Chapter 3
1169 Words
The doors slammed shut behind Mira with a finality that echoed in her chest.
She didn’t look back, she can’t even do that.
She walked past the marble floors, the quiet power in the air, the people who looked at her as though she were just another visitor lucky to be there,and she kept her spine straight. It wasn’t until she reached her car and shut the door that her breath broke free in shaky gasps.
Forty eight hours
The words replayed in her mind like a ticking clock. It wasn’t a conversation, it’s not a negotiation.It’s a deadline.
Her hands were clenched so tightly around the steering wheel that her knuckles ached.
This isn’t real, she told herself.
Men like Adrian Donovan didn’t give ultimatums like that. Not without lawyers. Not without paperwork. Not without warning. This was intimidation it’s definitely nothing more than a tactic meant to scare her into compliance.
Yes. That had to be it.
She exhaled shakily, nodding to herself as if logic alone could steady her pulse. He was testing her. Seeing how far he could push before she broke.
“I won’t break” she said nodding her head
When she finally parked outside her apartment building, the relief was short-lived. The familiar walls no longer felt safe, they felt small.
Inside, the silence pressed in on her. Mira dropped her keys on the console table and leaned against the door, closing her eyes. For a long moment, she simply breathed in and out slowly and controlled, the way she’d taught herself to breathe during the worst days of debt collectors and rejection emails and sleepless nights wondering if she’d fail completely.
She had survived worse than a man with too much money and too much pride.
Hadn’t she?
She pushed herself away from the door and walked deeper into the apartment, kicking off her shoes.
Her phone buzzed on the counter. She ignored it. Everything could wait. Everyone could wait. Right now, she needed distance, from Adrian’s voice, from the way his eyes had darkened when she challenged him, from the terrifying calm with which he had spoken about her child like a future asset.
My heir.
The word made her stomach twist, how dare he.
She poured herself a glass of water, but the moment it touched her lips, nausea surged. She barely made it to the sink, gripped the edge of the counter as the wave passed, breathing through her nose, eyes squeezed shut.
“Get it together,” she whispered.
Her body didn’t listen.
She straightened slowly, one hand resting on the cool surface of the counter, the other drifting almost unconsciously to her stomach. The gesture startled her. She froze, fingers splayed, as though touching herself might confirm something she wasn’t ready to fully accept.
There is nothing to protect yet, she told herself firmly.
And yet… she didn’t move her hand away.
Work was supposed to ground her like It always had.
Mira opened her laptop at the small dining table she’d turned into a workstation months ago. Emails flooded the screens, orders to confirm, clients to reassure, numbers to review, she dove in with practiced focus, answering messages, making calls, forcing her voice into its usual calm, professional cadence.
For an hour, it worked.
Then her vision blurred.
She blinked, rubbing her temples, but the headache persisted, it was dull and insistent. The words on the screen began to swim. When she stood up too quickly, the room tilted, and she had to grab the back of the chair to steady herself.
This is stress, she insisted. Just stress.
She had been under pressure before. This was no different.
Except it was.
By late afternoon, the fatigue settled into her bones like something ancient and heavy. Even breathing felt like effort, she abandoned the laptop and curled up on the couch, staring at the ceiling. Sunlight slanted through the curtains, dust motes floating lazily in the air.
Forty-eight hours.
The clock on the wall ticked softly, each second a reminder that time was slipping through her fingers.
She replayed the confrontation again and again, searching for cracks in Adrian’s logic. Something, anything, that proved he couldn’t do what he’d implied.
But every version ended the same way.
Adrian Donovan didn’t need to threaten, she knows better. His power was systemic, and Invisible. Woven into institutions, laws, perceptions. Even if she fought him, even if she won a battle or two, the war would grind her down.
And the one who would suffer most… would be her child.
The thought hollowed her chest.
“No,” she said aloud, pushing herself upright. “I won’t let you scare me.”
She stood and began pacing, the movement restless and sharp. She had built her life with intention, brick by brick, when no one believed she could.
She could do this too.
Her phone buzzed again.
This time, she looked.
Her assistant’s name glowed on the screen. Mira hesitated, then answered.
“Where have you been?” came from the voice from the other end, the woman demanded, worry bleeding through her irritation. “I’ve been calling you all day.”
“I needed time,” Mira said quietly.
A pause. “Are you okay?”
Mira opened her mouth to lie. The words stuck.
“I will be,” she said finally.
Another pause,this time longer. “Do you want me to come over?”
The offer nearly broke her.
“No,” Mira said quickly, swallowing. “I just… need tonight.”
“Alright,” her assistant said softly. “But don’t disappear on me again.”
“I won’t.”
After the call ended, Mira sat back down, her energy suddenly drained. The walls seemed closer now, and the air thicker.
That night, sleep came in fragments.
Cries of a baby could be heard in a room with no doors, velvet sheets was tied around her limbs as she struggled with herself, she could hear the cry of the baby-her child- but couldn’t reach him.
She woke with a gasp, heart pounding, her nightdress damp with sweat, tears on her pillow.
The room was dark. Quiet.
She lay there for a long time, staring into the shadows, listening to her own breathing. Slowly, she rolled onto her side, curling inward, one hand resting protectively against her abdomen.
“I’m here,” she whispered into the darkness. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Whether she was reassuring herself or the life growing inside her, she didn’t know.
By morning, the denial had thinned.
She’d be visiting the clinic to confirm all today, just as she wished the pregnancy test was negative, at least she wants to be free from being living as a captive to a man who never sees her as nothing but an asset, or a man that would want her to have nothing to do with her unborn child, she secretly wished the baby was real if only the circumstances could change.
- Writer
