All Chapters of PREGNANT BY THE CEO: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

My sixteen-year-old daughter read the letter from the father she’d never met, looked up at me, and said, “He was looking for us.” I had nothing to say back. We stayed right there on the kitchen floor. Neither of us made a move to get up. The tiles were cold and hard under us, but it didn’t seem to matter. Isla set the letter down carefully, like it was something fragile, then pulled her knees up to her chest and just… waited.That was so typical of her. She had this quiet patience that could loosen even the tightest knots in me. She’d learned a long time ago that pushing me for answers only made me shut down. So instead, she gave me space, and somehow that open, gentle silence was harder to hide from than any question she could have asked.So I told her everything. Not the clean, careful version I’d been feeding her for years, the one where her father and I simply made different choices and moved on with our lives. No. I gave her the real story, the one I’d never said out loud to a s

Diana Hale knew about my daughter, and I still hadn’t figured out what the hell I was going to do about it before she took the decision out of my hands. The invitation showed up two days after Sebastian stormed out of my office.Thick cream envelope, my company address written across the front in beautiful, deliberate handwriting. The kind that screamed control. “Diana Hale requests the pleasure of your company.” That weekend. A venue I knew all too well. RSVP by return. I turned it over slowly, heart beating a little harder than I wanted to admit.Sure, my address was public, but the personal touch and the perfect timing? This wasn’t random. Diana had been holding onto this information, waiting for the exact right moment to use it. She never did anything on impulse. I called her assistant and accepted before I could talk myself out of it. Apparently my gut had already decided for me.------I spent the next two days preparing myself, not nervously pacing, but thinking like a strategi

A stranger knew exactly what my mother had been told. My mother was gone, and there I was, standing in my hallway at 11 p.m., finally about to hear the truth about what had really happened to all of us. I walked into the kitchen and sat down in the dark. I didn’t bother with the light. It just felt more honest that way.“Tell me your name first,” I said.“Margaret. Margaret Osei.” Her voice was gentle but tired, like she’d been carrying this for a long time. “Your mother and I were close when you were little. We lost touch after she moved, but we still spoke every now and then, right up until near the end.” She paused. “She talked about you a lot.”I stayed quiet, my hand resting on the kitchen table.“The night before the wedding,” she went on, “Victor Hale went to see your mother. Not Sebastian, Victor. He met her privately at a little café near her work. He sat down and told her that Sebastian had made up his mind. That the engagement was his decision, and he was fully committed. T

The press was about to drag my life into print, and it wasn’t even the version I would’ve written. I had forty-eight hours to figure out how much of the truth I was willing to own.I called Sandra first. She picked up on the second ring, all business. I read the email straight through, voice flat. She went quiet for a second, thinking. “How much do they actually have?” she asked.“The business side is locked, the contract, the gala. Personal stuff… they’re just poking around, hoping I’ll fill in the blanks.”“Then we'll give them nothing solid,” she said. “Short statement, facts only. No emotions, no extra meat for them to chew on. Send it to me, I’ll sharpen it up.”My lawyer said basically the same thing and caught two lines I’d already decided to kill. I thanked her, but my stomach stayed twisted up. Then I called Sebastian. He answered right away. “My team caught the same reporter sniffing around Hale Industries.”“They’re hitting both sides,” I said.“I want us to put out a joint

He’d carried a photograph of us for sixteen years. I’d spent those same years trying like hell to stop carrying him. Only one of us had managed it, and it sure as hell wasn’t him.I picked it up and stared longer than I meant to. No memory of the moment. Just us, caught laughing by whoever snapped the picture. That girl had her whole soul in it, wide open, no walls, convinced the ground was solid, she had no clue.I slid the photo into my bag. “Thank you,” I said.Sebastian didn’t push. He watched me with that quiet patience he’d grown into, the kind that wants without demanding. He let the silence stay heavy between us. No questions about why I was taking it. or any talk of next steps. Just space.We said goodbye on the pavement. Nothing dramatic, two people who’d finally talked honestly for two hours, then stepped back into their separate lives a little more unsettled than before. He waited until I reached my car before turning away. I noticed, but I didn’t let myself think about i