His Forbidden surrogate

THE NAME SHE BURIED

Wren didn't sleep that night. Her mind kept replaying every word Marcus and Camille had said until the sentences blurred into one long, circling threat.

She sat cross-legged on her bed with her old laptop, the cracked screen casting a dim glow across the dark room. She searched for a name she hadn't typed in nine years, watching old headlines load one by one like reopening a wound that had never fully closed.

CALLOWAY INDUSTRIES COLLAPSES AMID FRAUD ALLEGATIONS.

DANIEL CALLOWAY FOUND DEAD IN APPARENT SUICIDE.

STERLING INDUSTRIES ACQUIRES CALLOWAY ASSETS FOR PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR.

Wren's hands trembled over the keyboard.

She had been sixteen when it happened, watching her father's name dragged through headlines, watching him disappear a little more every day until there was nothing left of him to save. She remembered the reporters camped outside their old house. The whispers at school. The way her mother stopped answering the phone in those final weeks, and the silence in the house afterwards that never quite went away.

She and Milo changed their names within the year, disappearing into foster care and survival. She had sworn on her father's grave that she'd never let a Sterling touch her life again.

And now she was carrying one of their children—a truth that felt more surreal every time she let herself think about it directly instead of skating past it.

She closed the laptop, her hands still shaking, and forced herself to breathe. She sat alone in the dark until her heartbeat finally slowed to something manageable.

The next morning, she found Marcus Sterling in the manor's east garden, sipping coffee with an ease that felt performed rather than natural. A folded newspaper sat untouched on the table beside him, like a prop he hadn't bothered using.

She'd seen him twice before, always briefly, always with an unreadable smile that made her skin prickle.

"Ms Sutton."

Marcus's smile widened as she approached, unhurried, like he'd been expecting her all along.

"Or should I say, Ms Calloway?"

Wren froze mid-step, her feet suddenly unwilling to move.

"I have excellent researchers," Marcus said smoothly, setting down his cup with a slow, deliberate motion, like he had all the time in the world and wanted her to know it. "It's a fascinating coincidence, don't you think? The daughter of the man my uncle destroyed, carrying my cousin's heir."

"What do you want?" Wren asked, her voice steadier than she felt, refusing to let him see how badly her pulse was racing.

"Want?" Marcus's smile turned sharp. "Nothing yet. I'm simply... curious how this plays out. Does Gideon know who you really are?"

Wren's silence answered for her.

"Interesting," Marcus said softly, standing and brushing invisible dust from his jacket. "I'd be careful, Ms Calloway. Secrets have a way of finding daylight at the worst possible moment."

He walked away before she could respond, leaving her standing frozen in the garden, the back of her neck prickling with cold sweat.

That evening, Gideon found her in the east wing study, staring blankly at a bookshelf she wasn't actually reading.

"You've been avoiding me since Camille left," he said, leaning against the doorframe.

"I've been thinking," Wren said carefully.

"About the Calloway name."

Wren's head snapped up.

"You know."

Gideon's jaw tightened. He didn't look away or soften it. He simply let her see exactly what it cost him to say it.

"Marcus mentioned it an hour ago, though I think he enjoyed watching me react more than actually informing me."

The air went out of her lungs.

"So you know who I am."

"I know your father was Daniel Calloway," Gideon said quietly. "I know my father's company played a role in what happened to his. What I don't know is everything else—why you signed a contract with my name on it, knowing what my family did to yours, knowing every day you spent under my roof what secret you were carrying alongside my child."

"Because my brother's life was worth more than my pride," Wren said, her voice cracking. "Because I needed the money, and I told myself it didn't matter whose money it was."

Gideon was quiet for a long moment, studying her like he was seeing her clearly for the first time.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Would you have signed the contract if I had?"

He didn't answer right away, and that silence told her everything she needed to know.

"I need to think," Gideon said finally, turning toward the door. "This changes things."

"Gideon—"

"Not tonight, Wren."

His voice was quieter than she'd ever heard it, almost wounded.

"I need to think."

He left her alone in the study, the weight of her exposed secret pressing down on her chest like something physical, impossible to set down.

She didn't know what frightened her more—that he now knew the truth, or how much she suddenly cared what he thought of her because of it.

Two days later, while searching for nothing in particular in the manor's private study, Wren found an old file left open on Gideon's desk, his handwriting scrawled across a sticky note clipped to the front.

Confirm identity before disclosure deadline.

And beneath it, printed on aged letterhead, a name that made the floor feel like it had dropped six inches beneath her.

Wren Calloway. Daughter of Daniel Calloway. Confirmed match, age 25.

He had known.

Not suspected—confirmed.

It was filed away like evidence he'd been sitting on while she lay beside him in hospital waiting rooms, trusting him a little more with every passing day.

The question wasn't just how long.

It was what else he was hiding, filed away in that same drawer, waiting for her to find.