His Forbidden surrogate

THE SECRET CLAUSE

Wren's hands shook as she stared at the confirmation page. Gideon's handwriting stared back at her like an accusation, each careful letter a small betrayal she hadn't seen coming, sitting there in black ink like it had been waiting patiently for her to find it, no matter how carefully she'd trusted him.

Confirm identity before disclosure deadline.

He had known.

Maybe not from the very beginning, but long enough to write it down, file it away, and say nothing while she lay awake every night wondering if her secret was still safe, wondering if the warmth growing between them was even real.

She heard his footsteps in the hallway and shoved the file back exactly where she'd found it, her pulse loud in her own ears, just as Gideon stepped into the study.

"You found it," he said quietly, seeing her expression.

"How long have you known?" Wren's voice cracked. "Really known, not suspected? Because there's a difference, Gideon, and I need to know which one I've been living with."

"Four days," Gideon admitted. "I ran the confirmation the night after Marcus said your name in the garden. I should have told you immediately. I was trying to figure out how."

"By hiding a file in your desk?"

"By trying to protect you," Gideon said, frustration bleeding into his voice. "If the board learns you're Daniel Callaway's daughter before the disclosure date, they'll use it to challenge the entire arrangement. They'll paint you as some kind of con artist instead of a woman trying to save her brother's life."

Wren wanted to believe him. Some desperate part of her did—the same part of her that remembered his hand hovering near hers at the embryo transfer, the way he'd sat with her for six hours in a hospital waiting room without complaint.

But nine years of learning not to trust a Sterling made it hard to simply accept his word now, when the stakes were this high.

"There's something else," she said slowly, remembering something she'd glimpsed in the file—a clause number, circled twice in red ink.

"Section Fourteen. What is that?"

Gideon's face went pale in a way she'd never seen before.

"Wren—"

"What is it, Gideon?"

He exhaled slowly, like a man about to lose something he wasn't ready to let go of, sinking into the chair across from her instead of standing over her the way he usually did.

"It's an older clause, written into the original surrogacy template before I took over legal personally. It grants the Sterling family full custody rights at birth if the surrogate's background is later found to conflict with the family's interests."

Wren's stomach dropped straight through the floor.

"You mean if the surrogate turns out to be a Calloway."

"I never intended to enforce it," Gideon said quickly. "I didn't even remember it existed until I saw your name matched."

"But it's real." Wren's voice shook. "You signed a contract that lets you take my baby the moment my last name becomes inconvenient, and you sat on that information for four days while I painted in your east wing and let myself believe you actually cared about me."

"I was trying to find a way to remove it before you ever had to know it existed—"

"That's not your choice to make!"

Wren shoved back from the desk, her chair scraping against the hardwood. She put distance between them before she said something she couldn't take back.

"This is my child too. You don't get to decide what I know or don't know about losing it."

Before Gideon could respond, Wren's phone buzzed on the desk between them.

Unknown number.

She almost ignored it. Her hands were still shaking, still raw from everything they'd just said to each other, until something told her not to.

She opened the message, dread already pooling low in her stomach before she'd even read a word.

I know who you really are, Wren Calloway. And if Gideon Sterling finds out the truth before I do what I came to do, everyone will lose.

The message blurred slightly as Wren read it a second time, her hand tightening around the phone until her knuckles went white.

"What is it?" Gideon asked, catching the look on her face.

She turned the phone toward him without a word, watching the colour drain out of his face line by line as he read it.

"Who sent this?" he demanded, already on his feet.

"I don't know," Wren whispered, the words barely making it past the tightness in her throat. "But whoever it is, they already know everything. My name. My father. All of it."

Gideon's jaw tightened. He reached for his own phone, dialling security with sharp, controlled fury, barking orders about tracing the number and reviewing the manor's perimeter footage from the last forty-eight hours.

But Wren barely heard him.

She was thinking about the garden—about Marcus's slow, unhurried smile, the way he'd told her secrets had a way of finding daylight at the worst possible moment, like he already knew exactly when hers would surface.

She was thinking about Camille, standing in this very room days earlier, leaning close enough to whisper, "Ask him, sweetheart, before it's too late to matter."

Too late for what? Wren still didn't know.

But someone out there did.

And whoever they were, they weren't finished yet.