Chapter Seven #3
Artificial insemination or not, the truth doesn’t dull the blade—it sharpens it.
Every paragraph of that security report, every photograph, drilled a jagged path straight through my chest. All this time she’d been mine, sleeping in my bed, she’d been planning on taking another man’s seed into her body.
Because what she wants isn’t me. It’s a child. A future. A family. And I’m not in the equation. Because I’m not good enough? Tainted fruit from a tainted tree? Does she think I won’t make a good father?
Now, as I look at her, I realise it’s quite incredible to feel a hollow in your chest even as a vice closes around it.
I’ve been played before. Lied to, manipulated by the many Tamaras of this world, starting with the woman who gave me life. I thought I was immune to shock. But nothing could’ve prepared me for this.
For Tessa.
Especially for the way the thought of her carrying a child that wasn’t mine makes my hands curl into fists, my vision blur, my heart turn savage in my chest.
It shouldn’t matter. We were never meant to be more than this—sex, sparring, a temporary fire to keep the days interesting. But somewhere along the line, she’s carved her way into my life. And now it feels like she’s carving her way back out, piece by jagged piece.
And still, underneath the fury, one truth pounds hard and relentless.
I could’ve trusted her. I almost did.
But now, all I can see is another secret to be whispered about. I’m the man she’s been using as a placeholder, not considered worthy enough to be the father of her child. Even if it wasn’t a position I desired. Right?
I shake my head at the taunting question. Because, rightly or wrongly, this feels too much like another betrayal from a queen who has just toppled from her pedestal.
The suite suddenly feels too small for the kind of pacing my body craves.
The air is too thick. My pulse is too loud. Tessa reaches for the door I wasn’t even aware she’d opened until my words stopped her. She closes it softly, as if she hasn’t just detonated the last of my control.
Then, she turns to face me. ‘What do you want to discuss?’
‘You not wanting to have sex earlier. Was it really PMS?’ I demand, my voice guttural, low enough to scrape gravel, even though this is by far the least important of her lies.
She freezes. Her lips purse, defiant and silent.
‘So you lied?’ I insist. The words rip out of me, a blade honed on disbelief and rage.
Her chin lifts, the queen back on her throne. ‘I gave an excuse that stopped your questions. So sue me. It’s not like you suffered any hardship out of it.’
Hardship.
The word implodes inside me.
I stalk towards her, every nerve vibrating, every muscle strung tight.
‘So you always intended…’ I grind out, ‘…to go and get impregnated by another man as soon as my back was turned. And then what? You would’ve come back to me as if nothing had happened and crawled back into my bed?
’ My whole body shakes as I speak, not from weakness but from the sheer volcanic force of the emotions tearing through me.
Horror washes over her face. ‘No! I would never do something like that.’
I’m nowhere near mollified by that reaction. Because does that mean she was planning to…to just leave me?
My hands curl, useless without an outlet, and still I can’t stop. ‘You lied to my face. You crawled into my bed, into my life, knowing damn well you were planning this all along. And you didn’t think…’ my voice cracks, my chest splintering open ‘…that as your lover, I should have known?’
Her eyes blaze, her jaw locks. ‘Being my lover doesn’t entitle you to have access to every corner of my life.’
I inhale sharply, every breath burning like acid in my lungs. ‘Repeat that. Go on. Say it again. Because I don’t think you quite heard yourself. Being lovers doesn’t entitle me.’ I step closer, the words a growl. ‘Surely, common courtesy dictates—’
Her laugh is sharp, brittle, a broken piece of glass.
‘Are you seriously lecturing me about common courtesy?’ Her chest heaves, eyes wild.
‘You? The man who got me pregnant last time but couldn’t be bothered to answer a simple text when I tried to tell you?
The man who is so hellbent on tarring every woman with the same brush, that he can’t see the woods for his own overblown ego? ’
The world stops.
I reel back as though she’s slapped me, the words slamming into me with the force of a wrecking ball. Pregnant.
My ears ring. My vision tunnels. I catch a glimpse of her face—flushed, horrified, as if she didn’t mean to say it—but it’s too late.
Pregnant.
Four years ago.
The text I’d glanced at and then deleted.
The one I’d dismissed as another ploy, another plea for more.
The one that had kept her anger with me blade-sharp all these years.
My mind scrambles, colliding with memory, with fury, with something so raw it scalds.
And now, finally, the truth is spilling between us like blood on the floor.
She’s staring at me, her chest rising and falling in ragged bursts, as if she wishes she could pull the words back into her lungs. As if she’s terrified of what she’s just unleashed.
But it’s too late.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t think.
All I know is that the world tilted on its axis four years ago on the night I met Tessa, and I was too blind—too scarred, too jaded, too furious at my mother’s sins, at Tamara’s conniving and deception—to see it.
And in my blindness, I missed something monumental. Something that belonged to both of us.
And Tessa…she’s carried this knowledge alone ever since?
For one disorienting second, my mind refuses to accept it. It searches for a loophole, a misinterpretation, a shred of logic that will make what she just said less catastrophic. But there isn’t one. I see the tremor in her hands, the ache in her eyes and the truth lands with devastating clarity.
A baby. Mine. Ours.
The very thing I’d never thought myself capable of deserving. I selfishly deleted her message, erased her request, and in doing so, might have obliterated something sacred for ever.
A sound claws up my throat, half curse, half prayer. I want to ask where my child is now, but the words wedge behind my teeth. Because I already know. The shadows in her eyes tell me everything.
My pulse hammers in my temples, in my chest.
And as I stand and look into those eyes, I experience the novel sensation of cowardice.
Because, as much as I yearn to know, I can’t bear to hear her say it out loud.
To spell out what that single dismissive swipe of her message wrought.
That she went through such a harrowing thing without me.
That I failed her when she needed me most.
A dull roar builds in my ears, a storm of shame and disbelief and grief so sharp it borders on physical pain.
I’ve faced boardrooms full of sharks, the condemnation of my family, the mockery of an entire society that once sneered at my name.
But none of it cuts me like this. Because, for the first time, I understand what true loss feels like.
And worse—what it is to be the author of your own devastation.
We both stand there, reeling, the silence between us no longer silence at all. It’s the deafening roar of truth finally clawing its way free.
I don’t know if it will destroy me…or if it already has.
Tessa
‘Repeat that.’
His voice is ragged, croaked out, wavering between cold and raw and visceral as he says those two words for the second time in ten minutes. Words that spear me straight through. Again.
I shake my head, trembling. ‘You heard everything, Theo. Don’t ask me to repeat it.’
He staggers back as if my words have landed a physical blow. One, two, three uneven steps before he paces blindly around the suite, his hand dragging through his hair, his breathing uneven.
When he stops, the silence is so oppressive it feels like it might choke me. He glances at me, eyes storm-dark, and something seems to crumble inside him, fold him smaller—one inch, then two—before he rallies as only Theo Biney can.
His chest unfurls, his square jaw angles up and his voice, when it comes, is thick with certainty, brimming with the steel-plated confidence that’s carried him through every challenge and battlefield of his life.
‘You didn’t have my baby,’ he rasps, conviction solidifying the words. ‘Because I know even you wouldn’t punish me by keeping something like that from me on the strength of an unanswered text.’
It’s my turn to crumble.
Because admitting it—while completely vindicating me—also slices me open in a way I hadn’t prepared for. It shows just how well this man knows me. How he can read my codes, trace my choices, understand the compass that points me north even when I’m lost.
How well he knows me. And yet, how little he knows me at all.
Because didn’t he just lump me in with the rest of the women who scarred him? Didn’t he brand me as a liar, deceiver, manipulator, without hesitation?
It’s all so utterly…exhausting.
But I force my shoulders back when they threaten to slump in on themselves. My voice comes out steady, flat, merciless.
‘No. I didn’t have your baby.’
Several more emotions coast over his face, too fast for me to catch them all—dread, devastation, disbelief, something that might even be shame.
And I stand there, waiting for the walls between us to either collapse completely or crush me to death.