THE SUSPICION
623 Words
Fiona’s POV**
Two days after the lunch incident, Fiona found herself staring blankly at her calendar while brushing her teeth. Foam gathered on her lips as her eyes traced the dates again and again, her heartbeat starting to tick faster with every second.
No…
No, that couldn’t be right.
Her period always came like clockwork — irritating, punctual, and impossible to ignore.
But the highlighted date was…
**Six days past.**
She froze in the middle of her bathroom, toothbrush still in her mouth.
Six.
That was not “stress.”
That was not “traffic.”
That was not “I’m tired.”
Her brain tried to assemble excuses like shaky dominoes.
Maybe work threw her off.
Maybe she calculated wrong.
Maybe Zara was distracting her.
Maybe—
Her stomach dropped.
A cold, sinking weight.
Her one-night mistake —
the heat,
the breathless desire,
the way he held her like he owned every part of her —
flashed in jagged fragments.
Alistair.
Her stepbrother.
The man whose name was carved into the underworld like a warning.
Fiona ripped the toothbrush from her mouth and leaned on the sink, breath trembling.
“This can’t be happening,” she whispered.
It couldn’t.
Because she had moved on.
Because she had locked that night away like it never happened.
Because he was not supposed to follow her into her normal life.
Her eyes drifted back to the calendar.
Six days late.
Her pulse thundered in her ears
Zara noticed immediately.
“You look pale. Like… ghost-who-saw-its-own-death pale. What’s wrong?”
Fiona forced a laugh.
“Just tired.”
Zara’s eyes narrowed.
“You’re a terrible liar.”
Fiona didn’t answer. She stared at spreadsheets without seeing a single number. Her stomach fluttered uneasily — not nausea, just nerves stretching thin like tearing thread.
By lunch, Zara had complained about her being “weird and suspicious” three times.
By closing time, Fiona could barely hear anything over her heartbeat.
On the way home, the streetlights buzzed overhead as she walked into a small pharmacy. It was nearly empty — just a cashier scrolling through his phone.
Fiona swallowed hard and picked up a pregnancy test, hiding it beneath a box of paracetamol like a criminal.
The cashier scanned the items without looking at her.
But Fiona felt exposed, like every security camera and passing pedestrian could see the truth rising under her skin.
She clutched the tiny paper bag to her chest the entire way home.
In her bedroom, she held the test in her shaking hands.
She read the instructions twice.
Three times.
Her vision blurred.
“Please,” she whispered to herself, “please just be stress.”
She took the test.
Laid it on the counter.
And waited.
Thirty seconds felt like thirty years.
Her breath came shallow.
Her fingers gripped the sink so hard they hurt.
Five minutes.
She turned it over.
Two bold lines.
Positive.
The room swayed.
Her throat closed.
A sound escaped her — half gasp, half sob.
“No… no, no, no…”
Her knees buckled, and she sat on the floor, the cold tiles pressing against her skin.
She was pregnant.
Pregnant with the child of the man she should have stayed far away from.
The man she had forbidden herself to think about.
The man whose world could crush her like glass.
Alistair.
Her soon to be stepbrother.
The mafia lord.
Her hands cradled her stomach, trembling.
“What… what am I going to do?”
She didn’t know.
But somewhere across the city, the man responsible for this tremor in her life paused mid-conversation, a strange emptiness sliding through him — a sense that something monumental had shifted.
And soon, their worlds would collide again
- Writer
