The contract marriage with a billionaire

Chapter1

Sofia's POV

It couldn’t be real.

It simply couldn’t.

For years I’d been told my body would never carry a child. That my womb was a hollow promise. That “family” was a dream I would have to watch other people live. Doctors had repeated it, kindly or clinically, the same verdict every time. Barren. Impossible.

And yet here I was, staring at two unmistakable pink lines on the small plastic window trembling in my hands. My knees felt weak; the bathroom walls swam around me like a carousel. Those two little stripes glowed like a dare to everything I’d been taught to believe about myself.

Pregnant.

The word struck like a drumbeat, at once terrifying and exhilarating. My palm drifted to my stomach, a flat, ordinary plane of skin, but beneath it, something miraculous had taken root. Something alive. Something that was half me, half him.

Daniel's child.

Despite the tremor in my hands, a smile began to break through. I could already picture the scene: Daniel's eyes going wide, that crooked grin softening into something earnest and unguarded, his arms wrapping around me as he whispered about new beginnings. We had survived so much already; this felt like the universe handing us a reset button, a chance to build the future we had whispered about in the dark.

I took a steadying breath, grabbed my keys, and headed for the door. On the drive over, my mind spun with possible ways to tell him. Maybe I’d hand him the test wrapped in a ribbon. Maybe I’d say it simply, watching his eyes as the meaning landed. He’d pull me close, his voice low and husky with wonder, telling me he would take care of us both. All of it seemed so vivid, as if it were already happening.

By the time I reached his building, I was buzzing, nervous, yes, but buoyed by hope. My heart drummed against my ribs as I climbed the marble steps to his condo. Everything would be different now. It had to be.

I pressed the doorbell, rehearsing my trembling lines in my head, but no sound of footsteps answered. The silence on the other side of the door stretched too long.

Frowning, I tried the handle. It turned easily under my hand. Unlocked. That was unusual, but Gabriel had always been a little careless about details like that.

“Daniel?” My voice echoed down the sleek hallway as I stepped inside. “Are you…home?”

No, “he answered”.

I walked further in. “Gabriel?”

A sound rose from somewhere deeper in the condo low, feminine, a faint moan or exclamation that made my brows draw together. And then a laugh. A woman’s laugh. High-pitched, mocking, achingly familiar.

Daniella.

My pulse skittered. The air in my lungs went heavy. I followed the sound as if wading through water, each step dragging. The voices grew clearer, sharper, like cruel whispers meant for me alone.

At the threshold of the living room, I stopped. My breath caught.

Daniel was half-dressed, leaning lazily against the couch, his shirt unbuttoned. Draped over him like an expensive shawl was Daniella, her dark wavy hair spilling down her back, her manicured hands gliding over his chest, her lips grazing his neck. They looked like a portrait of decadent intimacy, laughing in their little cocoon, oblivious to me.

My mind blanked.

“Daniel …” The word ripped from my throat in a whisper I barely recognised as my own.

They both turned. For a heartbeat, shock flashed across his face, but then it curdled into something colder, something worse. Indifference.

He straightened, tugging his shirt into place as though I were nothing more than an interruption to his evening. “Oh, Sofia,” he drawled, a smirk twisting his lips. “Didn’t expect you to show up unannounced. Thought you’d have learned to knock by now.”

Daniella giggled, not even bothering to look back at me.

I swallowed hard, my voice trembling as I tried to cling to whatever scraps of composure I still had. “I…came to tell you something. Something important and”

The words stuck as Daniella finally turned, sauntering toward me like a cat toward a cornered mouse. Her eyes scanned me with open disdain, her beauty weaponised: the dark siren hair, the sculpted body, the kind of presence that made men foolish. “Oh, this should be good,” she purred. “What’s so urgent, Sofia? Misplace one of your charity projects?”

I clenched my fists at my sides, refusing to let her see me break. “Daniel … I’m pregnant.”

The silence that followed was so taut it could have snapped. The world itself seemed to pause.

Daniel didn’t look stunned. He didn’t even look interested. His smirk only widened, turning brittle at the edges.

“Pregnant?” he repeated, laughing low and bitter. “And what exactly am I supposed to do with that information?”

I stared, my mind struggling to reconcile the man in front of me with the one who had held me, promised me forever. “What…what are you talking about?”

He scoffed, glancing at Daniella, who was now smiling like a queen who had won a war. “Sofia, you honestly thought I wanted anything serious with you? You’re a placeholder. Someone to pass the time with until I found someone better. And I did.”

My throat tightened. “I gave you everything Daniel. My trust, my body, my future. You told me you loved me. I thought”

Daniella cut in with a laugh like broken glass. “Sweetheart, he never loved you. How could he? You’re nothing. A charity case pretending to belong in our world.”

Daniel shrugged, his eyes hard as stone. “I never asked for this. If you want to play house, find someone else. I have zero interest in unwanted baggage. You’d better end the pregnancy. If I’d known you were this fertile, I wouldn’t have gone near you.”

Daniella pouted theatrically. “Aww, baby, you’re making me jealous.”

He turned back to her with a playful grin, blowing her a kiss.

Disgust surged through me, hot and choking. Tears threatened but I forced the words out. “You were everything to me. I thought you’d be happy. It’s your child, Daniel.”

He arched a brow, barely feigning concern. “Couldn’t care less. And I won’t have anything tying me to someone like you.” He lifted his voice. “Guards!”

The shout echoed through the hall. A cold shiver shot down my spine.

Two large men appeared almost instantly, looking from him to me.

“Take her out of here,” Daniel ordered, his tone flat, commanding. “And make sure she doesn’t come back.”

“No…you can’t do this.” My voice cracked. I took a step toward him, desperate to find some fragment of the man I had loved. “Daniel, please”

“Save your begging, Sofia,” he interrupted, flicking his hand at me as though brushing off lint. “You’re nothing to me. Get her out of my sight.”

The guards closed in. Panic clawed up my throat as they seized my arms. “Daniel! You can’t just throw me out like this. I’m carrying your child!”

He only watched, cold and detached. “If you come back,” he called as they dragged me toward the door, “you’ll regret it.”

Those were the last words I heard before the world tilted. The guards shoved me onto the marble steps outside his door. Pain exploded in my abdomen, sharp and blinding, radiating outward like fire.

I gasped, clutching my stomach as dread flooded me. Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

“Help…” I whispered, but the hallway blurred. The ground rose up. Darkness swallowed everything.

—

The first thing I registered was the sterile sting of antiseptic. Then the thin beep of a monitor somewhere nearby. I blinked, and the white ceiling of a hospital room swam into focus.

A nurse hovered over me, her face soft with pity.

“Miss Sofia,” she began gently, “I’m afraid…” Her voice faltered as she searched for the right phrasing, but in the end, the words spilt out quickly, almost mercifully. “You’ve lost the baby.”

“The room tilted again, but this time it wasn’t from shock, it was from an emptiness so vast it felt like falling”.