Replaced By A Pregnant Substitute

Ila POV:

I was adrift in a long, dark dream.

The dream took me back five years, to a rainy night on a deserted coastal road. I' d found him in a crumpled heap beside his wrecked sports car, a gash on his forehead bleeding profusely, his leg bent at an unnatural angle. He was Jaxon Kent, the untouchable tech god, and he was broken. I, a simple figure skater with a first-aid kit in my trunk, had been the one to save him.

The dream shifted. We were in a hospital. He needed a rare blood type for a transfusion, and I was a match. "Take it," I'd told the doctors without hesitation. "Take as much as you need." He told me later, his eyes dark and intense, that my blood now ran in his veins. "You're a part of me now, Ila Kline," he'd whispered, sealing the vow with a kiss. "And I'm never letting you go."

He pursued me with the same single-minded intensity he applied to his business empire. He filled my small apartment with flowers, he flew my favorite Parisian macarons in daily, he wrote me poetry that was both clumsy and breathtakingly sincere. "My life was black and white before I met you," he'd said, on the night he proposed. "You are my color, my light, my entire universe."

Then the dream soured. The vibrant colors bled to gray. The image of his adoring face was replaced by the tiger's snarling maw. The memory of his vow to never let me go curdled into the reality of him choosing to save Kamila, leaving me to be torn apart.

"No!" I screamed, the sound ripping me from the depths of the dream.

I snapped awake, my heart hammering against my ribs. I was in a dark, damp room. The air smelled of salt and decay. My hands were tied behind my back, and a rough blindfold was tied so tightly over my eyes it made my head ache.

Panic, cold and sharp, seized me.

"Looks like the pretty one is awake," a gravelly voice sneered from across the room.

"Which one?" another voice chuckled. "They look almost identical. Kent certainly has a type."

Their conversation was punctuated by the rhythmic sound of waves crashing against stone. A warehouse. By the docks.

"This is about business," the first voice continued, his tone turning cold. "Jaxon Kent ruined my family. He backed us into a corner, forced my father into bankruptcy. My father killed himself last year. It' s time Kent learned what it feels like to lose everything."

Gilmer Mcgee. A name I' d heard Jaxon mutter with contempt. A ruthless business rival he had crushed without a second thought.

Suddenly, a new voice, distorted by a speaker, filled the room. It was Jaxon.

"Mcgee! Let them go! This is between you and me. They have nothing to do with this." His voice was raw with a fury that vibrated through the floorboards.

Mcgee laughed, a harsh, grating sound. "Oh, but they have everything to do with it, Kent. You see, I'm going to make you choose. Let's play a game."

Rough hands grabbed me, hauling me to my feet. Another set of hands did the same to Kamila, who was whimpering and struggling beside me. We were dragged forward and shoved to our knees at the edge of what felt like a pier. The cold, salty spray misted my face.

Through the speaker, I heard Jaxon's ragged gasp. He was watching this on a screen.

"Let. Them. Go," he snarled, each word a low, dangerous threat.

"Game number one," Mcgee announced cheerfully. "A little swim. For every ten seconds you delay transferring the company shares, your ladies get a dunk in the bay. Let's see how much you love them."

I felt myself being lifted, then flung through the air. The impact with the icy water was a shock to my system, stealing the breath from my lungs. The salt stung the open wounds on my shoulder. I was hauled up, sputtering and gasping, only to be thrown in again. And again. The water was a brutal, suffocating fist, battering my already broken body. I could hear Kamila's shrieks beside me, a soundtrack to my own silent agony.

After the third dunk, as I was being dragged from the water, my body limp and trembling, I heard Jaxon' s desperate voice through the speaker. "Stop! Fine! I'll do it! Just stop!"

"Good boy," Mcgee chuckled. "But you were a little slow. You know what that means. You only get to save one of them from the next round. So tell me, Jaxon. Which one will it be? Your precious, blind figure skater, or the mother of your unborn child?"

The world stopped. The sound of the waves, Kamila's sobbing, my own ragged breathing-it all faded away. There was only the static hiss of the speaker, and the weight of the question that hung in the air.

Choose.

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