Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
SEBASTIAN
The headline loads before the photos do.
Katrina Haviland Carrying the First Austen Heir.
For a moment, I only stare at the words.
The study around me is too quiet, too orderly. Mahogany desk. Leather chair. The framed rendering of Starlight Court on the wall. It’s a room built for control, for decisions, and for men who can make disaster sound like strategy.
The first photo appears. Katrina on a beach not far from the resort, dressed in a white cover-up, sunglasses hiding half her face. One hand rests low on her stomach. Not casually. Not by accident. The pose is delicate, practiced, almost reverent.
The next photo is worse. Profile. Wind catching the loose fabric in exactly the right way. Her hand is there again.
I know angles. I know photography. I know the difference between evidence and suggestion dressed up as fact. This is suggestion. This is staging. Every frame is designed to let the viewer finish the lie for themselves.
But Chloe will see it. That's my first clear thought.
Not the board. Not the launch. Not Katrina’s contract. Not the fact that my name is being dragged into a paternity rumor manufactured with enough care to look organic. Chloe is going to see this, and it’s going to rip her open in the exact place I already tore.
I push back from the desk, but there's nowhere to go. The phone stays in my hand. The images keep waiting for me to look. Katrina’s palm on her stomach. Chloe’s hand doing the same, years ago, in our bathroom at six in the morning.
She’d been wearing one of my shirts, her hair loose around her face, her eyes wide and shining as if she were afraid joy might spook if she moved too quickly. The test sat on the counter between us. Two lines. Pale but there. Real enough to change the air.
She’d laughed first. A stunned little sound. Then her hand had gone to her stomach, not because there was anything to feel yet, but because love is irrational like that.
“Hi,” she’d whispered, looking down.
I hadn't known what to do with the size of it. My life had been built on numbers, plans, projections, and pressure. Then Chloe stood barefoot on cold tile with my shirt slipping off one shoulder, and suddenly the future had a heartbeat I couldn't yet hear.
I’d put my hand over hers.
“Hi,” I’d said too, because I was an idiot and because there was no better word.
The memory closes around my throat.
On the screen, Katrina laughs over her shoulder at someone out of frame. Her hand still rests on her stomach. The caption repeats beneath the slideshow, bolder this time, meaner because it pretends to be delighted.
Sources say the Austen family may have a new princess on the way.
My stomach turns.
This is not aimed at me. It’ll damage me, it’ll complicate business, and it’ll send legal, PR, and executive leadership into a coordinated panic before breakfast. But the cruelty of it is too precise to be only about scandal.
Someone wants Chloe to see another woman touching her body where Chloe once touched hers with hope. Someone wants her to believe that Katrina can give me what grief stole from us three times. Someone wants to destroy my wife.
And I walked directly into the trap, suit pressed, tie crooked, too blind to notice the floor giving way beneath us.
I throw the phone onto the desk harder than I mean to. It skids and strikes the base of the lamp. The sound is sharp enough to make me flinch.
For one second, I close my eyes. I don't get to break. Not now. Not when every broken thing in this room has Chloe’s fingerprints on it and my failures under it.
I pick up the phone again and call her. Straight to voicemail. Of course.
I try again anyway, because apparently I’m still capable of humiliating myself in private. Straight to voicemail.
“Chloe,” I say after the beep, my voice rougher than I expect.
“If you see those photos, they’re staged.
I know that’s not enough. I know I’ve given you every reason to doubt me.
But she’s not pregnant with my child. Nothing happened between us.
Nothing. I’m looking into all of it, and I...
” I stop, because the rest is too large for a machine. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I end the call and sit in the silence after my own voice. Then I search for another way to reach her.
Jessica has blocked me. Chloe has blocked me.
I have no right to go to the bakery again and put her sister in the position of guarding the door with a sugar spatula and righteous fury.
I won't go to Jessica’s house. Chloe told me not to follow her, and for once I’m going to respect the boundary I should have understood before she had to bleed to make it visible.
But doing nothing feels like standing in a burning room because someone asked me not to touch the door.
I search her name.
The results are a punishment. Wedding photos. Old Austen Parks press releases. A fan account with a picture of Chloe as Princess Tessa kneeling beside a little girl in a wheelchair, her smile so gentle it stops me cold.
Then gossip. More gossip. My name beside Katrina’s.
Chloe is reduced to an “estranged wife” by people who don't know she hates raspberries but likes raspberry jam.
They don't know she sings under her breath when she’s nervous, and they don't know she once stayed up until two making hand-painted signs for a cast party because one of the teenage performers had never had anyone celebrate her before.
I search Jessica’s name. Bakery page. Nothing useful.
Then, near the bottom, I find it: Flemming Community Arts Center. It’s a public post from an hour ago.
I open it so quickly my thumb slips once on the screen.
There she is.
Chloe stands in a black box theater with four other people, a script tucked against her chest. The caption reads, First read-through for Steel Magnolias. We already love this cast.
She’s not smiling the way she smiles for cameras. There’s no polite curve meant to keep other people comfortable. It’s smaller than that. Tired, yes. Pale around the eyes. But real. Almost happy.
The sight of it hits me with such force that I have to put the phone down on the desk and look away. She found a room where no one moved her behind flowers.
Then I see him. The man beside her is tall, dark-haired, and handsome in a way that doesn't require effort. He stands a half step behind Chloe, angled toward her, not the camera. His expression is open, warm, and fond.
Something old and ugly moves through me. Jealousy. It’s immediate, primitive, and so undeserved that I almost laugh. Not because anything is funny, but because the sheer arrogance of my own heart is staggering.
I have no right to feel territorial over a woman I left alone in public, wounded in private, and failed in every room that mattered. I have no right to resent any man for looking at Chloe like she’s worth seeing when I spent months letting the world overlook her.
I zoom in anyway. His gaze is on her face.
My jaw tightens. “Stop,” I say aloud.
I look at Chloe again. Her left hand is bare where it rests on the script. That does what jealousy couldn't. It cleans me out.
If this man makes her feel seen, then good. If that theater gives her air, good. If applause fills even one inch of the space I hollowed out, then I should be grateful and silent. I can be gutted about it on my own time.
I save the post, though I don't know why. Maybe because it’s proof she’s upright. Maybe because it’s the first image of her I’ve seen since she looked at me on the porch and told me she never wanted me to have to hold her through anything devastating again.
I still feel those words in my bones.
My phone rings. Curtis Strong.
I answer before the second vibration. “Tell me.”
“We found the entry code used by Ms. Haviland,” he says.
Everything in me stills. “Go on.”
“It was not a contractor badge or temporary event access. It was a private residence code, specifically one assigned to Mrs. Janine Austen.”
For a moment, I don't speak.
Outside the study windows, the grounds are bright and manicured, the kind of beautiful that takes an army of people to maintain. My mother has always loved that kind of beauty. Controlled, expensive, and obedient.
“Are you certain?” I ask.
“Yes, sir. The code was used at the north service entrance at 8:14 p.m. the night Ms. Haviland entered the residence. It’s been used routinely by Mrs. Austen and her driver over the past several months.”
“So Katrina used my mother’s code.”
“That appears to be the case.”
“Who else has that code?”
“Officially, only Mrs. Austen.”
“Send me the logs,” I say. “All of them. I want the original files, not a summary.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Curtis?”
“Yes?”
“No one changes, cleans, edits, archives, or loses anything.”
His voice goes colder. Professional. “Understood.”
I end the call and stand.
There's anger, and then there is the thing beneath anger. The quieter thing. The part that stops negotiating.
My mother gave Katrina access to my house. My house. Chloe’s house. The place where Chloe should have been safest from cameras, headlines, and women who knew exactly where to press their hands.
I think of Katrina in the sitting room, calm as if she’d been invited into a life already waiting for her. I think of the way she looked at me when she mentioned Chloe’s losses. Not guessing. Not needling in the dark. She knew.
How?
Chloe and I didn't make the miscarriages public. There were no statements. There were no family announcements after the first time, not after we learned what premature congratulations could cost. Chloe had barely wanted to tell Janine.
But keeping something from my mother has always been like hiding smoke in a glass box. She notices everything that might be useful later.
I leave the study with my phone in my hand and Chloe’s ring on the table behind me. I still don't touch it.
Janine’s assistant stands when I enter the executive suite.
“Mr. Austen,” she says, startled. “Mrs. Austen is on a call.”
“End it.”
Her eyes widen. “I’m sorry?”