My Husband Gave My Grandmother’s Heart to His Mistress

I found out about the pregnancy from Sara. She worked in accounting, sat two desks down from me before I cleared out my things. She texted me on a Tuesday afternoon: *Saw them at the clinic on Fifth. She was crying. He had his arm around her. I'm sorry.*

I sat in the coffee shop where I'd opened the message and stared at the screen until the words stopped looking like words. Then I ordered a decaf latte I didn't want and pressed my palm flat against my stomach under the table where no one could see.

Layne was pregnant. Kaiden was going to be a father.

Except I was pregnant. I was the one taking folic acid every morning and sleeping on my left side because the internet said it helped. I was the one who'd been told, years ago, that my body couldn't do this anymore — and then it did anyway, like some kind of cruel joke the universe decided to play after the punchline had already destroyed everything.

I didn't cry. I finished the latte. I walked six blocks to the office of Vera Richards, the attorney whose name I'd been carrying in my phone for three weeks without calling.

Her office was on the fourteenth floor of a building that smelled like old wood and furniture polish. The receptionist looked up when I walked in. "Do you have an appointment?"

"No," I said. "But I need to see her."

Something in my voice must have registered, because she picked up the phone.

Vera Richards was fifty-something, gray hair pulled back tight, suit sharp enough to cut glass. She looked at me across her desk and didn't smile. "Tell me what happened."

I told her. Not all of it. Not the baby. But the bear, the video, the rooftop, the demand that I apologize. The way Kaiden had moved his things out without ever asking my side. The pregnancy announcement I'd learned about through a third-party text message.

When I finished, Vera leaned back in her chair and tapped one finger against her desk. "You're still legally married."

"Yes."

"Do you want to stay that way?"

I thought about the question. I thought about ten years. I thought about the accident, the hospital, the way I'd thrown myself in front of his car without thinking because that's what you do when you love someone. You step in front of the damage. You take the hit.

"No," I said.

Vera nodded once. "Then we file. But I need you to understand something, Priscilla. This is going to get worse before it gets better. He has money. He has influence. And right now, he has a narrative where you're the villain. We're going to dismantle that narrative piece by piece, but it's going to take time, and it's going to hurt."

"I know," I said.

She studied me for a long moment. Then she opened a drawer and pulled out a legal pad. "Let's start with assets."

I didn't file that day. I took the papers home and left them on the kitchen counter beside the anniversary gifts I still hadn't thrown away. I told myself I needed to think. But the truth was, some part of me — the part that had loved him since I was twenty-three and stupid — was still waiting for him to come back.

He didn't come back.

Instead, the board of directors held an emergency meeting. I heard about it the same way I heard about everything now: secondhand, through people who still felt guilty enough to keep me in the loop. Kaiden had been given an ultimatum. Clean up the scandal or step down.

He chose option three.

Within two weeks, every person at Cole Enterprises who had been my ally — the VP who'd mentored me, the department head who'd recommended me for promotion, even Sara from accounting — was either reassigned, demoted, or quietly let go. Layne, meanwhile, was given a new title. *Special Advisor to the CEO.* She got a corner office on the executive floor. She got a salary that made mine look like an allowance.

I got an email from HR informing me that my position had been eliminated due to restructuring.

I went to the office after hours to clear out my desk. The building was almost empty, just the cleaning crew and the hum of the HVAC system. I packed my things into a single cardboard box: a coffee mug, some files, a sweater I'd left in the drawer.

The framed photo of Eleanor was the last thing I picked up. She looked back at me from behind the glass, smiling that quiet smile she always had, the one that said she knew more than she was telling. I pressed my thumb against the corner of the frame and felt something crack open in my chest.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

I didn't know what I was apologizing for. For failing. For not being enough. For still loving a man who had chosen someone else over and over and over again.

I turned off the light and walked out. I didn't look back.

That night, alone in the apartment, I pulled out the ultrasound photo and laid it on the table beside the divorce papers. Two futures. One impossible choice.

I pressed my fingers against my sternum and made my decision.

Kaiden would never know.