THE BILLIONAIRE'S HIDDEN TRIPLETS

CHAPTER 2: The Only Person I Trusted

Elara's pov

I ran.

I couldn't go back to my apartment and I was totally and completely lost. So I ran to the only person i knew her address I knew by heart. The only person I knew I could visit by midnight and her door would be wide opened to me. I needed to hear here voice right now, I believed she would tell me the right thing to do.

Selene lived four streets away in a building with a broken intercom that she doesn't report to the landlord anymore because he never fixed it anyway. I took the stairs two at a time and knocked before I had even fully caught my breath.

She opened the door almost immediately.

"Elara?" Her eyes went wide the moment she saw my face. She looked me over, looking at the rain on my jacket and the envelope in my hand. "What happened? Come inside, come in."

I stepped through the door and fell apart completely.

She caught me before I could be embarrassed about it. Her arms hugged me and she held me closely while I cried in a way I had not cried since my mother died shortly after that incident.

I cried ugly, but I didn't care. I didn't care how it sounded or what it look like at that moment. She didn't say anything. She just kept one hand moving in slow circles on my back until I poured out everything I was feeling.

When I finally stopped shaking, she walked me to the couch, gently pulled a blanket from the back and wrapped it around my shoulders. Then she went to the kitchen without me asking and came back with two mugs of tea.

"Tell me everything," she said softky. Sitting beside me with her legs folded underneath her.

“Okay.” I replied, sniffing back my tears.

I told her about the gala. How the waiter handed me a glass of water and how the room had started tilting fast. I told her how i woke up in a hotel room room I didn't recognise with headache that almost broke my skull. I told her about the key card on the nightstand with his name on it.

I told her about the pregnancy test and all the three test that I took, each one saying the same thing. How I sat on the floor with my back against the bathtub trying to make the numbers in my head add up to something different.

I proceeded to tell her about the visit to the doctor that morning and how the results was still the same. Even up till the part where she asked about the father.

“I… I went to the hotel to give him this.” I said, showing her the envelope.

“You did what?” She replied, shocked out of her mind.

I repeated myself. I told her about the receptionist and her fake smile. How they kicked me out of the hotel and how they flung the envelope across the floor toward me.

Selene listened to all of it without interrupting once. She sat very still with her mug held in both hands and her eyes on me the entire time. When I finished talking the apartment was quiet for a moment except for the rain against the window.

"You should have come to me first," she said softly.

"I didn't know what to do," I said, wiping my face with the edge of the blanket. "I thought that if I went to him directly it would be easier. I thought if I just explained everything to him, he would listen."

She shook her head slowly. "Elara. People like Damien Ashford don't open their own doors. You have to know the right way in." She reached over and took my hand into her two hands. "You don't have to figure that out alone. I am here and I'm not going anywhere."

Something in my chest loosened for the first time in weeks.

"Do you really think there's a way to reach him?"

"I know people who work inside Ashford Tower," she said without hesitating. "Let me make some calls." She squeezed my hand once and then let go. "But before any of that, there's something more important."

I looked at her.

"Have you had a proper scan done? A hospital ultrasound?"

I shook my head. The only test I did were the two pink lines on the test and the first hospital visit.

"Oh silly, you have to know the gender of yoir babies," Selene said. "Before you go back to him with anything you need to know exactly what you are dealing with. Come on. I'll take you tomorrow morning."

***

I ended up spending the night at her place and the first thing we did the next morning was to visit the hospital. The hospital was cold, smelling of antiseptic when we walked in and by the time I settled down, the paper on the examination table crinkled every time I moved but I kept moving because I could not make myself stay still.

Selene sat in the plastic chair beside the bed scrolling her phone quietly and I felt relieved. Shortly after, the sonographer came in and started without much conversation, which I was grateful for. She applied the gel and pressed the probe to my stomach then turned to face the monitor.

I stared at the ceiling. I breathing in, and out. Then she laughed softly just once under her breath.

My head came off the pillow. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing at all is wrong." She smiled as she turned the monitor toward me so I could see the screen properly. "Miss Quinn, do you see these three shapes here?"

I looked.

Yes. There were three separate shapes on that screen.

"Congratulations," she said warmly. "You are expecting triplets."

The room moved. I grabbed the edge of the examination bed with both hands and held it tightly.

"Three?" I asked. The word came out like I was hearing it in a foreign language.

"Yes. Three healthy boys, from what I can see at this stage of the pregnancy."

I turned to look at Selene.

She was completely still. Her phone was in her lap, face down. Her expression unreadable for just a second, one single second I almost missed, before she rearranged her face into a smile and leaned forward in the chair.

"That's incredible," she said gladly.

But her voice was flat. Slightly too flat and slightly too careful. Like someone repeating words back that they felt nothing about.

I was too overwhelmed to think about that. Three boys. I had three babies growing in my body right now. All of them are for Damien Ashford.

I lay back on the paper and stared at the ceiling again trying to remember how to breathe.

---

Outside the hospital, Selene pulled me into a hug before I could say anything.

"Go home and rest," she said into my hair. "Don't think about the next step tonight. You've had enough for one day."

I pulled back to look at her. "But Damien… the letter… I still need him to know."

"I'll handle Damien," she said.

"Really?"

"Yes." She was fully herself again, steady and certain and calm. "I'll make sure he gets your message. My contact inside the tower owes me a favour. Just give me a little time and trust me."

I nodded, believing her. Of course I believed her.

That night I went home and typed out a message to every public contact address I could find for Ashford Consolidated. I told him that I was carrying his children. Triplets to be precise.

I sent it, then I sent another one to a different address and one more hoping to get a response from one of them.

I closed the laptop and went to bed feeling like something might actually move forward for the first time in six weeks.

I did not know that every message I sent passed through Selene first. I did not know that she read all of them.

But what I did not know, was that Damien Ashford never saw a single word.