Faking My Death With His Baby: The Billionaire Burned My Wedding

SIENNA'S POV

The whiskey glass was empty. I'd been staring at the bottom of it for what felt like hours, watching the last amber bead roll toward the rim and cling there, refusing to fall.

My cheek throbbed. The alcohol hadn't numbed it. Hadn't numbed anything. Just sharpened the edges of every bruise, every cut, every raw place where Declan's words had scraped me hollow.

I raised my hand to signal the bartender for another pour.

A hand closed over mine. Warm. Gentle. Familiar in a way that made my stomach drop before my brain caught up.

"You've had enough."

The voice was low. Pained. I knew it before I turned.

Caleb stood beside my stool, his tailored blazer a slash of charcoal against the neon grime of The Dive. He didn't belong here. Never would. His jaw was clean-shaven, his hair swept back, every inch the law partner whose name now gleamed on letterhead downtown. But his eyes—those warm brown eyes I'd known since I was eighteen—were fixed on my swollen cheek with a stillness that was worse than shouting.

His fingers hovered near the bruise. Didn't touch. Just hovered, trembling faintly, like a man reaching toward a wound he couldn't stanch.

"Sienna." His voice cracked on the second syllable. "Who did this?"

I pulled my hand from beneath his. Shoved it into my lap. The torn silk of my slip caught on a splinter in the bar's edge, and I didn't bother freeing it.

"Don't." My throat felt lined with sandpaper. "You shouldn't be here, Caleb."

"Shouldn't be—" He stopped. Swallowed. When he spoke again, the question came out flat and lethal. "Was it

Declan?"

I didn't answer. The silence was answer enough.

Caleb's hand dropped to his side. Fisted. The knuckles went white. For three heartbeats he just stood there, breathing through his nose, jaw clenched so tight a muscle jumped beneath his ear. Then he pulled out the stool beside me and sat.

His blazer came off. He draped it over my shoulders before I could flinch away, tucking the lapels close beneath my chin with a care that made my eyes burn. The wool still held his body heat. It smelled like cedar and something clean—laundry soap, maybe, or the absence of expensive cologne. The opposite of Declan's sandalwood and bourbon.

"I'm not leaving you here like this." Caleb's voice had steadied. The lawyer's voice. The one that had probably just closed a dozen mergers while I'd been walking barefoot through the rain. "Tell me what happened."

"Nothing happened." I pulled the blazer tighter. A shiver racked through me, head to toe. "I fell."

"You fell." He leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped. The posture was measured. Controlled.

Everything beneath it wasn't. "Sienna, I've known you for eight years. I've seen you burn yourself on soldering irons, slice your palm on a broken bezel, walk into a glass door at an Antwerp gallery opening." A ghost of something—not quite a smile—flickered at the corner of his mouth. "You've never been a good liar."

The mention of Antwerp cracked something open in my chest. My burnisher. My sketchbook. The life I'd built before Declan reduced it to ash and loaded it into a black van.

"Please." My voice splintered. "Just go."

"No."

A fresh glass appeared at my elbow. Water, not whiskey. The bartender caught my eye and nodded once—a small, grim gesture—before moving to serve the other end of the bar. I wrapped my fingers around the glass.

Didn't drink.

"Why did you marry him?" Caleb asked, and the question was so quiet, so gentle, it hit harder than any accusation. "You married the man you've loved since you were eighteen. The one you'd have done anything for." He paused. "Are you happy, Sienna?"

My fingers tightened on the glass. The water trembled.

"Caleb—"

"Are you happy?"

The word was a knife. I stared at my bruised knuckles, at the wedding ring still jammed against the swollen joint. Happy. I'd been happy once. Tracing initials into rose gold. Believing that love could be hidden in filigree.

"I'm Mrs. Hayes now." The words tasted like ash. "That's enough."

Caleb made a sound—half laugh, half wound. "That's the saddest thing I've ever heard." He shifted on the stool, turning to face me fully. His knee brushed mine. I didn't pull away. "Three years ago. The miscarriage."

He waited until I looked up. "Does Declan know what really happened? Does he know you didn't lose that baby by accident? Does he know they took you to that clinic under duress, that his father's lawyers threatened to—"

"Stop." The word came out a rasp. "Caleb, stop."

"Does he know you almost died on that table because the procedure was botched? That you couldn't have children afterward even if you wanted to?" His voice broke on the last word. The composed, polished lawyer cracked open like a shell, and underneath there was just a man in agony. "Does he know any of it?"

I shook my head.

The single motion sent tears spilling down my cheeks. Hot. Silent. I didn't wipe them.

"He doesn't know." Caleb sat back. The confirmation sank into him like a blade. "You've been carrying this alone for three years while that bastard treats you like—" He couldn't finish. His hand lifted, hovered near my bruised cheek again, and this time he let it fall. Didn't touch. Just let it fall to the bar between us, palm up. A silent offering.

"I've watched you since you were eighteen," he said. The words came slowly, pulled from somewhere deep. "I watched you fall in love with him. I watched you light up every time he walked into a room. I thought—" A breath. "—I thought if I just stayed close, if I was patient, eventually you'd turn around. Eventually you'd see me. But you never did." His smile was a broken thing. "You love him too much. You've always loved him too much. Even now, with your face bruised and your feet bleeding, you're still protecting him."

"Caleb." His name cracked in my throat. "I can't—"

"I know." He rose from the stool. Extended his hand toward me. "Come home with me. I'll take you to my place. I'll get you bandages and dry clothes and a locked door between you and the world for one night. I won't touch you. I swear it." His eyes met mine. "I just need to know you're safe."

His hand. Warm. Steady. Everything Declan's wasn't.

I looked at it for a long, suspended moment.

Then I slid off the stool. Shrugged the blazer from my shoulders. Pressed it back into his chest with both hands, and the transfer felt like an amputation.

"Thank you." My voice held steady. Barely. "But I'm Mrs. Hayes. If Declan knew I was with you tonight—"

The sentence didn't need finishing. We both knew the answer. "This isn't just about avoiding scandal. This is my road to walk. I have to finish it."

Caleb caught my wrist before I could turn. Gentle. So gentle it barely registered as restraint.

"He hit you, Sienna. He'll do it again."

"I know."

"Then why are you going back?"

I looked at him over my shoulder. The neon lights of The Dive flickered pink and blue across his devastated face, and for one wild, traitorous heartbeat, I let myself imagine it—his apartment, his bandages, his promise.

Then I pulled free.

"Because I have to."

The rain had stopped. The streets gleamed wet under streetlamps as I walked the long, winding road back to the estate. My feet had gone numb hours ago. The cuts had crusted over, reopened, crusted again. I didn't feel them anymore.

The gate was open. The drive stretched empty. No guards, no vans, no orange ember glowing on the balcony.

Too quiet.

I pushed through the front door. The foyer was dark. No staff. No footsteps. Just the oppressive weight of a house holding its breath.

The stairs creaked under my bare feet. One flight. Two. The hallway to the master suite stretched long and dim, lit only by the amber seep of wall sconces. A scent coiled through the air—thick, cloying, nauseating.

Rose perfume.

The perfume I'd refused to wear.

The bedroom door stood ajar. I pushed it open with two fingers.

The room breathed with shadows. A single bedside lamp cast a jaundiced glow across the rumpled duvet.

Declan's shirt lay on the carpet. His belt coiled beside it. The air reeked of spilled bourbon and that suffocating rose.

And then I saw them.

Near the bathroom door. The frosted glass threw their silhouettes into soft-focus—his bare shoulders, the long line of a woman's spine, the dark lace of her lingerie.

Vanessa.

Her arms circled his neck. Her body pressed against him, all sharp angles and sculpted victory. She turned her head as I stood frozen in the doorway.

Our eyes met.

And she smiled.

Not a flinch. Not a flicker of shame. A slow, deliberate, venomous smile that said I win.

Declan didn't see me. His face was buried in her hair, his shoulders slumped with drink or grief or both. The man who had gripped my chin and demanded a sunrise was now collapsed in the arms of the woman who'd been trying to destroy me for months.

Thunder cracked outside. The window flashed white.

The string inside me—the one that had held through a slap, a miscarriage, a studio burned to ashes, a barefoot walk through the freezing dark—snapped.

I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I didn't even move.

I just watched the man I loved hold another woman, and I felt the last chamber of my heart go cold and still and silent.