PREGNANT BY A STRANGER,CLAIMED BY A BILLIONAIRE

I watched him read the lines, do the same maths I had just done, and arrive at the same answer I was still trying to crawl away from. And then, I watched the brief, involuntary flicker of something hopeful in his face go dark.

He looked at me for a long time without speaking.

When he finally did, his voice was… controlled. That was the thing about Ryan, he never fell apart where you could see it.

“When my family told me not to marry you, when they said a man like me had no business with a woman like you, I should have listened to them. I loved you, Sera. I want you to know that."

“Ryan, Ryan…” My voice finally broke. “”What do you mean loved?” The tears were now streaming down my face.

"Cheating wasn't enough for you Seraphina, you had to be careless enough to get pregnant? I need some air."

He turned and walked back down the hall and then I heard the front door open and close.

I sat down on the bathroom floor right there, back against the cold wall, the test still in my hand, tears streaming down my face and pressed my palm flat against my stomach.

I was pregnant.

Not by my loving husband but by a man I could not name.

And the husband who had chosen me against everyone's advice was standing somewhere outside in the cold, deciding whether love had a limit after all.

I was not sure I deserved to know the answer.

………..

Ryan stood in the doorway for a moment, just looking at me. Then he came in and sat in the chair across the room and clasped his hands between his knees.

I had not stopped crying since he left. My eyes were constantly leaking and I couldn't switch it off no matter how many times I pressed the back of my hand to your face.

"I'm sorry." The words scraped out of me. I bit down on my lip to hold the rest in. "I am so sorry."

He didn't answer straight away, the silence stretched.

"What exactly are you sorry for, Sera?"

"For all of it. For that night. For this..." I gestured at the test without looking at it. "I know how it looks. I know what you must be thinking and I understand, I do, but please believe me when I tell you I did not do this on purpose. I would never do this to you."

"You keep saying that."

"Because it's the truth."

He looked at his hands. Something moved across his face but I could not read it.

"Sorry doesn't fix this." His voice was low. "The first child that comes into this house is supposed to be ours, Sera. Ours! Not this…" He stopped and exhaled through his nose. "Just not his."

"I know." My voice broke on it. "I know."

He was quiet for a long time and I couldn't help but wonder what was going through his mind. He had come back. He had walked out that door and then turned around and came back and that meant something. It had to mean something.

I watched his face change. The hard line of his jaw softened. He stood up and crossed the room and crouched in front of me, and when he reached up and traced the line of my jaw with his thumb the way he always used to, I felt the last of my composure start to give away.

"Are you really sorry?" He sounded gentle now, almost tender. But there was a fire in his eyes.

"Yes." I whispered. "Yes, Ryan. I am."

He held my eyes for a moment. Then something settled in his expression, like he had made a decision.

"Then abort it."

I heard his words. I let it sink and understood it. But they would not arrange themselves into something that made sense in my head.

"What?"

"If you mean it." He pulled back and stood up slowly. "If you are genuinely sorry, you'll do this. I want you to carry my child and only mine. Get rid of that bastard and then we can put this whole thing behind us and start again."

He said it the way you would ask someone to cancel a subscription. It sounded very practical and straightforward. Like the solution was obvious and the only thing left was for me to agree.

But I just stared at him. This was the man I had loved since I was twenty years old, since that first year of university when he sat beside me in a lecture hall and borrowed a pen and never gave it back. I had loved him through everything. Through my father's illness. Through the funeral that happened just three months after our wedding, when I was still new to being a wife and suddenly had to learn how to be an orphan at the same time.

Dad had left everything to me. The company, the shares, a legacy built over thirty years that I had no idea how to carry alone. I was twenty three and hollowed out with grief and Ryan had been right there, steady and calm, telling me not to worry, that he would handle it, that all I needed to do was heal.

And I had let him. Of course I had let him. He was my husband. For two years he had been running my father's company and I had not questioned it once, not looked too closely at any of it, because I trusted him the way you trust the ground beneath your feet.

I had never refused him anything. Not once in four years of loving him had I looked Ryan in the face and said no. He had never given me a reason to.

Until now.

I could feel the word sitting in my chest and I knew that the moment it left my mouth something between us would change in a way that could not be taken back. I was not ready for that. Some part of me would probably never be ready. But my chin lifted anyway.

"I can't do that, Ryan." My voice was quiet but it did not shake. "I won't."