All Chapters of Don’t Beg for Love : Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

I turned toward the voice and found Andrew descending the stairs, dressed simply in a white shirt and gray trousers, his sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms.He looked breathtaking even in something this plain.Ugh. What was wrong with me, letting my mind wander there in the middle of everything else currently falling apart?He snapped his fingers once in front of my face, pulling me back to the present, and I realized he’d already crossed the room and was standing right in front of me.“You said you’d be at the hospital all day.” His brows lifted slightly. “Why are you back so early?”Why was I back?Because I was apparently, damnably pregnant with his child, all thanks to what I’d assumed, right up until an hour ago, was some careless mix-up at a pharmaceutical warehouse somewhere far removed from either of us.Except the more I turned it over in my head standing there in the entryway, the less it actually sounded like an accident at all. I hadn’t ordered any vitamin pills. I had

Ten years ago.Ten years ago, I’d been certain that everything I’d ever wished for in my entire life was finally becoming real.The memories came rushing back before I could stop them, uninvited and vivid enough to feel like I was standing inside them all over again. Annie laughing on the private beach behind the penthouse, her hair whipping loose in the wind while she chased the tide out and back in bare feet. The two of us sprawled across a blanket on the terrace at midnight, tracing constellations neither of us actually knew the names of, inventing new ones instead because it made her smile wider than the truth ever could. Her hand finding mine under the dinner table during those quiet evenings when neither of us needed to say anything at all, the silence between us comfortable in a way silence had never been with anyone else. I remembered thinking, more than once during those two weeks, that I’d finally won something I’d spent years fighting for.Annie. Her freedom from everything

Annalise’s POVThe force of his shove sent me stumbling backward until my spine hit the wall hard enough to knock the breath out of me for a second.I stood there frozen, stunned by the sheer violence in it, in him. What had happened to him? Why was he sitting alone in a bar like this, drinking himself into whatever state had turned him into someone I barely recognized?I pulled myself together and took a cautious step toward him again. His eyes cracked open, glassy and unfocused, and he glared at me through the haze. “Don’t come near me.”I didn’t take the warning seriously. He was clearly drunk out of his mind, barely able to hold his own head steady, so I approached anyway, reaching down to pry the bottle from his fingers. “Let’s go home, Andrew.”He shoved me again, harder this time, and the yell that tore out of him carried enough force to draw attention from the booths nearby. “Get out! Leave me alone! Are you deaf, or do you just enjoy ignoring me?”The words landed somewhere t

Jonas was still speaking when a shuffling sound suddenly crackled through the line, and a heartbeat later, the call cut off entirely.I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at the blank screen, blinking, trying to make sense of what had just happened. No dial tone, no message, just silence where Jonas’s careful, measured voice had been a second earlier.“What did he say?” Tania asked from beside me, leaning over to peer at my phone like the screen itself might offer answers. “Did Andrew actually sleepwalk his way outside the villa or something? Is that even possible while that drunk?”I shook my head, sinking back into the couch cushions, an uncomfortable weight settling low in my chest that I couldn’t quite name yet. Something about the abrupt end to that call sat wrong with me, though I couldn’t have explained exactly why if pressed.“Answer me, Anna.” Tania shifted closer, studying my face with growing concern. “Why do you look like that all of a sudden? And where in the wo

“All you’ve ever done is bring trouble to this family.” Grandpa’s voice sharpened further, each word landing like another strike against skin already bruised from years of the same treatment. “Amelia only just came back to us, and we nearly lost her all because of you. Couldn’t you take even a single lesson from your little sister? She’s obedient, she’s kind, she thinks of this family before herself, unlike some people I could name. Now answer me. How exactly did you become a fashion designer without a single word to anyone here? Did you think we wouldn’t find out, or did you simply not care whether we did?”I stood there in silence, unable to summon a response, my throat tight around words that refused to form into anything coherent.Maybe it was exhaustion finally catching up with me, the accumulated weight of years spent absorbing his criticism no matter what I chose to do with my life, no matter how hard I worked or how much I sacrificed to prove myself worthy of the name I carrie