All Chapters of PREGNANT BY THE CEO: Chapter 61 - Chapter 63

My sixteen-year-old daughter had written her own statement, and she was right, it was time. I sat there, with my heart thudding unevenly, trying to figure out if I was protecting her or just terrified of letting go.I picked up the document with hands that felt heavier than they should. Isla sat across from me, completely still, the kind of stillness that came when she had already decided something and was patiently waiting for the rest of us to catch up. Marcus lingered in the doorway, like a silent shadow. No one spoke. I read the document. Then I read it again, slower this time.One page, twelve sentences. Her voice was precise, direct, stripped of every careful layer the rest of us wrapped around the truth. She hadn’t written a press statement. She had simply written what was true.She wrote about growing up without a father she never knew. No performance of tragedy, just fact, the way she treated most facts: with a clear-eyed honesty that didn’t need sentiment to hold its weigh

He was thinking about giving up his family empire, and he was telling me about it in an empty venue on a Saturday morning. I was either the right person to tell or the reason he was considering it. I needed to know which, I needed it like air.I asked him directly. No careful cushioning, no soft edges. The question mattered too much for anything else.“Which is it?” I said. “Am I the right person to tell because you trust me? Or am I the reason you’re considering it?”He looked at me. He didn’t rush. That was one of the things I had come to know about him, he never rushed the truth. He sat with the question, turning it over fully before he spoke. The pause wasn’t hesitation. It was respect.“Both,” he said.I waited, heart steady but loud in my chest.“And that’s not a bad thing,” he added, his voice low and certain. He held my gaze with that quiet steadiness that meant he was all in. “You’re not a factor I’m balancing. You’re not something I’m running toward or away from.” A breath.