“Yes.”
The word barely left my mouth before another contraction seized me.
Adrian went completely still.
For one strange second, the conference room seemed to lose all sound.
Manhattan stretched beyond the glass walls.
The divorce papers lay beneath my shaking hand.
The pen I had been holding rested crookedly across the final unsigned page.
Adrian stared at me.
Not at my stomach now.
At me.
“Yes?” he repeated.
I closed my eyes as the pain tightened across my abdomen.
“She’s yours.”
His face changed in a way I had never seen before.
Adrian Whitmore knew how to hide anger.
He could make threats sound like polite suggestions.
He could sit across from men who hated him and reveal nothing with his eyes.
But this struck too deep and too fast.
Eight months of silence collapsed between us.
He caught my arm when my knees weakened.
“How long have you been having contractions?”
“I don’t know.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“Maybe an hour.
They weren’t this bad before.”
His jaw flexed.
Then the old Adrian returned—not the husband, not the wounded man, but the one who could take control of a room in seconds.
He picked up his phone.
“I need a car downstairs now.”
I grabbed his wrist.
“No.”
His eyes snapped toward me.
“I can go by myself.”
“You can barely stand.”
“I’ve managed for eight months without you.”
The words hit him harder than I expected.
His hand lowered slowly.
“Yes,” he said.
“Apparently you have.”
There it was.
The anger.
I had known it would come eventually.
I straightened as much as I could.
“Don’t do this here.”
“Do what?”
“Interrogate me.”
His voice dropped.
“You walked out carrying my child.
You changed your number.
You hid for eight months.
And today you came into my building prepared to divorce me without telling me I was going to be a father.”
I looked at the folder.
“You signed first.”
His stare sharpened.
“That doesn’t answer me.”
“No.
