Elena: POV

The memory hit me like a slap as I stared at my pale reflection in the bathroom mirror, my hand trembling against my flat stomach.

Every time. Every single time after he’d taken me—on the bed, against the wall, over his desk—Julian would hand me a small white pill and a glass of water.

“Take it,” he’d say, his voice flat and businesslike, already buttoning his shirt. No tenderness. No concern for whether I was sore or scared. Just that pill, held between his long fingers like a command.

The first time, I’d been stupid enough to ask why.

His answer had been brutally simple: “Because I don’t want complications, Elena. You’re not ready to carry my child.” A pause, those steel-gray eyes meeting mine in the mirror. “Actually, you’ll never be ready. You’re not worthy of bearing a Sterling heir.”

The words had gutted me then. They still did now.

I’d taken the pill every time after, swallowing it down with water that tasted like ashes.

I couldn’t stay in that penthouse. The walls felt like they were closing in, the luxury suffocating. I grabbed my coat and left, keeping my head down as I passed the doorman.

The CVS on Third Avenue was bright and anonymous. I wandered the aisles in a daze until I found myself in front of the family planning section.

The pregnancy tests were arranged in neat rows, each box promising answers I wasn’t sure I wanted.

I grabbed the Clearblue Digital—the most expensive one, because even panicking, I couldn’t shake Julian’s voice in my head: ‘If you’re going to do something, do it right.’

The teenage cashier barely glanced at me, too absorbed in his phone. I paid cash and shoved the box deep into my purse.

Back in the bathroom, I sat on the cold marble floor, the test stick clutched in my shaking hands. The digital display blinked: Testing…

Three minutes. One hundred and eighty seconds.

At two minutes and thirty seconds, the screen flickered.

At two minutes and forty-five seconds, words appeared.

Pregnant 3+ weeks

My legs gave out completely. I slid down the wall, that single word destroying and rebuilding my entire world at once.

I was carrying Julian Sterling’s child. When the hell did I get pregnant? I always took the pill after we slept together. Every damn time. Oh shit… wait. Over a month ago. He left so quickly afterward, and then I got distracted with something and just… forgot.

The man who hated me. The man who thought I’d drugged and trapped him. The man who loved Victoria Astor and would never, ever love me.

A sob tore from my throat, then another, until I was crying so hard I couldn’t breathe. Years of suppressed pain finally breaking through.

God help me, I wanted this baby. I’d dreamed of having Julian’s child since I was a foolish teenager watching him from the servants’ quarters. But not like this. Not when he could barely stand to look at me. Not when our marriage had an expiration date.

What kind of father would he be to a baby he never wanted? What kind of life could I give this child in our cold, loveless arrangement?

But the thought of not having this baby—of ending the only piece of Julian I might ever truly possess—was unbearable.

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