All Chapters of She Left With Nothing and Built Everything: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Roza POVDr. Cross studied the numbers on her screen with the kind of quiet focus that frightened me more than anything she could have said out loud.“Your blood pressure is significantly elevated,” she said finally, turning to face me and Soren where we sat side by side in her small office. “Higher than I would like to see at this stage of the pregnancy. Combined with the protein levels in your latest bloodwork, I want to be very clear with you about what this could develop into if we do not manage it now.”“Manage it how,” I asked, my voice smaller than I wanted it to be.“Rest, first and foremost. Reduced stress, wherever that is possible for you.” She glanced at me carefully, and I understood she already knew, at least in broad strokes, exactly how difficult reduced stress might be for a woman whose life had become one legal ambush after another. “I am putting you on partial rest starting today. Limited hours on your feet. No situations that spike your heart rate the way today cle

Soren POVRoza told me about the call the next morning, sitting across from me at the small table in her flat, her hands wrapped around a mug of tea she was not drinking.“Midnight,” she said. “She called me at midnight, Soren, all charm at first, offering to help with Harbor House’s investor troubles. Then she got quieter and told me some strange, half honest thing about regret.”My jaw tightened. “What exactly did she say?”“That she made a mistake three years ago she has never stopped regretting. That watching you build something new is harder to sit with than she expected.” Roza looked at me carefully. “I think it is time you told me the whole story, Soren. Not the version you gave me weeks ago. All of it.”I sat back, feeling something old and tired settle over me, the particular exhaustion of finally having to say a thing out loud that you have spent years keeping folded small.“We built a company together,” I said. “Property investment, mostly. I trusted her completely, profess

Roza POVSoren drove faster than I had ever seen him drive, his knuckles pale on the wheel, one hand reaching over every few seconds to check that I was still upright, still breathing, still there.“Talk to me,” he said. “Roza, please, say something.”“It is easing a little.” My voice shook. “Not gone. But easing.”“We are almost there.”The clinic swallowed us into fluorescent light and hurried footsteps, a nurse taking one look at my face and calling for Dr. Cross before I had even finished giving my name. They put me on a monitor, cold gel against my stomach, and for a long, terrible stretch of minutes the room held nothing but the sound of my own frightened breathing and the steady beep of a machine I did not fully understand.Then another sound joined it. Fast, steady, unmistakably alive.“There,” the nurse said gently. “Strong heartbeat. That is a good sign.”I let out a breath I had been holding since the boardroom call had ended, tears finally slipping free, and Soren’s hand f

Callum POVI stood in the rain and watched her face, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, I had no idea what to say next.I had rehearsed this on the flight up. I had rehearsed it in the taxi from the airport, sitting alone in the back seat while the driver made small talk I could not answer. Somewhere between London and this dark, wet street, every version of what I planned to say had fallen apart completely, leaving only the truth, raw and unpolished, standing there in front of her.“The merger collapsed,” I said. “Publicly. Reyes went to the press himself, framed it as walking away from an unstable partner. My board convened an emergency session two days ago. I am not certain I still have a company to run by the end of the month.”“Callum, I did not come out here for a business update.”“I know.” I laughed, and it came out wrong, hollow, nothing like the confident sound I used to make in boardrooms. “I do not know why I am telling you that first. Perhaps because

Roza POV“Absolutely not.” Mira’s voice came sharp through the phone the moment I told her. “Roza, tell me you are joking.”“I am not joking.”“She helped destroy your marriage. She sat across from you eating your soup while she was already sleeping with your husband. And now you want to open your door to her because she sent one frightened text message?”“It was not one text message, Mira. It was months of blocked numbers and voicemails and now this, someone who sounds exactly the way I used to sound, asking for somewhere to go because she has nobody else.” My voice shook, but I did not back down. “I know what that specific kind of fear sounds like. I lived inside it for seven years. I cannot pretend I do not recognize it just because it is coming from her.”Mira was quiet for a long moment. “This is not your responsibility, Roza.”“I know it is not.” I looked over at Soren, sitting quietly across the room, watching me with an expression I could not fully read. “But I keep thinking a