Chapter 11
Nothing that was only ours
Colin
I look at the papers scattered across my desk and I just can’t focus. The last few days have been a version of hell carved on earth just for me.
That damn article. Sensationalist. Attention-hungry. Pure garbage. It’s set everything on fire, and the flames refuse to die.
The phone never stops ringing. My inbox has turned into a graveyard of accusations, questions, and thinly veiled threats. Investors breathing down my neck. Shareholders and board members demanding “damage control.” Reporters circling, waiting for the next drop of blood.
They’re all on top of me now. Every single one of them. As if I’m some criminal who got caught, not the man who built this place from nothing. As if they’ve all conveniently forgotten exactly who I am.
I’m one of the founders. The president. The man who poured every ounce of himself into this company.
The sleepless nights. The missed dinners. The years I traded for success. My blood runs through these walls, and now they look at me like I’m poison.
I can feel it. That tightening in my chest. Panic tangled with betrayal. The whispers in the hallways. The pitying looks. The judgment in every pair of eyes that once looked up to me.
Everything I built, everything I sacrificed, is slipping through my fingers, and I can’t stop it.
All they see now is the scandal. The headline. The fall.
And I’ve never felt so alone.
I confronted Maya the second she walked through the office doors the next morning. She denied everything. Every word. Her voice calm, her eyes wide, wrapped in that fake innocence she wears like perfume.
Whether I believe her or not doesn’t even matter anymore. The damage is already done.
“At least they haven’t found out about the pregnancy,” she said. “It could be worse. But that remais our little secret. For now.”
I grind my teeth at the memory. At the way she smiled. At her hand brushing over her stomach.
The image burns behind my eyes, fury and disgust rising so fast it almost makes me shake.
If she had anything to do with this, with leaking that story, with dragging my name and my family through the mud, then the price she’ll pay will be far greater than she can imagine.
Because I’ve already lost too much. And I’m done letting anyone else take from me.
She’s been placed on leave for the next few weeks. There was an altercation in her department that ended with one of her coworkers slapping her in front of half the team.
What the associate did would have been more than enough reason to fire her, but I told Theodora to handle it differently. A formal warning. An internal memo. No more grace. No more tolerance if anything like that ever happens again.
Because Maya isn’t innocent in any of this. Firing the other associate would only make things worse. It would give the rumors more fuel, more credibility.
And the whispers are already loud enough to drown me.
Our legal team is doing what they can, filing the usual motions, sending the usual letters. But everyone knows that once something is out there, once it’s posted, it doesn’t die.
It just keeps spreading. Like rot. Like blood that won’t stop seeping through the bandage.
But none of that—not the company’s panic, not the headlines, not the calls at all hours—comes anywhere close to the worst part.
Because I might have lost my entire family for good. All of them.
And this time, there’s no fixing it.
As soon as I park, I’m out of the car and taking the stairs two at a time. Neither Ceci nor the kids have answered their phones. I left Jonathan back at the office trying to contain the fire—but I couldn't stay. I need to see them.
To know if they’ve already seen it. If they hate me even more than they already did.
More than I hate myself for everything.
I ring the doorbell and, for the first time, someone opens almost immediately. It’s Ceci.
Her face is pale, her eyes red and swollen. She looks exhausted, the way you do only after crying for hours.
She knows. She’s seen it.
“Cecily,” I croak.
“Come in.” Her voice is barely a whisper before she turns her back on me, leaving me standing there like a stranger.
When I finally manage to move, I step inside and close the door behind me.
Ceci curls into one corner of the couch, pulling a blanket over her legs. Her gaze drifts somewhere far away—toward the Christmas tree and the faint glow of the decorations hanging in the corner of the living room. “Where are the kids?” I ask.
She exhales. “Alicia’s in her room. Ethan... went out for a run a few minutes before you got here.”
I take a slow breath and lower myself into the armchair facing the couch. “Our legal and PR teams are already taking all the necessary measures,” I say.
Ceci doesn’t respond. She barely even looks at me.
“I’ll make sure it’s taken down from the site as soon as possible.”
She rubs her temple. “It’s already gone.”
That catches me off guard. Then it clicks. “Mark took it down or something?”
“No. I wouldn’t let him risk getting arrested. But when he checked, it had already been removed. I thought it was you.”
I sink deeper into the armchair. “Well, that’s at least one small mercy.”
Her next words cut straight through me. “Who wasn’t supposed to see it, our children, already did. So now it doesn’t really matter anymore.”
“You know that whole thing is a bunch of crap they were spreading on that trashy excuse of a site,” I say, anger bleeding through every word.
“Not all of it,” she says. Her voice is calm, but the tremor beneath it hits harder than if she’d yelled.
“For all I know, the only thing they got wrong was how long we were married. You did have an affair with your junior executive assistant. And you did do several of the things they mentioned. The way they twisted it, turning it into some forbidden love story or making it seem like you were the one who left me, doesn’t change the facts. ”
I stare at her from across the room. At the woman who once looked at me like I was her entire world, and now can barely stand to look at me at all. The words burn a hole in my throat. I know that once I say them, there’s no taking them back.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” I manage, my voice rough and tight.
Ceci’s eyes flick to me, tired and hollow. “What could possibly be left to tell, Colin?”
I swallow hard. “Maya’s pregnant.”
For a moment, she doesn’t move. She doesn’t even blink. Then it sinks in. Her breath catches, and she brings a trembling hand to her mouth.
The first sob breaks out of her like something she’s been holding back for days. “Tell me you’re lying,” she whispers, shaking her head. “Please. Just tell me it’s not true.”
“I wish I could.”
She lets out a small, broken laugh that sounds more like pain than amusement. Her shoulders shake as tears stream down her face, her expression shattered beyond repair.
“So there’s nothing left, then,” she says between sobs. “Nothing that was only ours.” Her voice cracks. “Everything you gave me, you gave to her too. And more. You gave her more.”
“Ceci, no,” I say, shaking my head, the words forcing their way out through clenched teeth. “I don’t believe her. If she’s pregnant, it’s not mine.”
She stares at me like she can’t even recognize the man standing in front of her.
“I thought I’d already lost everything,” she whispers. “But I was wrong. You managed to find one last piece of me left to break.”
I can’t hold it in anymore.
The tears come fast, spilling over before I can even catch my breath. I try to inhale, but it turns into a jagged sob.
“I’m sorry,” I manage, but it comes out broken. Strangled. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
My voice cracks on the words, desperate and exposed. I wipe at my face, but it doesn’t stop. The shaking. The guilt.
“I don’t want that baby, Ceci,” I whisper, each syllable tearing something open inside me. “I don’t. I won’t. She’s not the mother of my children.”
I press a hand to my chest, as if I could hold myself together long enough to make her believe me. My breath stumbles out between sobs.
“She’ll never be.”
My voice breaks completely now, just a rasp of what’s left of me.
“You are,” I whisper, like a prayer. “You’re the only one. You’ve always been the only one.”
The silence that follows is unbearable. Because in it, I realize the truth I’ve been running from: apologies don’t fix what’s already shattered.
I stand, legs unsteady, and take a hesitant step toward her—wanting, needing to give her some kind of comfort, because I can’t just stand here and watch her fall apart in front of me.
But when I reach for her, she flinches.
“Don’t,” she says, her voice trembling yet sharp enough to cut through me. “Don’t touch me.”
I freeze, my hand suspended in the air, a ghost of what it used to be.
Her eyes find mine. Full of pain, fury, disbelief. In that look, everything inside me caves in.
She wipes her face with the back of her hand, trying to steady her breathing. When she finally speaks again, her voice is colder. Distant in a way that makes my stomach twist.
“I’m going to call the school tomorrow,” she says, her eyes fixed somewhere past me. “The kids won’t be going back until after the holidays. I’m taking them with me to the cabin on Stone Ridge my parents rented. We’ll stay there until New Year’s.”
Her lips press into a thin line. “I was planning to go with them after Christmas, but after everything that happened today, I can’t risk it. I don’t want them vulnerable if something else happens.”
She finally meets my gaze, and it's worse than if she hadn’t—because her eyes are dry now, resigned. “I don’t know how you want to handle things, Colin. But if you want to see them for Christmas... you’ll have to come there.”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
“I don’t even know how they’ll react,” she adds, her voice low. “Alicia’s been asking a lot of questions about that article. Ethan hasn’t said a word to me, or about you, and that scares me more than anything.”