Chapter Two:

I do not breathe again until Damien takes the phone from my hand.

He reads the message once. His face does not change, but something in him shuts like a steel door. For one hard second, I almost regret telling him anything at all. Men like Damien do not react loudly. They react efficiently, and that is usually worse.

“Who sent this?” he asks.

“I don’t know.”

“That answer helps no one.”

“It’s the only one I have.”

He looks at me, not the screen now, and I can feel him measuring every word I say against every move I’ve made tonight. I hate that I have already given him a reason to doubt me. I hate even more that the message shakes me enough for him to see it.

He sets my phone on the table. “Are you pregnant?”

The question is so direct that it feels like a slap. No softness. No hesitation. Just truth dragged into the open.

“I don’t know,” I say, and this time I am telling the truth.

His eyes narrow. “You don’t know?”

“My cycle is late.”

“How late?”

I fold my arms over myself. “Long enough.”

The silence after that is ugly.

I did not plan to say it like this. I did not plan to say it at all. I have not even let myself think the word clearly yet, as if refusing to name it might keep it from becoming real. But now it is here, sitting between us with the contract and the photograph and the city humming below like none of this matters.

Damien picks up the phone again and locks the screen. “Who else knows?”

“No one.”

“That includes Adrian?”

I hesitate, and that is enough.

His jaw tightens. “He knows.”

“I don’t know what he knows,” I say quickly. “Adrian likes fear. He sends things to unsettle me. It could be a lie.”

“Could be.”

He says it flatly, but his eyes stay on me in a way that makes my skin feel too tight. He is not just hearing the words. He is rearranging the entire deal around them.

“I’m not trying to trap you,” I say.

The second it leaves my mouth, I wish I could take it back.

A shadow passes through his expression. “Do I look like a man who gets trapped?”

“No. You look like a man who burns the building down before anyone locks the door.”

That almost earns a reaction from him. Almost.

He walks to the window, phone still in his hand, and I hate that he seems calmer with his back to me than most men do in prayer. I cannot read him like this. I cannot tell if he is angry, calculating, or already rewriting the terms of everything.

“Answer me carefully,” he says. “Is there any chance that message is true?”

The room goes still around me.

There it is. The question under all the others. Not whether I am late. Not whether Adrian is playing games. Whether another man could have already left something permanent inside this arrangement before Damien ever touched it.

I should be offended. Instead, I feel tired.

“Yes,” I say.

He turns.

I force myself to keep standing straight. “There is a chance.”

For the first time tonight, the mask slips. It is brief, but I catch it. Not hurt. Not jealousy. Something colder. Something far more dangerous because it settles deep instead of flashing hot.

“How far along?” he asks.

“I haven’t seen a doctor.”

“Then you will.”

“I said there’s a chance.”

“And I said you will.”

I should fight him. I should push back on instinct alone. But the truth is I do not want to walk into a clinic by myself and hear something life-changing from a stranger while pretending my hands are not shaking. I have been alone with too many bad truths already.

“I’ll handle it,” I say.

“You haven’t.”

My temper snaps. “You don’t get to speak to me like I’m incompetent.”

“No. I speak to you like you’re cornered.”

The words land because they are true. Again.

I look away first. “This is exactly why I don’t ask men for help.”

“That hasn’t stopped them from making decisions around you.”

I hate that too.

He comes back to the table and closes the folder. The contract is no longer the center of the night. The message is. My body is. Adrian is somehow in the room without being in it.

“If Adrian sent this, he wants one of two things,” Damien says. “He either wants to stop this marriage, or he wants to enter it through you.”

“He already thinks he owns part of my life.”

“Then he’s about to be disappointed.”

Something about the way he says it makes me look up.

There is no warmth in Damien Blackwood. I know that. But there is focus, and right now all of it is aimed at me. It should make me uneasy. Instead, it makes my pulse trip in a way I do not appreciate.

“This is why you shouldn’t marry me,” I say.

His gaze stays on mine. “This is exactly why you should.”

I let out a small, humorless laugh. “You really are insane.”

“No. I just refuse to hand a problem to another man when I can solve it myself.”

I stare at him. “That may be the most arrogant thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“And yet here we are.”

I sink back into my chair because suddenly standing feels like work. My mind is moving too fast. Marriage. Pregnancy. Adrian. Damien. Every path looks terrible from where I am sitting.

“What if it’s true?” I ask quietly. “What if I am pregnant and the child isn’t yours?”

His answer comes without pause. “Then we confirm it, contain the damage, and move.”

The bluntness should hurt. Somehow it steadies me. Not because it is kind. Because it is clear.

“And if I don’t want to be managed?”

“That depends on whether you want to survive this cleanly.”

I close my eyes for one second. Just one. When I open them, he is still there, still impossible, still infuriatingly composed.

“You make everything sound like strategy.”

“Everything already is.”

Maybe in his world, yes. In mine, strategy has always come with emotional wreckage left behind. But I cannot deny the shape of the moment. Adrian has made his move. Damien is offering structure where my life currently has none.

My phone buzzes again.

This time Damien sees the message appear before I can reach it.

Meet me before midnight, or I will send proof.

My stomach twists so fast I feel sick.

Damien reads it over my shoulder. “He’s impatient.”

“He’s enjoying this.”

“Only because you let him think he can.”

The words sting. I rise too quickly and grab my clutch. “I’m going.”

He steps into my path at once. “No.”

“Don’t start ordering me around.”

“I’m not starting. I’m stopping you from making a stupid move.”

“It’s my stupid move to make.”

“Not if it affects my name.”

There it is. The line in the sand. The reason this can never be anything but dangerous. Even now, with all this tension snapping between us, he still comes back to ownership, image, and consequences.

I lift my chin. “Your name?”

“You accepted the proposal.”

“I haven’t signed anything.”

His voice drops. “You shook my hand.”

The heat between us changes. Not softer. Sharper. I become painfully aware of how close he is, how controlled he stays, and how unstable I suddenly feel.

I should move. I do not.

“Then maybe you should reconsider,” I say.

“Maybe you should stop giving your enemy access to your panic.”

That does it. “You don’t know anything about me.”

His eyes hold mine. “I know enough.”

No. He doesn’t. He doesn’t know what Adrian sounds like when he is pretending to be gentle. He doesn’t know how long it takes to rebuild your mind after someone has spent years convincing you that love and control are the same thing. He doesn’t know what it costs me to stand in a room and still look composed.

But then again, maybe he knows more than I think. Maybe cold men recognize broken things because they are built from them.

I take a breath. “If I don’t meet Adrian, he’ll escalate.”

“If you do meet him, he’ll know you’re still afraid.”

“I am afraid.”

The words come out before pride can stop them.

Damien goes very still.

It is the first truly honest thing I have given him tonight, and I instantly want to swallow it back. But something shifts in his face. Not pity. Something steadier.

“When did you take the test?” he asks.

“I haven’t.”

That surprises him. “Why?”

Because if I see proof, then I cannot pretend this is still just stress and chaos and one late month. Because if it is real, then everything changes. Because I am tired of life-changing truths arriving when I have no room left for them.

“I didn’t want to know alone,” I say.

The room quiets around us.

He studies me for a long second, and when he speaks again, his voice is lower. “Then you won’t.”

I should refuse that too. I should tell him he is not entitled to stand beside me at the most vulnerable moment of my life simply because he offers me a contract. But the offer lands in the one place I have kept hidden all evening.

Loneliness.

He sees it. I know he does.

He takes my phone and slips it into his pocket before I can object. “You are not meeting Adrian tonight.”

I open my mouth, but he cuts across me.

“You’re coming with me.”

“Where?”

“To find out whether this is a threat,” he says, “or my child.”

My heartbeat stops for one terrible second, and I whisper, “Your child?”