specific dish or a tradition or a gift.Just this.Family and love and laughter.Warmth that comes from the people in the room rather than an ornate fireplace and underfloor heating.Lily is in her bouncer near the kitchen doorway, wide awake and tracking the chaos with enormous, serious eye

(Chase)Lily will not sleep.She was fine during the show, fine through the chaos of the evening, perfectly content while Mason was here and the room was full of noise and movement.The moment things quieted down she decided she had opinions about it.I walk her through the townhouse in slow loops, one hand supporting her back, the other cupped under her small, warm weight.She isn't crying exactly.She's making the sound that falls just short of crying, a persistent, restless complaint directed at no one in particular.I understand the feeling.The kitchen light is still on.I can hear Natasha moving around in there, the soft clatter of dishes, the tap running.She offered to take Lily so I could go home, and I told her to let me.She looked briefly surprised and then went back to the kitchen without arguing.We're finding a language, the two of us.It doesn't have words yet.Just small negotiations.Small concessions that neither of us names out loud.I carry Lily into the narrow ha