Sabrina barged into my office like she always did–no knock, no apology, just the casual entitlement she wore like perfume.
I barely looked up from my laptop. Quarter-end figures glared back at me, red margins I didn’t want to explain to shareholders. Carly had been texting all morning about nursery paint samples and some overpriced European bassinet she insisted our son had to have. I let her talk, let her fill the silence between us. Easier that way.
Sabrina flopped into the leather chair across from my desk, draping one leg over the arm like she owned the place.
“Elena stopped by,” she said, peeling the words like a sticker she couldn’t wait to slap somewhere ugly.
That caught my attention.
I sat back slightly, closing the laptop but not snapping it shut. “For what?”
She shrugged, nails tapping against the armrest. “Her stuff, I guess. Guess the divorce papers made it real for her.”
I studied her, trying to read what she wasn’t saying.
“And?” I asked.
Sabrina’s grin sharpened. She leaned in like she was offering a secret, something she knew I wouldn’t like but couldn’t resist hearing.
“She puked in the kitchen.”
The words didn’t land right at first. They spun, slow, useless.
I blinked. “So what?”
“She’s a mess,” she said, practically humming with satisfaction. “She puked over the sink. Pale as hell. Could barely stand upright. Looked like she’d pass out any second.”
I stared at her, feeling something shift beneath my ribs , slow, sickening.
Sabrina’s eyes glittered. “I think she’s pregnant.”
The office went very still. Even the sound of the AC vents seemed to shrink away.
“You don’t know that,” I said, voice sharper than I meant.
“No.” Sabrina shrugged again, careless. “But come on. Morning puking? Shaky? Running out of here like her hair was on fire? What else could it be?”
She said it like it was obvious. Like it didn’t even matter.
But it mattered.
More than it should have.
My hand curled into a loose fist on the desk, slow and deliberate. I kept my voice even. “You think it’s mine?”
Sabrina threw her head back and laughed, loud and harsh.
“Who else’s would it be?” she said, tilting her head at me like I was the idiot here. “The woman barely left the house for months. Unless the UPS guy’s her secret lover, it’s yours.”
Her words slid under my skin and stuck there, raw and stinging.
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. My brain was already doing the math, clawing through the dates, the arguments, the way Elena had looked at me lately — not angry, not pleading. Just… gone.
Gone in a way I hadn’t really understood until now.
If she was pregnant…and she hadn’t told me. What did that mean?
Was it revenge? A final act of defiance, a twisted way of tying herself to this family even after I thought I’d finally cut her loose?
Or was it something worse?
Had she known at the ballroom? When I stood there, arm wrapped around Carly, announcing our future into a microphone like a damn CEO at a stockholder’s meeting?
Had she already been carrying something then?
The thought made my stomach turn.
I had Carly. I had the new future, the right one, practically gift-wrapped and waiting.
But if Elena had a claim, too? If there was a child tied to my name through her? That wasn’t something I could ignore.
Sabrina stood up, smoothing her skirt like she was brushing off imaginary dust.
“Anyway,” she said brightly, “good luck with that.”
She tossed a mock salute over her shoulder and sauntered out, leaving the door swinging half-closed behind her.
I sat there long after she left, staring at nothing.
The numbers on my laptop blurred. My reflection in the dark screen looked back at me.
I told myself it didn’t matter. That Elena didn’t matter.
She was done. Replaced. Filed away like a chapter of my life that had ended the minute Carly smiled at me across a party floor.
But a thin crack had splintered somewhere in the center of my chest. Elena had slipped through my fingers. And there w
