Chapter 6

The pregnancy test sat on the bathroom counter like a verdict.

Two pink lines.

Lena stared at it for ten minutes, waiting for it to change, for the universe to reveal some hidden punchline. But the lines remained, stark and undeniable, and when she finally looked up at her reflection, the woman in the mirror was someone she did not recognize. Her eyes were shadowed, her face pale, her dark hair hanging in tangled waves around her shoulders. She looked tired. She looked scared. She looked like a stranger.

Three months since the wedding.

Three months since she had deleted the threatening text, thrown away Alexander's card, and thrown herself into job applications and freelance design work, trying to bury the memory of that night under productivity and exhaustion. She had taken three temp jobs, cleaned apartments for cash, and designed logos for small businesses that paid fifty dollars and took three weeks to approve a single font change.

Three months since her body had started whispering secrets her mind refused to hear.

The nausea that hit every morning like clockwork. The missed period that she had told herself was stress. The strange, tender heaviness in her breasts that made even her most comfortable bra feel like a torture device. The fatigue that had her falling asleep at her laptop by nine PM every night.

She was pregnant.

With Alexander Voss's child.

Lena sank to the bathroom floor, her back against the cool tile, and wrapped her arms around her knees. The apartment was small, a studio in Queens that she could barely afford on her freelance income, but it was hers. Safe. Quiet. A fortress of solitude where no one could find her.

What was she going to do?

She could call him. The number on the card was probably still valid. She could tell him he was going to be a father, demand, what? Money? Acknowledgment? A place in his gilded world? She could imagine the conversation, the cold politeness, the legal team that would descend on her like vultures. She had seen enough celebrity gossip to know how these stories ended. The billionaire's secret baby. The gold-digger. The settlement and the NDA and the lifetime of silence.

Her phone buzzed.

She flinched, then reached for it with dread already pooling in her stomach. The screen was blank. Then another buzz, and another text appeared from the same unknown number from three months ago.

Unknown: We warned you. The Voss heir has no room for distractions. Leave New York. Or we will make sure you regret staying.

Lena's breath came in shallow gasps.

They knew.

Whoever they were, they knew about the pregnancy. Or they suspected. Or they were watching her closely enough that a positive test felt inevitable. The threat was not just about her anymore. It was about the baby. The tiny, growing life inside her that she had only just begun to acknowledge.

Fear crawled up her spine, cold and serpentine.

She was twenty-two, unemployed, with no family to speak of since her mother's death two years ago. She had a few thousand dollars in savings and a portfolio of design work that no one had seen. She was a ghost in a city of millions, invisible and alone.

Against the Voss empire, she was nothing.

But against her own child, she was everything.

Lena placed a hand over her still-flat stomach and felt something shift inside her. Not a kick, not yet. Something deeper. A resolve that crystallized from the chaos of her fear.

She would leave New York.

She would raise this baby alone.

And she would never tell Alexander Voss that he had a child.

Not because she was cruel.

But because someone had threatened to hurt them both, and Lena would rather break her own heart than let them break her baby.