Married To The Devil Who Bought My Revenge

010: The Pregnancy Test

~Ava's POV~

Two pink lines. No hesitation. No, maybe.

I sat on the cold bathroom floor, back against the tub, staring at the test like it'd change if I waited.

It didn't.

I'd bought it that morning, two blocks from Adams Tower, cash only, hood up. I didn't even fully admit to myself why I was buying it until I was already at the counter handing over the money. I'd been nauseous for three days. I told myself it was stressful. The new routine, the new life, the complete collapse of everything I'd known. That was enough reason for anyone's body to revolt.

But somewhere back of my mind, I already knew.

I just don't want to believe it yet.

*****

The bathroom was quiet, like the whole penthouse was. The kind of quiet that money buys. I sat on the tile floor, holding the test, thinking about that night at the club.

The whiskey. The ruined wedding dress. Dominic's voice saying “let me help you forget, just for tonight.”

I'd kissed him first. I remembered that much clearly. Everything else was softer around the edges, but that part I remembered. I made a choice that night. A messy, broken, not entirely rational choice, but mine. I wasn't going to pretend otherwise.

I just hadn't thought this far when I made it.

I looked at the two pink lines again.

"Okay," I said out loud, to nobody. Just to hear something in the silence.

Then I wrapped the test in tissue paper, buried it at the bottom of the bathroom bin, and washed my hands twice.

*****

I needed to attend meeting with Priya Mehta at two o'clock. Market positioning, supplier risk assessment, a follow-up on some numbers she wanted my read on. I showed up on time, sat across from her in the small conference room off the main floor, and walked through every single item on her list without my voice shaking once.

"You caught the variance in the Renmark margin report," Priya said, tapping her pen against her notepad. "Dominic said you flagged it yourself."

"It stood out," I said simply.

"Most people miss it." She looked at me. Not unfriendly exactly. Just measuring. "You have good instincts."

"Thank you."

She nodded once and moved on to the next item.

Throughout the meeting, a voice in my head kept saying you're pregnant, you're pregnant. I ignored it and pushed on. Made it through the hour, even cracked a joke that almost made Priya smile.

I was fine. I was completely, totally, one hundred percent not fine. But nobody in that room could tell, and that had to count for something.

*****

Dinner was harder.

It was just the two of us, like most evenings. Dominic had ordered in, and we sat opposite each other at the kitchen island with food between us and the city doing its usual thing outside the windows.

He talked about a board meeting he had in the morning. I responded at the right moments. I ate about half of what was on my plate before my stomach started warning me it wasn't interesting, and I quietly pushed the rest around so it looked like more than it was.

I was doing well. I thought I was doing well.

"Are you alright?"

I looked up. Dominic was watching me with that calm, focused look he had when he was paying closer attention than he let on.

"Yes," I said. "Just…tired."

He looked at me a bit longer than normal. Not like he suspected anything, more like he was storing info for later. Then he nodded and looked back down at his food.

He didn't push. He never pushed.

Tonight, for the first time, I wasn't sure if I was grateful for him not pushing or not.

*****

I lay in bed for a long time after dinner, staring up at the ceiling with both hands flat on my stomach. Not dramatic. Just thinking.

The contract was eighteen months. Business only. He had said it himself, first day, clear as anything. No love. No expectations. Just clean business. I had agreed to that. I had signed my name to that.

A baby was not in any clause either of us wrote. I had read every line of that contract twice and there was nothing, not a single word, that covered this.

I didn't know what this did to the arrangement. I didn't know if it blew the whole thing open or if there was a way to hold it together while I figured out what came next. I didn't know how Dominic would react, whether he'd be cold about it or practical about it or something else entirely. I didn't know which of those options scared me more.

What I did know was that I wasn't telling him tonight. Maybe not tomorrow either. I needed to understand what I was carrying before I handed it to someone else to weigh in on.

I also knew, quietly, sitting under all the fear and the noise, that I wanted this baby. I didn't expect to know that so quickly. But I did.

That was the only thing that felt clear.

I grabbed the notepad from the nightstand, flipped past work stuff and notes about Renmark, and found a blank page.

I pressed the pen to the paper.

Three words. That was all.

What comes next?