Gavin Delgado was the most dangerous name in Kingsford's elite circles.
I told him I wanted a baby.
He curled his lip, eyes dripping with contempt：
“Using a pregnancy to claw your way in? Pathetic.”
I played along：
“You're right, of course. Then how about I keep the baby and lose the father? Would you allow that, Young Mr. Delgado?”
Gavin assumed I was playing hard to get. Mocked me for overestimating myself.
A month later, I picked up my lab results at the hospital.
Then I deleted every trace of Gavin Delgado from my phone.
I even cleared out of the house so his new woman could have the space.
I heard that afterward, he searched the entire city, asking everyone like a man unhinged：
“Where is she? The woman who used me and ran?”
……
The master bedroom at Hillside Manor still smelled like what had just happened between us.
I stepped barefoot across the carpet, picked up the nightgown scattered on the floor, and pulled it on slowly.
Gavin leaned against the headboard, an unlit cigarette pinched between his fingers, every line of his face slack with satisfaction.
“Birth control's on the nightstand. Take it.”
His voice was raw, and it wasn't a request.
My hands stilled. I turned and let my gaze settle on that flawless face of his.
“Gavin, let's have a baby.”
The air seemed to freeze for a beat.
Gavin looked at me like I'd told the funniest joke he'd ever heard. A scoff, and those heavy-lidded eyes filled with open ridicule.
“Eudora Henson, you've been at my side for five years. I thought you were smarter than this.”
He tossed the cigarette onto the nightstand, leaned forward, and seized my chin. His grip hurt.
“Using a pregnancy to claw your way in? Pathetic. You think getting knocked up earns you a seat at the Delgado table?”
The humiliation didn't surprise me.
Five years. No matter what I did, no matter how well I did it, in his eyes I was always the same thing: a woman who'd sold her dignity for money.
I held still against the sharp pain in my jaw, met his gaze, and smiled.
It was probably a bleak smile. But to him, it was just another “scheme.”
“You're right, of course.”
I reached up, placed my hand over the one gripping my chin, and pried his fingers away, one by one.
“Then how about I keep the baby and lose the father? Would you allow that, Young Mr. Delgado?”
Something shifted behind his eyes. He hadn't expected that.
The contempt only deepened, as if he'd seen straight through a clumsy trick.
“Hard to get, Eudora? That routine is tired. Find a new one.”
He flung my hand away and dropped back onto the bed. His voice went cold.
“Take the pill and get out. I don't want to look at you tonight.”
I turned without a word, picked up the pill box from the nightstand, popped a white tablet out of the blister pack in front of him, tipped my head back, and swallowed.
He didn't see me hold the pill under my tongue.
The moment the bedroom door closed behind me, I went straight to the bathroom, gagged, and spat the tablet into the drain.
The woman in the mirror was pale, her neck still marked with his kisses. I pressed a hand against my flat stomach.
Gavin, this time I mean it.
I want your child. But I don't want you anymore.
The next morning, noise from downstairs woke me.
As Gavin's private secretary and live-in house manager, my internal clock was always precise. But today, someone had beaten me to it.
“Oh, Ms. Henson, sorry about that. Didn't mean to wake you.”
Lauren Simmons stood in the open kitchen, working the espresso machine, wearing an oversized men's dress shirt that showed off two long, pale legs.
I recognized that shirt. Gavin had been wearing it yesterday.
I stopped at the foot of the stairs, and the same nausea from last night rose right back up my throat.
