His Brother's Ruin

Chapter Two: The Name

The pregnancy test burned in my hand like a verdict.

Two lines that are very clear, bright, and impossible to ignore. I stared at them until my vision blurred, waiting for them to change, to fade, to reveal themselves as some kind of cruel joke. They stayed exactly where they were.

I was pregnant by a stranger whose face I could barely remember and whose name I never learned.

My wolf stirred deep in my chest, and for the first time in years, she did not feel like a threat. She felt curious and awake in ways I had spent a decade trying to keep her asleep.

I shoved her back down and threw the test in the trash.

The clinic confirmed it three days later. Ten weeks along, give or take. The doctor is a kind woman with gray streaks in her hair, and she asked gentle questions about the father while I sat on the examination table and tried not to fall apart. I gave her nothing because I had nothing to give.

But there was one person who deserved to know… who needed to hear the truth before I figured out what came next. That person is Daniel.

The thought made my stomach turn, but facts were facts. He was the only man I had been with before that night at the bar, and even if the timing was wrong, even if everything about this situation was wrong, he needed to know.

His office sat on the forty-second floor of Hartwell Tower, all glass walls and dark wood and views that made the rest of the city look small. I signed in at the front desk and rode the elevator alone, watching the numbers climb while my heart pounded against my ribs.

The doors opened. Daniel's secretary, a sharp-faced woman named Ruth, looked up from her computer and raised one perfect eyebrow.

"He’s not expecting you," she said.

"He’ll see me."

Something in my voice must have convinced her because she picked up the phone and murmured into the receiver. A moment later, she nodded toward the double doors behind her desk.

"Five minutes."

The doors closed behind me with a soft click. Daniel sat behind his desk, sleeves rolled to his elbows, hair slightly mussed like he had been running his fingers through it. He looked up when I entered, and his expression shifted from surprise to something colder. Something practiced.

"Valentina." He did not stand. "I wasn’t expecting you."

"We need to talk."

"About what? The engagement?" He laughed, but the sound held no warmth. "If you are here to make a scene, I suggest you save your energy. What Sandra and I have is real, and nothing you say is going to change that."

My hands curled into fists at my sides. "I am pregnant."

The words hung in the air between us. Daniel's face went very still, and for one brief moment, I saw something flicker behind his eyes as if he were measuring something.

"Pregnant," he repeated.

"Ten weeks."

He leaned back in his chair and studied me like I was a puzzle he was trying to solve. Then he reached for his computer, turned the screen toward me, and pressed play on a video file.

Security footage, black and white, grainy but clear enough. A woman in a green dress walking through a hotel lobby, her face turned toward the camera, her hand linked with a tall figure whose face stayed hidden in shadow.

The woman in the footage is me. Walking out of the Nightfall Hotel eleven weeks ago.

"I have known for weeks," Daniel said. "I have been holding this, waiting to see what you would do with it. And now you come here, pretending the child might be mine?" He laughed again, sharper this time. "Did you think I would not find out? Did you think you could trap me with someone else's mistake?"

My blood went cold. "Daniel..."

"You are pathetic." He stood, straightening his cuffs like this conversation was an inconvenience. "You always have been. Three years of following me around, desperate for attention, desperate for any scrap of affection I threw your way. And when you could not have me, you spread your legs for the first stranger who looked at you twice."

The words hit like fists, each one landing harder than the last. I opened my mouth to respond, to defend myself, to say anything at all, but nothing came out.

Daniel pressed a button on his desk. "Security."

"You are calling security on me?"

"You are trespassing in a private office, making accusations about a personal matter that has nothing to do with me." His smile was cold enough to freeze blood. "I would leave quietly if I were you. The press has been circling the Hartwell name lately, and I would hate for them to find out that my ex-girlfriend has been harassing me about her pregnancy."

The door opened behind me. Two men in dark suits stepped inside, their faces blank and professional.

"Miss," one of them said. "Please come with us."

I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw something at Daniel's perfect face and watch him bleed the way he had made me bleed every day for the last ten weeks. But screaming would give him exactly what he wanted, and I refused to be the hysterical woman in his narrative.

I lifted my chin and walked toward the door.

The guards escorted me through the lobby, past the curious stares of secretaries and executives who pretended not to watch. We reached the glass doors that led to the street, and one of the guards leaned close to my ear.

"Casmir Hartwell," he whispered. "That is who you spent the night with, and you should find him."

The doors opened. I stumbled onto the sidewalk, the name echoing in my head like a gunshot.

Everyone in Silverstone City knew that name. Casmir was Daniel's stepbrother, the man accused of attacking their father three years ago, the man exiled from the pack and stripped of his inheritance and erased from the Hartwell family tree. Daniel told me the story himself, late one night, when I asked about the brother I had never met. Dangerous, he called him. Violent. A monster who nearly killed his own father.

I believed every word because Daniel said it, and I trusted Daniel the way you trust someone you have given three years of your life to.

Now Daniel's words echoed in my head alongside the guard's whisper. Casmir Hartwell. The monster. The exile. The father of my child.

My legs carried me to the curb. I flagged down a cab and climbed inside before I could talk myself out of it.

"Where to?" the driver asked.

I pulled out my phone and searched for Casmir Hartwell. The first result was an address, an estate on the edge of the city where the old money wolves lived behind iron gates and centuries of tradition.

I gave the driver the address and leaned back against the seat, my hand resting on my stomach.

The gates appeared thirty minutes later, tall and black and wrapped in iron vines that looked sharp enough to draw blood. A camera swiveled toward the cab, and a voice crackled through the intercom.

"State your business."

"Valentina." My voice came out steadier than I expected. "I need to see Casmir Hartwell."

Silence. Then the gates swung open.

The estate rose before me like something out of a dark fairy tale, all stone walls and tall windows and shadows that seemed to move even in the afternoon light. I paid the driver and walked toward the front door, my heels clicking against the stone path.

The door opened before I could knock.

And there he was. The stranger from the bar, the shadow with the sharp jaw, and the voice like gravel. He stood in the doorway with his sleeves rolled to his elbows and his dark eyes fixed on my face, and he did not look surprised at all.

"I have been waiting for you," Casmir said. "Come inside.”