At 2:00 AM, the fluorescent lights of the 24-hour pharmacy felt like an interrogation.
I walked down the empty aisle, my oversized trench coat pulled tight around me, and swept four different brands of pregnancy tests into my basket.
By 2:45 AM, I was sitting on the cold marble floor of the Caelum estate’s master bathroom.
Lined up on the edge of the sink were four plastic sticks.
Two pink lines.
A blue cross.
The word Pregnant.
Another two pink lines.
I stared at them until my vision blurred. My mind, trained to calculate structural loads and stress points, immediately began doing the math. Six weeks. Maybe seven.
My blood ran cold.
It couldn't be Ridge. We hadn't been intimate in over six months. He had blamed the stress of the firm; I had blamed the exhaustion of designing our wedding venue. Now I knew he had been spending his nights in Lily’s bed.
If it wasn't Ridge, then who?
I closed my eyes, pressing the heels of my hands against my temples, trying to force my brain past the fog of the last month.
A memory flickered. Weeks before the wedding.
Lily had handed me a glass of champagne at the rehearsal dinner. “To the bride,” she had said, her smile perfectly sweet. I remembered drinking it.
I remembered the room suddenly tilting, the suffocating heat, the desperate need for air.
Then, fragments.
Stumbling down a carpeted hallway. A heavy door clicking shut. Waking up in an unfamiliar, dark hotel suite. The scent of sandalwood and rain.
And a voice. A man’s voice—low, calm, and laced with something dangerous.
“Are you alright?”
After that, nothing. Just a heavy, dreamless black, until I woke up the next morning in my own bed, chalking my headache up to pre-wedding nerves and too much champagne.
I opened my eyes, staring at the four positive tests. Horror clawed at my throat.
I didn't know who the father was.
I dragged my knees to my chest and pressed my face into my arms. I allowed myself exactly sixty seconds of sheer, unadulterated panic.
I let the terror wash over me, let my hands shake, let the tears prick my eyes.
When the minute was over, I stood up. I swept the tests into the trash, tied the bag shut, and washed my face.
I was just reaching for a towel when my phone vibrated against the marble counter.
The screen flashed in the dark room. Ridge.
"Camille," he breathed. He sounded frantic, his voice cracking with a desperation I had never heard from him before. "Camille, please. Where are you? Just tell me where you are."
I stared at my pale reflection in the mirror. "Why are you calling me at three in the morning, Ridge?"
"Because I need you," he pleaded. "The firm is a disaster. The investors for the Vanguard project are threatening to pull out because they found out you aren't the lead architect anymore. Please, come home. We can fix this. I'll call off the press, I'll handle Lily—just come back."
For a second, the sheer audacity of it left me speechless.
Before I could respond, a muffled, whiny voice echoed in the background of his end of the line.
"Ridge? Who are you talking to? Is she going to fix the Vanguard blueprints? My dad is going to kill us if we lose that contract."
Lily.
A bitter, hollow laugh escaped my lips. "You two truly deserve each other."
"Camille, wait—" Ridge scrambled, his tone shifting from begging to defensive. "Don't be like this. You owe the firm this much. You can't just abandon the projects we built together!"
"I owe you nothing," I said, my voice dropping to a lethal whisper. "Do not ever call this number again."
"Fine!" Ridge snapped. The mask of the pleading lover vanished, replaced by the vicious, cornered narcissist I now knew he was. "If you won't come home, then I don't have a choice. I'm going to ruin you, Camille. I'll make sure you never work in this city again. After all... you cheated on me first!"
The line went dead.
I lowered the phone, my brow furrowing. Cheated on him first?
I didn't have to wait long to find out what he meant.
At 7:00 AM, my phone began to vibrate violently.
Notifications flooded the screen in a rapid, endless stream. Texts from former colleagues, missed calls from reporters, Google alerts with my name.
I opened the top news notification.
It was a video, leaked anonymously to the city's biggest gossip syndicate. The headline screamed in bold black letters:
THE RUNAWAY BRIDE’S DIRTY SECRET: ARCHITECT CAMILLE CALLA’S PRE-WEDDING AFFAIR EXPOSED.
My heart stopped. I tapped play.
There I was, wearing my white silk evening dress. But I wasn't walking straight. I was stumbling, leaning heavily against the wall, looking completely, hopelessly intoxicated. I looked like a woman who had partied too hard and lost all control.
Then, a man stepped into the frame.
The camera angle cut off his face, showing only a broad shoulder clad in a dark, expensive suit.
He caught me by the waist as my knees buckled.
I leaned into his chest, my hands gripping his lapels. The footage had no audio, but it looked intimate. It looked damning.
The video ended with the man guiding me through the door of Suite 402.
I paused the video, zooming in on the dark, grainy image of the man's hand resting on my waist. A heavy silver watch glinted on his wrist.
My breath hitched. My hand moved instinctively to my flat stomach.
I took a high-resolution screenshot of the frame, focusing on the watch and the distinct, tailored cut of the man's suit. I opened a secure messaging app and attached the image, sending it to Hayes—my oldest friend and the only private investigator in the city who couldn't be bought by Ridge or my father.
I stared at the blurry figure of the man who had taken me into that room. The man whose child I was now carrying.
I typed out a single, definitive command and hit send.
Find me that man.
