All Chapters of PREGNANT BY THE CEO: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Victor Hale had just tried to buy me out of the room the same way he bought his son a bride. The man had exactly one move, and he had just shown it to me.I want to go back twenty minutes.I had been heading for the lobby exit, folder under my arm, mind already on the drive back, when Victor appeared near the window seating. Silver-haired, unhurried. Phone in hand like he'd simply wandered over, like this was accidental.Victor Hale was never accidental. I sat down anyway because refusing to sit would have handed him something, and I wasn't giving this man anything he hadn't taken already.He opened with pleasantries. Compliments about my firm…measured, impersonal, the kind you gave someone you were about to insult. Then something about Sebastian having good taste dropped into the conversation with just enough weight to test whether it would land somewhere soft.It didn't. I kept my face pleasant and my spine straight and waited for the real thing. He reached into his jacket and slo

Sebastian's wife wanted to talk, and the terrifying part was that she sounded like someone who was on my side.I said yes, not immediately. I sat with the phone against my ear long enough that she could hear me deciding… not hesitating, actually deciding, and then I said yes because I had spent sixteen years working with an incomplete version of events and the incompleteness had started to cost me more than the truth ever could.We met at a restaurant she suggested. Quiet, midweek, the kind of place designed for conversations that needed to stay where they were put. I arrived first deliberately, ordered water I wouldn't drink, and was already seated and composed when she walked in.I had seen her in photographs, society pages. The wedding announcement I had found on a Thursday morning that had quietly ended my world. I thought I understood what I was walking into.I was not entirely right. Claire Sutton-Hale moved through the restaurant with the practiced ease of a woman who had been

There it was, the lie that ended everything, and whoever sent it clearly wanted me to know it had always been a lie.I sat there staring at the screen until my eyes started to burn. The document was scarily good. The letterhead looked perfect, the numbers lined up exactly right, and the date stamp sat in just the right spot. If someone you trusted had handed this to you and said “look,” you would’ve believed every word, because it was built that way.But it had my name on it, and I’ve signed my name ten thousand times in my life. The loop on the second letter was off, just a little. The tail on the last letter curved to the right, mine always swept left, without even thinking about it. The pressure in the middle strokes was too steady and careful like someone had studied my signature once and tried really hard to copy it instead of just writing it the way you do when it’s yours.Three tiny mistakes. Small enough that almost nobody would notice, I was noticing. I forwarded the whole t

I opened the folder. Eight pages of clean, clinical surveillance. My address, my office, the Tuesday coffee shop, Isla’s school schedule, her after-school activities, even which door she used every morning. All of it written down like it was nothing.Victor had read every word and done nothing. I turned the page and my stomach dropped. There was Isla at thirteen, standing just outside the school gates, bag slung over one shoulder. She was looking up at something off-camera, her grey eyes wide and soft, completely unguarded. The way she only looked when she thought no one was watching.I stared until the edges of the room went blurry. My throat closed up, I gripped the table hard, forcing air into my lungs so I wouldn’t break right there. When I finally looked up, Sebastian was watching me.His face was calm, but it was the empty kind of calm that comes after you’ve already fallen apart somewhere private. His eyes were red-rimmed.“How did you find out?” I asked quietly.“He sent me a

Victor Hale wanted a private meeting. I walked into that boardroom like I’d been waiting for it my whole life, because, honestly, I had.Not this exact moment or this particular morning, but I’d known something like this was coming ever since that envelope showed up in the lobby. Men like Victor don’t take no for an answer. They treat it like the opening move in a game they’ve already decided they’re going to win. The boardroom was empty except for him.He sat at the far end of the long table, not in Sebastian’s usual spot but in a different chair, one carefully chosen so the bright morning light poured straight onto whoever walked in. A small, quiet power play. Victor was the kind of man who arranged the room before anyone else even stepped inside.I noticed it right away and sat down anyway without moving the chair, adjusting it would’ve told him I’d caught on. I wasn’t ready to hand over that kind of information. He looked exactly like I remembered, silver hair, sharp suit, sittin