Pregnant By The Billionaire Who Forgot Me

CHAPTER TWO

Ethan's POV

"Who is she?"

That was the first thing I asked when my mother told me a woman had been sitting outside my hospital room for three days straight. Not what happened. Not how bad the accident was. Not even how long I had been unconscious. Just who is she.

My mother's expression didn't change. She sat beside my bed with her hands folded in her lap and told me not to worry about it. The woman was gone now. Everything was handled.

I didn't push it. My head felt like it was full of gravel and even the light coming through the window was too much. I closed my eyes and let the medication pull me back under and told myself I would ask again later.

I asked again later.

Marcus was in the room, sitting in the chair by the window with a coffee he hadn't touched. I looked at him and said, "Tell me what I'm missing."

He looked at my mother first. That small glance told me everything I needed to know about the kind of answer I was about to get. Carefully measured. Selectively edited.

My mother told me I had been in an accident. The car went off the road in the rain. I had been unconscious for four days and had lost some time, a period of roughly fourteen months that the doctors said may or may not return depending on the brain's own recovery process. She said it calmly, the way she said everything, like she was reading from a report.

Fourteen months.

I lay there and tried to reach back into that gap and found nothing. Not a face, not a conversation, not a single image. Just a clean blank space where more than a year of my life should have been. The last thing I remembered clearly was sitting in my office on a Tuesday morning in early spring, reviewing the quarterly reports. After that, nothing.

Marcus told me the basics when my mother stepped out to speak with the doctor. The company was fine. The projects I remembered were completed. Things had moved forward in my absence and my team had managed well. He said it all quickly and efficiently like a man working through a rehearsed list.

I looked at him and said, "You're leaving something out."

He said nothing.

"The woman," I said. "Who is she?"

Marcus set down his coffee. He looked at the door, then back at me, and said, "Your mother will explain everything when you're stronger."

That was not an answer. I knew Marcus well enough to know that when he deflected it meant the truth was something he had been told not to say. I let it go for the moment because my head was splitting and arguing required energy I didn't have. But I filed it away.

I was discharged two weeks later. The mansion felt familiar the way old furniture feels familiar, present but not quite connected to anything recent. I walked through the rooms and recognized everything and felt nothing particularly significant about any of it. My study. My bedroom. The long dining table. All exactly as I remembered them from before the gap.

My mother had arranged for Camille to be there when I arrived home.

I remembered Camille. That part of my memory was intact. We had been together for two years, ended things mutually, or so I recalled, remained on decent terms. She was standing in the entrance hall looking effortlessly put together and she smiled at me with the kind of familiarity that felt like an anchor in the middle of everything that felt unmoored.

She had been around every day since. Bringing me things, sitting with me, filling in small details about the months I couldn't remember. Not big things. Just small ones. A restaurant we had apparently visited. A film she said we watched together. I couldn't verify any of it but it felt harmless and her presence was comfortable in the way that familiar things are comfortable when everything else feels unstable.

A week into being home I found a coffee mug on the kitchen counter that didn't belong to anyone on the staff. Small, plain, white, with a small chip on the handle. I held it for a moment and felt something I couldn't name. Not a memory exactly. More like the shadow of one.

I asked the housekeeper about it. She looked briefly uncertain and then told me it had simply been left behind and she would dispose of it.

I told her to leave it.

I didn't know why.

The lawyers came the following week with documents relating to the gap period. I sat at my desk and went through them methodically the way I did with everything. Contracts, correspondence, financial agreements. And then a document that stopped me entirely.

A marriage certificate.

My name. A woman's name. Nora Chen. A date fourteen months ago.

I stared at it for a long time. Then I called my mother in and placed it on the desk between us and waited.

She sat down, crossed her legs, and explained it with the same controlled calm she used for everything. A contractual arrangement. A practical decision I had made during a complicated period regarding the inheritance clause. The woman had been informed that the arrangement was void given the circumstances. It had been handled cleanly and I didn't need to concern myself with it.

I looked at my mother and then back at the document.

"Where is she now," I said.

My mother's expression shifted just slightly. Not much. Just enough for me to catch it before she smoothed it over.

"That's not something you need to focus on right now," she said. "You're still recovering. What you need is rest and stability, not complications from an arrangement that was never meant to be permanent."

I said nothing. I picked up the marriage certificate and looked at the name again.

Nora Chen.

Something about it sat differently than it should have for a stranger. Like a word in a language I used to speak and had almost forgotten. I couldn't explain it and I didn't try to. I just knew that the feeling was there and it wasn't nothing.

I put the document in my desk drawer and locked it.

"I want to meet her," I said.

My mother smiled. But it didn't reach her eyes and I noticed that too.

"I don't think that's a good idea, Ethan," she said.

I looked at her for a long moment. Then I looked back at the locked drawer.

I had built an entire empire on the ability to know when someone was managing me.

My mother was managing me and somewhere out there was a woman whose name felt like something I had lost and hadn't stopped looking for.