MY REJECTED TWINS AND MY BILLIONAIRE PROTECTOR

A Life For A Life

Chapter four

Barbara

The stillness had lasted too long.

I pressed my palm hard against my stomach, waiting for the familiar push, the slow roll, the stubborn kick that had always answered me. Nothing. Only silence under my skin. My son was due any day. He should have been moving.

By the time I reached the private hospital the worry had turned sharp. The female doctor who always handled my scans met me with a face already arranged into careful sympathy. She guided the ultrasound probe across my skin and stared at the monitor longer than she ever had before.

“I’m looking for the heartbeat,” she said at last. “There is none.”

The words didn’t land at first.

“Check again.”

She glanced at me. “Ms. Wellington—”

“I said check again.”

She moved the probe slowly, covering every angle. The screen stayed quiet. No rhythm. Only the still gray shape of him.

“The diagnosis is intrauterine fetal demise,” she said. “I’m very sorry. There is no life.”

“You’re lying.”

My voice sounded strange in my own ears. Inside, something large and wordless was collapsing. This child was supposed to be the clean beginning. Mason could go back to that woman if he finds out I'd lost the baby.

The doctor continued in that same careful tone. “We need to act fast. Immediate evacuation is recommended before infection or other complications set in. The longer we wait, the higher the risk to your health.”

“Shut your mouth.”

I walked out before the doctor could speak again.

I stood outside, both hands over my stomach as if I could still protect what was no longer there.

“Why?” I whispered to the stillness under my palms. “Why would you do this to me? Is this my punishment? Because I took a married man?”

The thought burned. I shoved it away hard.

No. I did nothing wrong. He chose me. That woman was never going to be enough for him. I gave him a future. I gave him a son who would carry the Wellington name.

In the car, I sat with both hands on the wheel and told myself the same sentence until it almost sounded true. My son is not gone. Scans are wrong sometimes. Doctors make mistakes when they are tired.

I needed to hear Mason’s voice.

He answered on the first ring. “Hey, baby. How are you? How’s our son?”

The question hit like a bruise. I closed my eyes and saw him the night before on his knees beside the bed, one hand spread over the place where our boy should have been moving. He looked happier than he ever looked when he spoke about Yolanda's twins.

I shook the image away. My child is not gone.

“Barbara? Are you there? Say something.”

I cleared my throat. “Yes. I’m here. I’m coming to the office.”

“Everything okay?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

I hung up before the lie could thin out.

The Wellington Group lobby was quiet when I stepped through the glass doors. Then I saw her.

Yolanda.

Standing near the reception desk in a loose dress. Something hot and ugly rose in my chest. Jealousy. Contempt. Exhaustion. What was she doing here? How dare she bring her wreckage into my building after everything?

I stayed back, half-hidden by a column, and watched Mason come down from the elevator. The moment he saw her his expression tightened. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the side corridor. I followed at a distance, silent on the marble, and listened.

Every word reached me.

The boy—Adrian—needed surgery or he would not survive the night. Sixty thousand dollars. She was begging. Offering to sign the divorce papers, to disappear, to give Mason whatever he wanted if he would only help save their son. Mason refusing. Claiming he had nothing. Telling her to leave before I arrived. Then he walked away from her.

I remained in the shadows until the elevator doors closed behind him. Only then did I return to the car.

I started driving without deciding where. The city moved past in a blur. My son was gone. The future I had built around him had a hole in the center. And that woman still had two living children—one of them a boy, Mason’s boy, born only hours after we left her on the floor last night.

The thought arrived quietly at first.

What if…?

It horrified even me. I gripped the steering wheel harder.

What if I took him?

The idea should have disgusted me. Instead it kept unfolding, soft and dangerous. Yolanda had delivered last night. My son had stopped moving this morning. The timeline was close. A newborn boy. Mason’s blood. If I raised him, no one would ever need to know the difference. Mason would still have his son. I would still have the child who secured my place. The company would still have an heir who belonged to me.

Barbara, what are you doing? This is wrong. You already took her husband. Now you want her son?

The other voice answered, cooler, desperate. I’m saving his life. She should be grateful. As for her husband—he chose me. I’m giving Mason his own biological child. He’s lucky it's not a stranger's son.

Larger reasons pressed in behind the smaller ones. The company. Wellington Group. My father’s quiet preference for my stepbrother simply because I was born a woman. All my years of work, every deal closed, every late night, and still the old man looked past me. He had said it clearly enough: if I had a man like Mason beside me, I might stand a chance of succeeding him. A healthy son would lock that future in place. Without the child, everything could slide toward my stepbrother, who cared nothing for the business.

I will not lose.

The words settled like stone. I will not lose the company. I will not lose the man. I will not lose my son.

Grief still sat in my chest, raw and real. Jealousy burned beside it. Fury at the unfairness of it all. And underneath everything, a cold, practical desperation that refused to let me turn the car around.

By the time Mother and child General hospital into view I had already decided.

I parked, reached into the glove compartment, and pulled out a black face mask and a plain cap. I settled both into place until only my eyes showed. Then I stepped out and looked at the hospital entrance—the same one Yolanda had named when she was begging for her child’s life.

I started walking toward the doors, one hand still resting over the quiet place where my son should have been.