The CEO Surrogate

3

The following weeks settled into a routine that felt almost normal, which Camila supposed was the point.

There were appointments. Blood draws, hormone assessments, a psychological evaluation with a gentle woman named Dra. Santos who asked questions about Camila's support network and emotional resilience with the careful patience of someone who had heard every possible answer and found them all reasonable. There were more documents, more NDAs, a dietary protocol from Dr. Pereira's clinic that banned caffeine, restricted certain foods, recommended eight hours of sleep with the optimistic conviction of someone who had never lived in a small apartment caring for a sick parent.

Her mother's treatment started with the new funding.

That was the thing that kept Camila's feet on the ground when the whole arrangement felt strange and surreal: watching Mamã sleep through a full night for the first time in months. Watching the shadows under her eyes thin, gradually, like fog burning off. Watching Clara come up from Porto for a weekend and cry quietly in the kitchen because she could finally see their mother's face without the grey tinge of unbearable pain.

This is what it's for, Camila reminded herself. This is the whole thing.

She saw Sofia twice during that period — once for a formal check-in at the clinic, once unexpectedly at a café in Príncipe Real, where Camila had stopped for coffee on her way home from the hospital.

That second time was the one that stayed with her.

Sofia had been sitting alone, which was unusual. She was always surrounded — by Rafael's assistants, by clinic staff, by the particular orbit of organised attention that accompanied people with serious money. But that afternoon she was just a woman at a small table with an untouched espresso and a look on her face that Camila recognised.

It was the look of someone doing calculations they didn't want to do.

"Camila." Sofia noticed her and the look disappeared, replaced immediately by the warm, composed mask. "What a coincidence. Please, sit — only if you have a moment."

Camila had a moment. She sat.

They talked about easy things first — the treatment schedule, how Camila was adjusting to the hormone protocol, whether she'd tried the café's croissants. Sofia was effortlessly charming in the way of people trained from birth to be effortlessly charming. She remembered details — asked after Camila's mother by name, asked whether she'd been able to return to her nursing program yet, asked these questions with the precise warmth of someone who had filed the information away and retrieved it at the right moment.

Then she said, wrapping both hands around her espresso cup, "Can I be honest with you? Woman to woman."

Camila kept her expression neutral. "Of course."

"Leonardo doesn't—" Sofia paused, choosing. "He doesn't know everything about why we're going this route. He understands the medical necessity. But some of the details." A small, practised smile. "I've managed those privately. Between myself and Dr. Pereira. You understand."

Camila did not understand.

"I'm telling you," Sofia continued, "because I want you to know that if Leonardo asks you certain questions — about the nature of the procedure, about the timeline — the answers Dr. Pereira has provided him are the complete picture as far as you're concerned. You're not to elaborate."

Something cold moved through Camila's chest.

"I'm not sure I understand what you're asking me to do," she said carefully.

Sofia's eyes held hers for a moment. Clear, steady, completely untroubled. "I'm not asking you to lie to my husband, Camila. I'm asking you to let the doctors manage the medical information. That's their job." A pause. "Your job is to carry the pregnancy. That's all."

She said it gently. She said it the way someone says that's all when they mean and don't forget it.

Camila walked home that afternoon with the feeling sitting in her stomach like a stone.

She told herself it was nothing. Couples managed medical information privately all the time. Sofia was proud — clearly, visibly proud, in the specific way of a woman who had built an image around effortlessness and didn't want the cracks showing. That was all this was.

She told herself that three more times before she believed it enough to sleep.

What she didn't know then — what she had no way to know — was that the embryo Dr. Pereira had transferred into her body two weeks later, the one he'd told Leonardo was genetically his wife's, produced from a harvesting procedure six months prior, was not Sofia's.

The embryo was from an anonymous donor.

Sofia Vasconcelos could not produce viable eggs. Had not been able to for three years. Had kept this information from her husband with the same ruthless, quiet efficiency she kept everything that threatened her position.

She needed a child with Leonardo's genetics to secure her standing in the Vasconcelos family. To satisfy the patriarch's will. To give herself a claim on the empire that her marriage alone, it turned out, was no longer sufficient to guarantee.

She'd chosen Camila carefully. Young, desperate, isolated, financially exposed. A girl with no powerful connections, no lawyer of her own, no safety net beyond the money Sofia controlled.

A girl who could, if necessary, be made to disappear.

The jacaranda outside Camila's kitchen window had no branches left now. November had finished the job October started.

Inside, her mother slept.

And in the darkness of a body that belonged to her and also, now, to a contract, something small and impossible was beginning.