My Husband’s Wife Wants My Baby Dead

The champagne bottle sweats in my grip as I balance the bakery box against my hip, fumbling with the spare key Max gave me six months ago. The metal is warm from being clutched too tight during the entire cab ride to his penthouse. My heart hammers against my ribs—not from the climb up to the fortieth floor, but from the weight of the velvet box hidden in my coat pocket.

Three years. Three years of late-night conversations, of his hand finding mine across restaurant tables, of whispered promises about our future. Tonight, I'm going to ask him to marry me.

The lock clicks. I push open the door, already rehearsing my speech, when my heel catches on something—a newspaper, abandoned on the marble entryway. I bend to move it aside, and the headline detonates in my vision like a flashbang.

**WEDDING OF THE CENTURY: Hart Heir Weds Webb Heiress in Secret Morning Ceremony**

The champagne bottle slips. It doesn't shatter—just rolls across the floor with a hollow sound that matches the sudden emptiness in my chest. My fingers are numb as I pick up the paper. There's a photo. Max in a tailored tuxedo, his arm around a woman in ivory silk. Jacqueline Webb. Her hand rests on her stomach in that universal gesture, the one I've been practicing in the mirror for the past week.

The date stamp reads today. This morning.

"You're early."

I spin. Max stands in the hallway leading from his bedroom, adjusting platinum cufflinks. He's wearing the same tuxedo from the photo. His hair is still perfectly styled. He doesn't look surprised to see me. He doesn't look guilty.

He looks annoyed.

"What—" My voice cracks. I clear my throat, force the words out. "What is this?"

Max glances at the newspaper in my shaking hands. Something flickers across his face—not shame, but calculation. He crosses to the bar cart, pours two fingers of scotch like we're discussing quarterly earnings.

"It's a merger, Harper. Hart Enterprises and Webb Holdings. My father's been negotiating it for eighteen months." He takes a slow sip. "The marriage was a condition of the deal."

The bakery box hits the floor. Chocolate cake, his favorite, spills across imported Italian tile.

"A condition." I repeat the words, testing them, trying to make them mean something other than what they obviously mean. "You married someone else because of a business deal."

"It's not personal." Max sets down his glass with a soft clink. "Jacqueline understands what this is. A strategic alliance. It doesn't change anything between us."

The laugh that escapes me sounds feral. "It doesn't change anything? You got married!"

"To secure a two-billion-dollar merger." His tone sharpens, the way it does when he's closing a difficult negotiation. "Don't be naive. This is how our world works. You knew what I was when we started this."

Our world. Not my world—I'm the administrative assistant who files his paperwork, the girl from nowhere with a high school diploma and a studio apartment in Queens. At least, that's what he thinks.

I move toward the door. My legs feel disconnected from my body, operating on autopilot. Get out. Just get out.

Max's hand closes around my wrist. "Where are you going?"

"Away from you." I try to pull free, but his grip tightens.

"Harper." His voice drops into that low register he uses in bed, the one that used to make me melt. "Don't be dramatic. We can work this out."

"Work this out?" The hysteria is rising now, hot and acidic in my throat. "You married another woman!"

"I need to tell you something." The words tumble out before I can stop them, before I can think about whether this is the right moment. But there is no right moment anymore. "I'm pregnant."

The silence that follows is so complete I can hear the champagne bottle still rolling somewhere behind me, a slow, aimless circle.

Max's face transforms. The smooth corporate mask cracks, revealing something cold and reptilian underneath. His hand drops from my wrist like I've burned him.

"You're lying."

"I'm ten weeks along. I have the ultrasound in my—"

"You're trying to trap me." He backs away, and there's something in his eyes I've never seen before. Fear. And beneath it, rage. "Jacqueline is pregnant too. Do you understand what you're trying to do? An illegitimate child would destroy the merger. Destroy everything."

The room tilts. "Jacqueline is pregnant?"

"Four months." He says it like an accusation. "This merger depends on the Hart-Webb heir. One heir. Not some bastard from a—" He stops himself, but the damage is done.

From a nobody. That's what he was going to say.

"Get rid of it." Max's voice is flat now, businesslike. "I'll pay for the procedure. The best clinic, completely private. We can move past this."

"Move past—" I can't breathe. The penthouse is too small, the air too thin. "This is your child."

"It's a problem." He moves to his desk, pulls open a drawer. "And I solve problems."

He withdraws a folder. Inside are photographs—me, in his bed, in positions I never consented to being captured. My stomach lurches.

"Insurance," Max says softly. "In case you ever became... difficult."

He spreads them across the desk like evidence in a trial. "These go to every major publication in the city if you don't sign the NDA my lawyers prepared. You'll be the administrative assistant who seduced her boss, who tried to trap a married man with a fake pregnancy. Your reputation, your job, your entire life—gone."

He slides a document across the desk. "Or you sign this. Terminate the pregnancy. Move into the apartment I'll provide in Tribeca. And we continue as we were. Discreetly."

The velvet box in my pocket feels like it weighs a thousand pounds.

"I need to think," I hear myself say. My voice sounds far away, like it belongs to someone else.

Max's expression softens into something that might be relief. "Smart girl. Take the weekend. But Harper?" He catches my chin, forces me to meet his eyes. "Make the right choice."

I nod. I take the NDA. I walk to the door on legs that don't feel like mine.

And as the elevator descends, carrying me away from the man I thought I knew, I press my hand to my stomach and make a different choice entirely.

I choose to survive.