Chapter 8 Olivia
OLIVIA
My office feels smaller today. I could almost swear the walls are closing in on me with each breath.
When I close my eyes, a different scene swims to life behind my eyelids.
My white plaster office is gone; in its place is a long alleyway of cement.
I can hear the bang of bullets leaving the chamber, feel his firm hands guiding mine on the gun, his chest pressed against my back, the heat of him seeping through my clothes.
You want a child? Try Tinder. But if you think I’ll sell my soul for your checkbook…
Those were my exact words to him. I delivered them with God-sent righteousness burning through my veins, chin lifted, shoulders squared. For one glorious moment, I felt powerful.
Then his eyes turned to ice.
“You need me, Dr. Aster. I don’t need you.”
And he was fucking right.
That’s what infuriates me. Not just his arrogance or his obscene proposal, but that for one shameful second, I considered it.
I stare at the white orchids in my window—the ones I arranged so carefully only this morning, before everything went to hell. Their petals curl inward like they’re pouting, as if even the plants know better than to bloom for me today.
What kind of doctor am I, that I’d even contemplate selling a woman’s body to save my practice? My mother would be appalled. Not at the ethical breach—God knows she wouldn’t give a damn about that. She’d be enraged at my failure to close the deal.
Failing because of your morals is still failing, Olivia.
“Earth to Dr. A.” Camille throws a stress ball shaped like a uterus at my head.
My office manager-slash-head nurse-slash-occasional-life-coach looks like a 1950s pinup girl went to business school, with her victory rolls and sharp pencil skirts.
Right now, her winged eyeliner is narrowed in concern.
“You’ve been staring at those flowers for twenty minutes.
Either they insulted your mother or something happened at that meeting.
And, no offense to your mom, but you wouldn’t be that upset if someone insulted her. ”
I catch the flying uterus mid-air and squeeze it until the fallopian tubes bulge. “Nothing happened.”
“Oh, sure, sure.” Camille closes the door and drops into the pink velvet visitor’s chair. “That’s why you’re all scrunchy-faced and frowny and smell like you just had sex with a musket.” She pauses. “Wait. Did he actually—?”
“If you ask if I had sex with a weapon, you’re fired.”
Camille’s brows lunge upward, asking the question her mouth no longer can.
“He had a private shooting range in his basement.” My sigh turns into a hollow laugh. Talk about a red flag. “Apparently, I needed lessons in self-defense before we could discuss business.”
“Because of Frederick?” Camille shivers as if she was the one twice assaulted at the gala last night. “God, what a creep. Not Stefan—Frederick. You get it.” She waves an impatient hand at me and herself. “Anyway. Well?”
“And I learned that Russian billionaires have interesting ideas about foreplay.”
“So you did have sex!”
“No!” Heat crawls up my neck as Camille’s eyebrows hit her hairline. “That was a joke. It’s not— I— He just showed me how to shoot. With his hands on my—” I stop, trapped by Camille’s knowing smirk. “Can we focus on the actual problem?”
“You mean your inability to tell a compelling story?” She groans. “I’m getting absolutely nothing over here. Where are the raunchy details?”
If I still have a business in two months, I should invest in an HR department. This place is toxic.
“The actual problem is that Stefan Safonov wants me to traffic him a womb, Cami.”
“Ooh, trafficking! That’s new. Black market or white glove delivery?”
“This isn’t funny. And it’s not a joke. He wants me to find a woman to give him an heir.” I shiver at the words, as if saying them will summon Stefan like the Russian Beetlejuice. “That isn’t our business model. It’s the literal exact opposite of our mission statement.”
I spent weeks drafting and rewriting the “About Us” section of my website. I can still rattle off the first paragraph by heart.
At Aster Fertility Solutions, we empower women to take control of their reproductive journey on their own terms. We believe that creating a family should never be limited by circumstances, but guided by personal choice and supported by compassionate expertise.
Or, in this case, it can be guided by financial desperation and the whims of a billionaire. To-may-to, to-mah-to.
Camille sobers up, at least insofar as she ever does. “Gross. Imperial surrogacy with an extra side of ethical nightmare.”
“Basically.” I pull Stefan’s proposal from my bag and slide it across the desk. I watch Camille’s expressions do a downward spiral as she reads the taped-together pages.
“So we’re talking full Handmaid’s Tale, but with better tailoring. What’d you tell him?” Camille asks.
“To choke on it.”
“Classy. And how’s that working with—” She flips open my laptop, revealing another overdraft alert. “—our imminent bankruptcy?”
In case I doubted the universe’s sense of humor, an email hits my inbox at that exact moment. It’s a new message from Dr. Walsh’s office—Thank you for referring Mrs. Alvarez! Attached is a photo of my former client grinning beside Walsh’s gold-embossed sign in her foyer.
I feel sick.
“Goddamn vulture,” Camille mutters over my shoulder. “She poached Alvarez? That’s our third traitor this week.”
“Fifth, actually.” I massage my temples, trying to work away the perma-headache that lives behind my eyes these days. “The Vasquez twins went over to the dark side yesterday.”
“Jesus. I didn’t know about them.” Camille collapses back in her chair, looking downright dejected. “They were weirdos, but they were our big break. Everyone wanted to know about the identical twins who wanted identical babies.”
“Well, now, they’re Walsh’s newest testimonial.
” I pull up their joint Instagram account, a feed dedicated to matching outfits and the identical sister-cousins I should’ve helped them create.
But the most recent post shows both sisters tagged in a glowing review of their “new fertility journey” with Walsh’s clinic.
“She offered them a two-for-one discount on their next round.”
“How can she even afford those rates? She’s practically giving treatments away.”
Camille is fuming, but I already mourned this loss in the bathtub this weekend. I drowned my denial in bubbles and my rage in a bottle of pinot grigio.
Now, I’m in the barren wasteland of acceptance. It sucks here.
“Because unlike us, she has backers. Dr. Walsh has deep pockets fueling her expansion.” I lean forward, dropping my face into my hands and talking through my fingers.
“Word is that she’s sleeping with some angel investor for a new, on-site embryology lab.
It’s going to be state-of-the-art equipment we could never dream of affording. ”
We stare at the peeling “Hope Grows Here!” mural I had painted on the lobby wall during our first week open. The pastel red flowers are now cracking like dried blood.
Those cracks in the foundation are visible. The invisible ones are just as bad, though. The rent check for this office is due in two weeks. Our equipment lease payment bounced last month. The pharmaceutical rep who used to bring us lunch and free samples doesn’t even return my calls anymore.
Things have never been grimmer.
“Remember when we had a waiting list?” I whisper, talking like we’re already at the wake. “When women would fly in from other states because we had the highest success rate on the East Coast?”
“We still have the highest success rate,” Camille retorts.
“Walsh stole all of your research, remember? As far as I’m concerned, her successes are yours, too, Liv.
The trouble is that she opened that monstrosity across town with canapés and custom sound baths, and her clients don’t know she’s a crook. ”
I feel the familiar rage bubbling up—the betrayal still fresh despite two years having passed.
Dr. Rebecca Walsh had been my mentor. I’d trusted her with everything because, for a fleeting second there, she was like the mother I never had.
Kind, encouraging, impressed. I craved her approval and shared my innovative protocols, my client stories, my dreams of helping women who everyone else had written off as hopeless cases.
Then she took it all and called it hers.
I’m still reeling.
Camille is the one to break the silence. “What if… we play his game? Just once. What if—”
“No.”
“Hear me out.”
“I don’t need to hear you out.” I’ve heard her argument in my head already. I’ve been chasing it in circles like a dog chasing a morally repugnant tail.
“This isn’t what we do, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find a surrogate ethically. We find someone who needs the money as much as we do. No coercion, just… mutually beneficial exploitation.”
“We don’t exploit people. Period. That’s Walsh’s brand, not ours,” I snap, standing up to pace. “We started this clinic because we believed in doing things differently. In treating women like people, not incubators.”
“Give it another few weeks and we won’t be treating anyone!” Camille slaps my desk, eyes wide and pleading. “We’re down to three clients, Liv. Three. And Ms. Chopard’s daughter starts college next month. You think she’ll keep paying for fertility treatments when her daughter’s tuition is due?”
Ms. Chopard has been on our roster for years. She wants a baby more than anyone I’ve ever seen and she has the money to keep trying, no matter how many times I tell her it might be fruitless. But everyone reaches their limit of disappointment.
Believe me; I fucking know.
My throat tightens. It’s been five long years of fighting tooth and nail for every patient, every success, every tiny victory against infertility. All of it is slipping away now because I can’t compete with Walsh’s chain of baby factories and their shadowy investor backing.