Chapter 32 #2
Tessa’s wearing the loose dress, but she has a hand resting unconsciously on her stomach. And she’s glowing.
Harper pops the cork on the champagne. She grabs two glasses from the open cabinet and holds one out to Tessa.
Tessa steps back, keeping her hands at her sides.
Harper’s eyes narrow. She lowers the glass. “You’re not drinking,” she says.
“I’m on a detox,” Tessa says quickly. Too quickly. “Green juices. Asher’s orders.”
“Uh-huh,” Harper says. She puts the bottle down. She walks over to Tessa and grabs her face, examining her. “You look… different. Your skin. Your… everything.”
“It’s the stress of the hack,” Owen interjects, draping an arm around Harper to distract her. “Come on, Harp. Let’s eat pizza. I’m starving.”
Harper shakes him off. She steps back, studying the four of us. She’s smart. She grew up in the same house of horrors we did; she learned to read a room before she learned to read books.
“Something is going on,” she says slowly. “You guys are acting weird. Weirder than usual. You’re moving like a pack.”
“We are a pack,” I say.
“No,” Harper says. “You’re guarding her.” She points at Tessa. “What is it?” Harper asks, her voice dropping. “Is she sick? Is that why you guys vanished?”
“I’m fine, Harp,” Tessa says, stepping forward. She hates lying to Harper. I can see it eating at her. “Really. We’ve just been… working.”
“Working,” Harper repeats skeptically. She looks at Ethan. “You look happy. You never look happy.”
Ethan struggles to neutralize his expression. The joy of the twins is still buzzing in his system. “The server architecture is fully stabilized.”
Harper sighs, throwing her hands up. “Fine. Keep your secrets. But I’m staying here tonight. I ordered three pizzas, and I’m not leaving until Tessa tells me why she ghosted me.”
“You can stay,” Ethan says, relaxing slightly. “But no interrogations.”
“We’ll see,” Harper warns.
The evening becomes a minefield. We eat pizza on the floor of the living room.
We try to act normal, but our baseline for normal has completely fractured.
Ethan watches Tessa to make sure she’s comfortable, while Owen feeds her crusts to settle her stomach.
I obsess over the thermostat, ensuring the ambient temperature remains optimal.
Harper watches it all, tracking every glance.
By 9:00 PM, the tension is palpable. We’re terrible at this. We’re engineers, not actors.
“Okay, seriously,” Harper says, wiping tomato sauce from her lip. “Are you guys… dating?”
Conversation halts abruptly.
“What?” Owen asks, nearly choking on his beer.
“I’m not blind,” Harper says. “The touching. The looks. It’s giving dating vibes. Is Tessa dating one of you? Is it Owen? It’s usually Owen.”
Tessa looks at me, panic flaring in her eyes.
“We…” Tessa starts.
“We’re close,” Ethan interrupts smoothly. “The trauma of the hack brought the team together.”
“Right,” Harper draws out the word. “Trauma bonding. Sexy.”
She stands up to grab another slice, but her phone buzzes on the counter. Then mine buzzes. Then Ethan’s.
It’s a cascade of notifications, a digital ripple effect.
Ping. Ping. Ping.
“Who’s blowing us up at nine at night?” Owen asks, pulling his phone out of his pocket.
My screen lights up. It’s a priority alert from our PR monitoring software.
Keyword Alert: Mosaic, Scandal, Branson.
My stomach drops.
“Oh no,” Owen whispers. He looks physically sick.
“What?” Ethan asks, standing up.
“Harper,” Owen says, his voice urgent. “Don’t look at your phone.”
But it’s too late. Harper is already staring at her screen. Her jaw drops. Her gaze snaps from the phone to us, then back to the screen.
“What. The. Hell,” Harper whispers.
“What is it?” Tessa asks, trying to stand up, but I put a hand on her shoulder to keep her seated.
“Asher, report,” Ethan barks.
I open the link. It’s a gossip site. The Austin Insider. Not a major news outlet, but viral enough to do damage.
STARTUP SECRETS: MOSAIC FOUNDERS ACCUSED OF COERCING SUBORDINATE IN "BILLION-DOLLAR HAREM"
Billion-dollar. Not cash. Valuation. A headline designed to make people click.
And below the headline is the photo.
Though grainy and taken from a distance with a telephoto lens, the image is undeniable. It’s us outside the clinic. Ethan has his hand on the small of Tessa’s back, Owen is leaning in to kiss her temple, and I’m holding her hand. It isn’t a professional photo. It’s intimate. It’s incriminating.
And the location tag on the article reads “Spotted outside The Fertility Clinic of Austin.”
“You’re pregnant?” Harper screams, dropping her phone. It clatters onto the marble floor.
Ethan closes his eyes, pained resignation crossing his face.
I focus on the data. Views: 150,000 and climbing. Shares: 2,000. Top Comment: Three bosses and one employee? That isn’t a romance, that’s a lawsuit waiting to happen. #MosaicMess
“Harper,” Tessa whispers, reaching out.
“Don’t,” Harper says, stepping back. She looks at her best friend, then at her three brothers. She looks betrayed and entirely horrified. “You… all of you? At a fertility clinic?”
“It’s not what it looks like,” Owen tries, but it’s a weak lie.
“It looks like my brothers are running a harem with my best friend!” Harper shouts. “And you’re pregnant? Who is the father?”
“We don’t know,” Tessa admits, her voice breaking.
Harper makes a sound like she’s choking. “You… oh my god. This is insane. Is this why you ghosted me? They’re your bosses!”
“The internet knows,” I state calmly, holding up my phone. “It’s trending.”
Ethan opens his eyes. The initial shock vanishes, replaced instantly by calculated aggression.
“Harper, sit down,” Ethan commands.
“No!” Harper grabs her purse. “I can’t… I need to process this. I need to go.”
“Harper, wait!” Tessa cries, standing up.
But Harper’s already at the elevator, hitting the button frantically. “Don’t follow me. Just… don’t.”
The doors slide open, and she disappears.
We are left in the stillness of the penthouse. The pizza is cold. The champagne is unopened. And on four different screens, the photo of our secret is burning a hole through the internet.
“It’s out,” Owen whispers. “The secret is out.”
Ethan walks to the window, looking out at the city currently reading about his sex life.
“Markus,” Ethan says.
“What?” I ask.
“It wasn’t a random paparazzi,” Ethan says, turning around. His eyes are dead calm. “We took the service exit. We took the tinted SUV. No one knew we were there.”
“Except the person watching us,” I realize.
“Markus Vance didn’t stop,” Ethan says. “He had us followed. He fed her name and position to the press to frame it as a coercion scandal. He took that photo.”
Tessa sinks back onto the sofa, clutching her stomach, her breathing turning shallow as the reality of the Morality Clause sets in.
“Let them look,” Ethan says, walking back to us. He reaches down and takes Tessa’s hand, pulling her to her feet.
He looks at me. He looks at Owen.
“We prepared for this,” Ethan says. “We knew the war wasn’t over.”
“What do we do?” Owen asks. “Deny it? Call it AI-generated?”
“No,” Ethan says. He looks at the ultrasound photos still tucked in his pocket. He pulls them out and throws them on the table next to the phone displaying the scandal.
“We don’t deny it,” Ethan says. “We own it.”
“Own it?” I ask. “That is a high-risk strategy.”
“It’s the only strategy,” Ethan says. “Markus wants to use this to shame us. To make us look dirty. So we don’t let him. We control the narrative.”
He turns to Tessa. “Are you ready to tell the world?” he asks.
Tessa glances at the photo, at the hateful comments scrolling by, then down at the ultrasound.
She lifts her chin. The physical tremor in her hands stops.
“They’re our babies,” she says fiercely. “I’m not ashamed of them. And I’m not ashamed of us.”
“Good,” Ethan says. He picks up his phone.
“Who are you calling?” Owen asks.
“Sterling,” Ethan says. “I’m going to tell him to go to hell before he gets the chance to fire us.”
He hits the dial, looking over at me. “Asher, get the laptop. Deploy the data.”
I sit at the table, opening my terminal, the harsh glow of the screen illuminates the two grainy ultrasound photos lying between us as the first lines of counter-strike code begin to compile.