THE HEIRESS HE BETRAYED

SERAPHINA'S POV : "Vance, stop, someone could walk in." The breathless, high-pitched giggle was unmistakable. It echoed through the heavy mahogany door of the CEO’s suite, cutting through the quiet hum of the executive floor. My hand froze on the brass handle. "Let them," a deep, familiar voice growled. My husband's voice. I shoved the heavy door open. Looking at the two people tangled all over each other, a wave of anger and nausea hit me. Larkin Cross, my husband's childhood sweetheart. She was pinned against my husband's massive oak desk, her petite frame completely swallowed by his broad shoulders. Her bleach-blonde bob was a messy halo, and her heavily altered features were flushed with pleasure. My husband, the man who hadn't touched me in over a year, had his hands buried in her designer skirt. The news I wanted to deliver was stuck in my throat, the plastic pregnancy kit showing two lines inside my pocket felt like a stab and mockery of myself. I had taken three separate subway trains in my oversized, frumpy sweater just to get here. I wanted to surprise him. I wanted to tell him that after three years of a cold, suffocating marriage, we were finally going to be a real family. I was such a lovesick i***t. "Seraphina.", my husband Vance called my name like I was an outsider ruining his fun. He didn't jump. He didn't scramble to cover up, and he certainly didn't look guilty. He simply withdrew his hands, his slate-gray eyes entirely devoid of emotion. He casually adjusted the cuffs of his custom-made suit, his sharp jawline tensing in pure annoyance. "Knocking is a basic courtesy Seraphina," he dragged out. He sounded exactly like he was reprimanding a clumsy intern who had spilled coffee on his rug. My hands curled into fists. My nails dug so hard into my palms that the skin broke, but I couldn't feel it. All the blood in my body was literally boiling with rage. "You're... you're sleeping with her?" My voice broke as the sentence stumbled out after finally finding what to say. I hated how pathetic, how impossibly weak I sounded. Larkin hopped off the edge of the mahogany desk. She smoothed down her pencil skirt with a smirk, her eyes raking over me in disgust. Her gaze lingered on the baggy cardigan I wore to hide my figure. To hide everything I truly was. "Oh, Sera," Larkin mocked, her sickeningly sweet voice dripping with fake pity. "Don't act so surprised. Did you really think Vance would settle for a dull and uninteresting little nobody like you forever?" "Get out, Larkin," I snapped, taking a shaky shallow breath to calm myself down. "She goes no where Seraphina," Vance commanded. His voice was absolute ice. "You're the one who needs to get out, Seraphina. You're causing a scene, and it's embarrassing." The sheer audacity of his words felt like a physical slap to the face. He was the one raw and exposed on a desk in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, but I was the embarrassment. "I'm your wife!" I screamed out of anger and frustration. The three years of bottled-up frustration and getting rejected finally broke me. Three years of cooking dinners that went cold. Three years of sleeping in a massive, empty penthouse bed while he worked late. "I stood by you when you were nothing! I endured those humiliating clinical treatments for us!", I screamed at Vance. Vance scoffed. He leaned casually against his desk, crossing his arms over his broad chest. "We had a boundary, Seraphina. I made the rules clear from day one," he said, staring at me like I was a piece of dirt on his expensive Italian custom-made suit. "You play the quiet, dutiful wife in public. You keep my PR clean, and you get to live in my penthouse and use my credit cards. That was our transaction." "Transaction?" The word lodged in my throat like broken glass. “ That was how you saw it all along just a transaction”. "Don't pretend you didn't know," Larkin chimed in, wrapping her arms around Vance's bicep. She pressed her heavily augmented chest against his arm. "He only married you because the board wanted a wholesome family man. You were just a prop." My vision blurred with hot, angry tears. I loved him. I had given up my entire world for this man. I walked away from billions. I abandoned my father's protection, my trust fund, and my elite social circles just to prove my love to a man who saw me as a PR stunt. I hid the Astor name to be a Sterling, and this was my reward. "I did everything for you," I whispered, the zeal to fight draining out of my bones. "You're infertile, Vance. You told me you couldn't have children naturally. We went to the clinic..." Larkin let out a sharp, mocking laugh. She buried her face in Vance's shoulder to muffle the sound. I ignored her, reaching a trembling hand into my oversized sweater pocket. "I let them pump me full of hormones," I continued, my voice shaking as I pulled out the white plastic stick. "I took the bruises. I took the pain. Because you couldn't do it." Vance’s slate-gray eyes locked onto the pregnancy test in my trembling hand. For a split second, something flickered in his gaze. Not joy. Not surprise. It was pure disgust. "A positive test," he stated, his tone dangerously flat. "Yes," I sobbed. A pathetic, desperate part of my broken heart hoped this would change his mind. I hoped the reality of a child would snap him out of whatever mid-life crisis this was. "I'm pregnant. It worked, Vance. We're having a baby." I waited for the realization to hit him. I waited for the cold billionaire to gradually melt, just like in the foolish, delusional fantasies I had clung to for three years. Instead, a cruel, mocking smirk twisted his handsome features. He slowly pushed off the desk, his towering six-foot-two frame casting a dark, suffocating shadow over me as he closed the distance between us. "You really are a naive little peasant, aren't you?" he whispered. Every word dripped with venom. "Did you honestly believe I'd let a woman like you carry my heir?" My breath hitched. My heart completely stopped beating in my chest. "What are you talking about? The IVF..." "The IVF was a distraction Seraphina," Vance sneered, his eyes gleaming with a sick, malicious triumph. He looked down at the positive pregnancy test, then back up to my tear-stained face. "I paid the director of that clinic to put you through the pain and hardship," Vance said smoothly. "It kept you busy. It kept you out of my bed. And most importantly, it gave me a medical excuse not to touch you." The walls of the executive office seemed to violently rotate. My knees went weak, threatening to give out beneath my weight. "I faked my infertility, Seraphina," Vance finally delivered the final, fatal blow of truth without blinking. "I never gave the clinic my DNA." Silence rang in my ears. The world stopped spinning entirely. “If Vance didn't give his DNA... then who did?”, I wandered. Looking like a mess. The clinic used a highly secured, anonymous VIP donor list, so how then I remembered his words, “I paid the director of that clinic to put you through the pain and hardship, It kept you busy. It kept you out of my bed. And most importantly, it gave me a medical excuse not to touch you.” those exact words echoed in my head. Vance leaned in close. His expensive cologne made my stomach churn. His breath brushed my ear as his smirk widened into something monstrous. "So tell me, darling," Vance whispered cruelly, his eyes flicking down to my flat stomach. "Whose bastard is that?"