All Chapters of The Charming CEO I Slept With Is My Ex’s Half Brother: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

"You've thrown up three times this week."Mia said it flat, arms crossed, blocking my path to the bathroom like a very small, very determined wall."It's stress.""It's Tuesday, Wednesday, and today, and you went green during a budget meeting over a bagel smell." She tilted her head. "Rose, I love you, but stress doesn't do that.""I haven't been sleeping. My stomach's off.""Uh huh." Her eyes dropped, pointed, to the leftover coffee I hadn't touched in three days. I used to live on that coffee. "When was your last period?""Mia.""I'm serious. When?"I opened my mouth to deflect and nothing came out. Because I'd been doing the math in my head for two days straight, quietly, obsessively, and I already knew the answer, and saying it out loud would make it real."I don't know," I said, which wasn't a lie. It just wasn't the truth either."You don't know." She said it slowly, like she was tasting the shape of it. Something shifted in her face, understanding dawning hard and fast. "Oh my

HENRY'S POVDaniel was already at the table when I walked into the restaurant, two folders squared in front of him like he'd arranged them twice while he waited.He'd picked a booth in the back, half hidden by a divider, the kind of table you choose when you don't want to be overheard. Old instinct. He'd always had good instincts, even back when the only thing we were hiding was a stolen bottle of scotch in his dorm room."You look like hell," he said."Good to see you too.""I mean it. You look like a man who hasn't slept since he landed." He pushed a glass of water toward me anyway, old habit from law school all-nighters neither of us talked about anymore. "Sit. Eat something. Then tell me why you asked me to pull records nobody's touched in fifteen years."I sat. I didn't touch the menu."My mother's file," I said. "The death certificate, the police report, the insurance claim, whatever exists. I want all of it.""You know I already started, the second you called.""And?""And it's

The stairwell saved me and nearly killed me at the same time.I'd taken the stairs instead of the elevator, too impatient to wait, my mind still tangled in last night's failure, the words I hadn't said, the paper I'd thrown away like it could erase the problem along with itself. Halfway down the second flight, the world tilted sideways.My vision went white at the edges. My knees buckled.I grabbed the railing with both hands, hard enough to bruise, and went down anyway, one stair, then catching myself, my shoulder slamming into the wall instead of the concrete steps below. For one suspended second I hung there, breath gone, heart hammering, picturing exactly how much worse it could have been."Whoa, hey!" A man from accounting caught my elbow, steadying me. "You okay? You went white as a sheet.""I'm fine," I said, though my voice shook. "Just... missed a step."I wasn't fine. I sat on the landing for a full minute after he left, palm pressed flat against my stomach, breathing throug

ROSELINE’S POVHenry asked to meet somewhere neutral this time, not his office, not mine, a small conference room on the ninth floor nobody used because the projector had been broken for months. I appreciated the gesture even as I braced myself for whatever came with it."I've had my lawyer draft something," he said, sliding a folder across the table before I'd even sat down."A lawyer. Already.""I wanted to move quickly."I flipped the folder open, scanned the first page, and felt my stomach drop somewhere near the floor. Figures. More figures than I'd ever seen attached to my own name in one place. A monthly allowance. A trust for the child. A clause about housing, something about a car, something else about healthcare that read like it had been written for a different species of person entirely."What is this?""Protection. Security, for you and the baby." He watched my face carefully, like he'd expected relief and was already recalibrating when he didn't see it. "You won't have t

VIVIAN'S POVThe orchids on my desk needed water. I noted it the way I noted everything, filed neatly between more pressing concerns, a small task to attend to once the larger ones were handled.Eric's text sat open on my phone. I need everything you've got on Roseline Carter's file. He'd sent it to the wrong person, a junior associate in HR who'd made the mistake of forwarding anything unusual straight to me, a habit I'd cultivated years ago and never once regretted.My son was circling something. Clumsily, as he did most things, but circling nonetheless.I set the phone down and folded my hands, considering the problem the way I considered everything, as a matter of arithmetic. Every family is simply a ledger of debts and assets, dressed up in sentiment so no one has to look directly at the math. I'd understood that at nineteen, standing in a hospital corridor with a secret already forming inside me that would take thirty years to fully collect on.Richard had given Eric his name. I