CHAPTER SIX
ALEXANDER
The door closes behind Isabella, and I do not move.
For several seconds, the sound continues inside my head as though the entire house has absorbed the impact. The engagement ring she left on the console table catches the light from the hall, and the empty space surrounding that small piece of jewelry seems impossibly large.
Richard is speaking, but it takes me a moment to understand the words.
“Alex, I’m so sorry. I had no idea she was pregnant. I never would have mentioned what I saw if I’d known.”
I look at him. “Leave.”
My uncle stops mid-explanation.
“Of course. It might be best to give both of you some time to calm down.”
“Now, Richard.”
He studies me for a moment before retrieving the coat he left over a chair.
“Don’t do anything rash.”
A humorless laugh leaves me, sounding as though it belongs to someone else. “I think we’re well beyond that.”
Richard leaves, closing the door more carefully than Isabella did. Once his footsteps disappear, the house falls completely silent.
It has never seemed so large.
There is too much space between the entrance and the sitting room, between the furniture and the walls, between every breath I manage to take. Isabella left half the lights on, the paper bag from the children’s shop is sitting on an armchair, and one of the tiny white socks remains in my hand.
I look at the console table and the ring waiting there.
I walk over and pick it up. The metal is still warm, as though it has retained something of her, and when I close my fingers around it, a painful pressure settles in the center of my chest.
I should go after her.
The thought comes with perfect clarity. I should open the door, reach the car before it leaves, and tell her I made a mistake. I should tell her I need to repeat the tests, that I do not know what happened, and that I had no right to turn fear into an accusation.
I take a step toward the door before hearing my own voice again.
Don’t use another man’s child to make me a father.
The words still seem to hang in the air. No apology could take them back, and I cannot promise to believe something that still appears impossible.
I drag both hands over my face and return to the sitting room. My phone is on the table, showing one missed call from Richard and two from Edmund. I open my conversation with Isabella and type Come back, then delete it before sending.
I try We need to talk and erase that too before finally writing, I shouldn’t have said that.
I stare at the words for nearly a minute, aware of how inadequate they are beside what I have done. Eventually, I press send.
The message is delivered but not read.
Five minutes pass, then ten, then twenty. When I call, the phone goes straight to voicemail, and a second attempt gives me the same result.
I could track the car. One call to my head of security would give me its precise location in less than a minute, but Isabella would hate knowing I had followed her after throwing her out. Instead, I call the driver and tell him only to let me know when she is somewhere safe.
At midnight, he sends a message telling me he dropped her at Clara’s flat.
The relief irritates me because I should not need to know where Isabella is. She should be here, asleep beside me or complaining that my hands are cold when I reach for her waist in the middle of the night.
I am the reason she is not.
Upstairs, the bedroom door is open. Half her clothes remain in the wardrobe, as though she might come back at any moment.
Her perfume is on the dresser beside the earrings she removed last night.
There are shoes beneath a chair, a book lying open on the bedside table, and a strand of dark hair caught against my pillow.
The room still looks like ours, but her absence has changed everything.
At the end of the corridor is the wedding dress behind a closed door. I do not go in. The idea of seeing it produces a physical pain I am unwilling to examine.
I sit on the bed and realize I am still holding the little white sock. It fits entirely in my palm, and the thought of a baby comes before I can stop it, followed immediately by the possibility that the child could be mine.
I crush the idea before it has time to take shape.
Anger returns because it is easier than the alternative. There are three tests, a definitive diagnosis, and a hotel where Isabella was seen with another man. I cannot ignore reality simply because I love her. Love does not alter biology or turn an impossibility into a miracle.
At two in the morning, I open my laptop and write to St. Aldwyn Reproductive Centre.
I want to repeat all previous fertility testing. Earliest available appointment.
The cursor hovers over the send button for several seconds before I press it.
Seven minutes later, I open my sent messages and cancel the request.
I remain staring at the screen.
I cannot explain why I did it. Perhaps repeating the tests would mean admitting that there is a possibility Isabella told me the truth. Perhaps I am afraid of the result regardless of what it says.
If I am still azoospermic, there will be only one possible conclusion. If I am not, everything I said to her tonight becomes something I will have to live with for the rest of my life.
I close the laptop.
My phone rings. Edmund’s name appears on the screen, but I let the call end. He immediately tries again.
I answer.
“What did you do?” he demands without greeting me.
“Good evening to you too.”
“Isabella called her mother, who called my housekeeper, because apparently no one in this family understands the concept of privacy.”
“That chain of communication is concerning.”
“She’s pregnant.”
Silence stretches between us.
“Yes.”
“And you sent her away.”
I say nothing.
“You idiot.”
“My test results were clear.”
“What tests?”
“The ones from seven years ago.”
“And did you repeat them today?”
I look at the dark screen of my laptop. “Not yet.”
“Then repeat them.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand perfectly. You’re so terrified of being deceived that you’d rather condemn her before you investigate.”
I stand. “You don’t know what it’s like to look at the woman you love and realize that what she’s telling you is mathematically impossible.”
“Mathematics doesn’t make babies.”
“Medicine produces diagnoses.”
“And doctors make mistakes.”
“Three times?”
“I don’t know, Alexander. That is why new tests exist.”
My anger rises because the solution sounds simple when spoken by someone standing outside the problem.
“I don’t want to discuss this.”
“You should. You just destroyed a marriage over a question you still haven’t had the courage to ask again.”
“Good night.”
“Alex, don’t make anything permanent while there’s still—”
I end the call.
The conversation should disappear with it, but it follows me through the rest of the night. Every time I close my eyes, I see the tears on Isabella’s face and the tiny socks lying on the floor.
The next morning, I reach the office before seven. I have not slept, but work has rules I understand. Numbers do not ask for trust, and contracts do not cry when they are questioned.
At nine, Richard arrives without being invited and closes the door behind him.
“How are you?”
“Working.”
“And Isabella?”
“None of your business.”
“Right.”
He sits anyway.
“I only wanted to say again that I’m sorry. I never would have mentioned the hotel if I’d known this was going to happen.”
“Stop.”
Richard obeys. For several seconds, I study him and try to understand why his presence irritates me more than usual.
“I don’t want you doing this to yourself,” he says.
“Doing what?”
“Doubting your own judgment because you love her.”
My expression hardens.
Richard leans forward. “You had three tests. I was with you when you received the last result.”
I remember St. Aldwyn, the gray corridor, and the cup of coffee he handed me while I waited. Richard was the only person in the family I told at the time.
“The result was zero,” he continues. “That isn’t an opinion or a suspicion.”
“I know.”
“If you repeat the tests now and get the same answer, you’ll suffer twice. First because of the betrayal, and then because of the confirmation.”
The words reach exactly the part of me that has been trying not to think.
“And if the result is different?”
Richard looks genuinely sad. “Then apologize and do everything you can to repair the damage. Until then, protect yourself.”
Protect yourself.
It is advice that has always made sense in business, within my family, and in any relationship where money gives people reasons to lie. Now the words taste bitter, but they also feel safe. Protecting myself means refusing to hope until there is an explanation.
Even so, I do not book the tests that afternoon.
I do not book them the following day either.
Isabella ignores my calls and leaves my messages unread. On Wednesday, she finally writes.
Isabella: My assistant will collect my things tomorrow. Please don’t be home.
I read the message twenty times before replying.
Me: There’s no need to send anyone. I’ll bring everything myself.
Her answer arrives almost immediately.
Isabella: I don’t want to see you.
I should be angry at the refusal. Instead, all I feel is the weight of knowing Isabella would rather allow a stranger into our home than spend another minute in the same room with me.
My assistant arranges the collection. I spend the entire day at the office and return that evening to empty spaces in the wardrobe, dresser, and bathroom. Isabella has taken her perfume, the earrings, and the book from the bedside table.
The bedroom no longer offers even the illusion that she might come back.
Two weeks later, the wedding is officially canceled. Our publicists release a short statement:
Alexander Thorne and Isabella Costa have mutually agreed to end their engagement.
It is a lie, but I allow it to be published. I will not expose Isabella to the press or turn her pregnancy into a scandal. When journalists ask whether another person was involved, my team refuses to comment.
On the day the suppliers come to dismantle part of the wedding arrangements, I enter the room where her dress was being kept for the first time.
It is gone.
I do not know whether Isabella intends to return it, keep it, or burn it. I imagine the fabric I never saw, chosen for a ceremony that will never happen, and sit down on the empty floor.
For the first time since the accident, I cry.
Not much, and not loudly. The tears come with anger rather than surrender, and I tell myself they have nothing to do with a child or with a possibility that was never mine.
They are for Isabella.
Only Isabella.
The months begin to pass.
I do not repeat the tests. Edmund brings the subject up over dinner once, and I end the conversation before he finishes the question. Richard never mentions them again.
I find a photograph of Isabella in an article about an advertising campaign. She is shown in profile, smiling at someone outside the frame, and the curve of her five-month pregnancy is impossible to ignore.
I close the page.
That night, I drink too much and type a message asking whether she is all right. I do not send it.
As the estimated date of delivery approaches, I begin waking every morning at four and lying there staring at the ceiling, imagining hospitals, contractions, and impossibly small hands.
I do not know why, and I do not want to know.
Then one day I realize the date has passed. There is nothing in the newspapers, no one calls me, and Edmund says nothing. Somewhere in London, Isabella has given birth while I was sitting in a meeting discussing the acquisition of a German company.
Life continues, or at least manages a convincing imitation of movement.
One year becomes two, then three. I work more than I did before, buy companies, sell assets, and accept invitations to places where people know better than to ask personal questions. I sleep with women whose names I remember mostly because my assistant keeps an efficient schedule.
None of them stays.
None of them comes into my house or leaves anything in my bathroom. If one suggests spending the night, I find an excuse or book a hotel suite instead.
I never use the bedroom I once shared with Isabella again. The door remains closed, and the staff learn to clean it only when I am not home.
Five years later, her engagement ring is kept in the safe in my office.
Beside it, inside an unmarked box, is a single tiny white sock.
I do not think about either of them.
Almost never.
That is the easiest lie I tell.