Semua Bab After Midnight With Him : Bab 101 - Bab 110

Sophia’s POVThe silence after his question lasted too long.The envelope still sat in his hand. The pages about my past—whatever version of it someone had decided to weaponize—lay between us like a third person in the room. My mouth had gone dry. I had come here to tell him one truth and walked straight into another. For a second I thought the moment had been stolen for good.Then something in me just… gave out.I couldn’t hold both secrets anymore. The past on those pages would have to wait. The thing growing inside me couldn’t.“I’m pregnant.”The words left me flat and unsteady. No buildup. No careful framing. They just broke into the space between us and stayed there.Damien went completely still.The envelope lowered a fraction. His eyes stayed on my face, searching, like he was waiting for the rest of a sentence that might make the first part make sense in a different way. The city light from the window cut across half his expression and left the other half in shadow. I watched

I knew things had shifted into a new gear when he canceled a board lunch to sit with me through a routine check-up I had told him I could handle alone.The doctor’s office was quiet and pale. Damien sat in the chair beside mine like it was the most important meeting on his calendar. He didn’t interrupt the appointment. He didn’t try to take over. He just listened, asked one clear question about the nausea, and thanked the doctor at the end with the same seriousness he used for contract negotiations. When we walked out he already had the car waiting at the curb.“You didn’t have to come,” I said as I slid into the seat.“I know.”“I mean it. I’ve been to these by myself before.”“I know that too.” He closed the door, came around, and got in beside me. “I’m still coming.”There was no edge in it. Just a flat certainty that made argument feel strangely pointless.From that morning on, the princess treatment stopped looking like a temporary reaction and started looking like a system. He a

Isabella’s POVI didn’t plan on seeing them.I had come to the private members’ club near the river for a late drink with a board contact who had already canceled by the time I arrived. I should have left. Instead I took a seat in the upper lounge overlooking the main floor and ordered alone. Old habit. I preferred the height. It made watching easier.That was when they walked in.Damien’s hand sat low on Sophia’s back as they crossed the room. Not the practiced public touch he used for cameras. Something more automatic. She leaned into it slightly when a waiter passed too close. The ease between them was what registered first. Then the rest of it landed in pieces.The careful way he guided her around a chair. The fact that she ordered nothing with caffeine. The subtle, protective angle of his body whenever someone moved near her. And then—when she turned sideways to speak to him under the light—the unmistakable line of her profile.Pregnant.Not obviously. Not the kind of pregn

Sophia’s POVThe second wave hit harder than the first.Isabella didn’t wait for the legal process to do the work. She went public. Not with a careful statement through a lawyer, but with a full, emotional version of events that she fed to every outlet willing to listen. In her telling, Damien had still been her husband when I entered the picture. Their relationship hadn’t ended cleanly. It had been strained, private, unfinished. And I had walked into the middle of it with my eyes open.She cried in one of the interviews.Not loudly. Just enough for the camera to catch the shine in her eyes while she described the shock of learning about the pregnancy. She said the word *wife* more than once. She said *our marriage*. She said she had been trying to rebuild something real when another woman became pregnant and turned a private struggle into a public replacement. By the time the segment ended, the story had a villain, a victim, and a scandal large enough to swallow every quieter truth w

Sophia’s POVThe courtroom was colder than I expected.Not in temperature. In feeling. Everything about it was designed to strip a story down to what could be proven, and for the first time since Isabella’s accusations hit the press, that felt like it might actually work in our favor. Damien sat beside me in a dark suit, steady and silent. Our lawyers filled the table to the left. Across the aisle Isabella kept her eyes forward, composed in the same careful way she had been composed at every public appearance since this started.I forced myself to breathe evenly. The baby made sitting still for long stretches harder than it used to be, but I wasn’t going to give anyone the image of me fragile in a room like this.Sophia’s counsel went first.The lawyer laid out the timeline with a clarity that left little room for theater. Employment records. Communication logs. Public appearance dates. Documentation showing that whatever relationship Damien and Isabella had once shared had ended well