The Billionaire’s Accidental Baby

Chapter 5:The Confrontation

POV: Isla

He jumped between us, using his larger frame to shove us apart. He caught my wrists, holding them tightly until I couldn't move, pinning my arms down. Simone stumbled backward against the refrigerator, her breathing heavy, her polished hair completely messed up.

"Let go of me!" I choked out, fighting against his grip.

Dylan didn't look at me. He kept his back to me, blocking my view of her, his eyes fixed entirely on his mistress.

"Simone, please go," Dylan begged, his voice frantic as he checked the hallway behind him. "Just get out. We will talk later."

"Dylan, she hit me—and what she said, you lied to me" Simone started, her voice rising in an angry, panicked whine.

"I said go!" Dylan yelled, his boy-next-door charm completely gone. "Get out!"

Simone looked at me one last time, her eyes a mix of pure hatred and deep, unsettling humiliation. She gathered her keys from the counter, smoothed down her ruined coat, and marched out of the kitchen. A second later, the front door slammed shut so hard the frame rattled.

The apartment went completely quiet, except for the sound of my ragged breathing. Dylan slowly let go of my wrists and turned around to face me.

The silence stretched between us, thick and suffocating. The absolute disgust I felt looking at him made me want to scrub my skin raw.

"The consent forms," I said, my voice shaking with a dangerous, quiet rage. "I need you to explain them to me."

He started with confusion, though his eyes were still darting around the room wildly. He let out a small, breathless laugh and reached his hands out. "The consent forms? Babe, what are you talking about? What forms? You're bringing up paperwork right now? After what just happened? We need to talk about us, Isla. We need to talk about how you just attacked our friend."

"Our friend?" I spat, the word tasting like poison. "Don't you dare call that viper my friend. And don't you dare play dumb with me. The forms in your gunmetal cabinet, Dylan! The ones with my forged signatures! I know everything."

He moved, taking a step closer, his voice dropping into that smooth, comforting tone, though it trembled under the weight of his exposure. "Oh, those? Isla, listen to me. There was just a small clerical thing with the clinic. You were so overwhelmed with the injections and the appointments, remember? You were crying every day, totally stressed out. I handled some of the paperwork for us to make it easier on you. I might have signed for you on a couple of basic sheets, but it is really not a big deal. I did it for us. I did it to save our dream."

"To save your dream?" I gasped, my voice cracking, a harsh, disbelieving laugh escaping me. "You forged my name on the final IVF consent forms! You secretly switched the samples to a stranger's sperm because your own body is defective, and you didn't even have the decency, the basic human respect, to tell me! You stole my choice! You violated my body! Who did I marry? Who the hell are you?"

He pivoted to something softer, his eyes looking wide and deeply concerned. "Babe, you are so stressed right now. This whole process is a lot on your body. You are just reading into things, exaggerating a paperwork mistake into some massive conspiracy. Think about the pregnancy hormones, and the emotional weight of the first trimester. You know how your anxiety can make small things look like mountains. You've always had a tendency to panic when things get overwhelming."

"Don't you dare blame my hormones!" I roared, slamming my purse down onto the counter. The sound cracked like a gunshot. "Don't you dare try to gaslight me ever again! You are a monster, Dylan. A sick, pathetic, fragile little man."

Dylan’s face hardened, the faux-concern vanishing, replaced by a cold, defensive glare. "I did what I had to do, Isla! Do you think it was easy for me? Hearing a doctor tell me I couldn't have kids? You were already obsessed. If I told you the truth, you would have looked at me like I was broken. You would have left me!"

"I would have supported you!" I screamed back, the pain ripping through my chest. "We were partners! We were supposed to be a team! I would have held your hand, we would have cried together, and we would have chosen a donor together. But you didn't want a partner. You wanted a scapegoat. You let me believe I was the problem! You sat there and watched me apologize to you for my 'failing' body while you knew the whole time it was you!"

"And what was I supposed to do?" Dylan snapped, stepping closer, his chest heaving. "Watch you look at me with pity? Watch you resent me? I gave you what you wanted! You wanted a baby, and now you're pregnant! Why does it matter whose name is on a stupid piece of paper?"

"Because it's forgery! It's fraud! It is a criminal offense, you i***t!" I yelled, stepping right into his space, forcing him to look at the unadulterated hatred in my eyes. "A legal specialist already looked at the photos of those forms. They know it's a forgery. A handwriting analyst would destroy you in court. You didn't just lie to me, Dylan, you committed a crime against me. You are a disgusting, fraudulent coward."

"A coward?" Dylan sneered, his voice dropping into a vicious, ugly register. "I'm the one who kept this family afloat while you lost your mind over temperature charts and ovulation sticks! You became a ghost, Isla. You weren't a wife anymore. You were just a ticking biological clock. Simone actually saw me. She appreciated me. She didn't spend every second of the day making me feel like a failure."

"Oh, so you f****d my best friend as therapy?" I mocked, my voice dripping with pure, unbridled sarcasm. "How heroic of you, Dylan. You lay in bed with her in expensive hotels while I was stuck here crying, taking painful hormone injections, and ruining my own health for a family! I saw the videos on your phone. I saw the dates. You left me alone on weekends when I was bleeding, when I thought I was losing our embryos, so you could film nude videos of my best friend in five-star suites!"

"You had no right to go through my phone!" he shouted, his face turning an angry, mottled purple.

"I had every right! You brought your filth into my kitchen, into my house! Who did I marry, Dylan? Look at me and tell me who the hell you are! Because the man standing in front of me is a stranger. You are a hollow, deceitful shell of a person. You spent years engineering my misery just so you wouldn't have to face your own medical reality."

"Isla, calm down!" Dylan snapped, his gentle act completely breaking now. He stepped forward and tried to grab my shoulders, his fingers twitching with a mix of panic and rage. "You're getting hysterical over a stupid mistake! We can fix this! We can get past the Simone thing, it was just a distraction. We have a baby coming. We can still be a family!"

"Don't touch me!" I screamed, shoving his hands away with all my strength.

I looked at him, and the last piece of my heart went completely cold. I thought about three years of being told I misread things, three years of being told my anxiety was making me paranoid. I thought about how often I had been the one to apologize, how often I had excused his coldness and distance just to avoid the pain of conflict.

"There is no family," I said. "There is only you, your lies, and the absolute ruin you've made of your life. You are a criminal, Dylan. And I am going to strip you of absolutely everything."

I didn't say another word to him. I turned around and marched upstairs.

I pulled a travel bag from the top shelf of the closet. My hands were shaking with pure adrenaline as I packed. I grabbed three days of clothes, my toiletries, my laptop, and my charger. I went straight to our fireproof box, ripped it open, and took my personal documents. I grabbed my prenatal vitamins and shoved them into the bag.

Dylan appeared in the doorway, his face tight, angry, and pale.

"You're being irrational," he said. "You're scaring me, Isla. Put the bag down and let's talk about this like adults. You can't just walk out in the middle of a fight. We need to figure out what we're telling people."

I pulled the zipper across the bag, the sharp, metallic sound filling the bedroom like a final sentence.

"I'm not being irrational," I said, glaring straight through him, my eyes completely detached from any warmth we had ever shared. "I am finally seeing things clearly."

I picked up the heavy bag and walked right past him, slamming my shoulder into his as I went.

I practically ran down the stairs. I think I heard him shout something else from the top of the steps—some pathetic plea or a final, desperate insult—but I didn't care. I opened the front door, stepped out into the pouring rain, and slammed it firmly behind me.

A wall of freezing, pouring rain hit my face.

I froze on the porch, the water soaking through my clothes in seconds. I looked down at the dark, wet street. I didn't have a car. I had always taken cabs or walked because he had insisted, month after month, that we had to save every single penny for the IVF treatments, for the specialists, for the medications.

A fresh, blinding wave of rage burned through my chest, hotter than the freezing rain. I spun around on my heel and marched right back into the house. Dylan was standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking surprised, a smug little look beginning to form on his face as if he thought I had already given up.

"You couldn't even afford to get me a decent car," I spat, my voice shaking with pure, unadulterated hatred. "You told me we had to sacrifice. You told me we had to live on a strict budget because the clinic was draining us. But you could afford to cheat on me. You could afford to take my best friend to expensive luxury hotels every other weekend! You had plenty of money for your affairs, didn't you?"