The next morning, Aubree called in sick, her voice a convincing, croaky mess. She took the subway to a private women's health clinic on the Upper West Side, miles from her own neighborhood. She paid in cash and gave them a fake name. Jane Smith.
She sat in the waiting room, a sterile space decorated in calming shades of blue, and felt anything but calm. The other women there had serene smiles and rounded bellies. They radiated a quiet joy that made Aubree feel like an alien, a ghost haunting their happy world.
A nurse called her name. "Jane Smith?"
The doctor was kind, her voice gentle as she confirmed what the plastic stick had already told her. The blood test was positive. She was pregnant. Approximately five weeks along.
The official verdict landed with the finality of a judge's gavel. There was no hope left.
The doctor began to talk about options. Continuing the pregnancy. Adoption. Termination. Aubree stared at the pamphlets the doctor offered, the glossy paper covered in smiling, multi-ethnic families and clinical diagrams. Her brain couldn't process the words.
She took the pamphlets on termination and fled.
Walking through the streets of New York, the city's vibrant energy felt muted, gray. A single, resolute decision formed in the chaos of her mind: Beck Franco could never, ever know. This was her problem. Her mistake. And she would fix it. Alone.
Meanwhile, across town, in a private, sun-drenched gym overlooking Central Park, Beck Franco was punishing a heavy bag.
Sweat soaked through his t-shirt, plastering it to the hard muscles of his back and chest. With every punch, every vicious impact of his gloved fist against the leather, he saw her face. He saw her shove him away. He heard the sound of her retching in the bathroom.
The humiliation was a living thing inside him, a venomous snake coiling in his gut.
"Easy there, mate," a voice with a lilting Irish accent drawled from nearby. "What did that bag ever do to you?"
Declan O'Connell, his closest friend and a real estate mogul with a devil-may-care attitude, took a long sip from a bottle of electrolyte water.
Beck ignored him, pouring all his rage and frustration into another flurry of punches.
Declan sauntered over, undeterred. "I called your office a month back, looking for you. Your people said you were in a last-minute 'meeting' at the Carlyle. Funny thing is, I checked with the hotel manager-no finance conferences, no private equity summits. So, tell me, was your 'meeting' with a mysterious brunette? Because this rage has a very specific, female-shaped energy to it."
Beck stopped, breathing hard. He ripped off his gloves and grabbed a towel, wiping the sweat from his face. He shot Declan a look that could freeze fire. "Mind your own business."
The non-denial was all the confirmation Declan needed.
Later that night, Beck stood in his cavernous penthouse apartment, the city lights twinkling below like a distant, indifferent galaxy. Sleep was impossible. The sting of her rejection warred with a possessive, obsessive need that was entirely new to him. He couldn't accept it. He couldn't accept her disgust. He had to have her. He had to understand.
He opened his laptop and pulled up her employee file. He stared at her ID photo-a professional smile, intelligent eyes. The face was intimately familiar, one he had studied on paper countless times over the years. But the woman in that photo, so composed and in control, felt like a complete stranger compared to the terrified, desperate woman who had vomited at the prospect of his kiss.
He woke with a jolt, his body aching with a need that was both infuriating and undeniable.
This woman was becoming a sickness. An obsession.
He reached for his phone, his decision made. He dialed a number from memory.
"It's me," he said when the man on the other end answered. "I need a full, priority background check on my executive assistant, Aubree Hamilton. I want to know everything. Who she sees, where she goes. I want to know why she took a sick day today. Everything."
Aubree, alone in her small apartment, was making plans, mapping out a future where her secret was safe. She had no idea that a net was already closing in, that the man she was trying to escape was about to unleash all of his power to find out the one truth that would change everything.
