The Billionaire’s Pregnant Ex-Wife

The storm came in early that evening, it slipped over London like a bruise, and Eleanor Sinclair was looking at it from the sixty-third floor of Blackwood Tower. Purple-black clouds banked above the Thames, swallowing the last sliver of sun. Lightning forked above the Shard, a silent warning that turned the glass rooftops silver for one heartbeat and then dropped the city back into gloom. The pale oval face and careless knot of dark hair reflected in the glass, eyes too wide for the rest of her. Behind that glass was a crumbling woman, as if the wind pressing against the building could blow her away. She rested her fingertips on the cool pane and felt the faint tremor of thunder through the bones of the skyscraper. Three years ago, on a night just like this, Dominic carried her over this threshold while the rain drummed on the roof of the helicopter. He had whispered, "Welcome home, Mrs. Blackwood," and she had held it forever. The living room is bright from behind, with that coordinated luxury that will fill design magazines: Italian leather, brushed steel, a single Rothko on the far wall the color of dried blood. Everything is expensive, and nothing is warm. Even that fireplace, which Dominic insists on in winter—gas, remote-controlled, and never allowed to sputter—feels staged. Tonight the fireplace is dark, that low amber light coming from the ceiling lights and the intermittent flash of lightning that sheds everything in stark whites and blacks. On the lacquered table waited the folder. Black leather unmarked, corners sharp enough to cut. Inside are twenty-seven pages of legal parchment and a fountain pen heavy enough to bruise. This morning at six-thirty he placed them there, as another man would do flowers. He had said nothing, only loosened his graphite tie, poured three fingers of Yamazaki 18 into a crystal tumbler, and walked to the window opposite hers. He had stayed there, drinking slowly, shoulders rigid beneath the bespoke suit, eyes fixed on the piece of city he owned. Eleanor had counted every second in the frantic metronome of her pulse. Now the silence stretched so thin she could hear it scratching at the glass with the rain like fingernails. She wrapped both hands around her mug-white porcelain, chipped on the rim from where it had fallen when the pregnancy test stick showed its second line in the morning-and lifted it to her lips. The chamomile inside had turned cold fifteen minutes ago, but she just kept lifting it to her lips as a habit. Somewhere in the building, a clock chimed eight. Almost immediately swallowed by thunder, yet it stirred Dominic. He turned, and for the first time since entering the room, he looked directly at her. It felt like hitting something physically. Those storm-cloud gray eyes, ringed by unfairly thick lashes for a man, had once stripped her bare in candlelit hotel rooms, but tonight they were inscrutable. "Sign the papers, Eleanor." His voice was low; hoarse with whiskey and something harsher. Perhaps regret, perhaps fatigue, impossible to discern with him. She puts the mug down carefully out of fear that the clatter would reveal the tremor of her hands. "I'd thought we might talk first." "We've talked." He lifted the tumbler, drained what remained, and placed it beside the folder with the same precision he used to close million-pound deals. "There is nothing left to say." A bitter smile stole across her mouth. He was, indeed, right; months ago, words had abandoned them. However, "I could move into the guest wing. We could try counseling. Anything but-". "Eleanor." Only her name, but it cracked across the room like a whip. "Do not make this harder than it already is." Silent as a shadow, she walked across the heated marble floor to the table. Under her fingertips, the folder was cold. It read at the top: PETITION FOR DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE Blackwood, Dominic Alexander v. Blackwood, Eleanor Jane She had to read it twice, as the letters kept blurring. Below, Dominic's signature had already marred the line meant for the respondent in neat black ink. Bold slashes, no hesitation at all. And somewhere in her heart, she wondered if he had practiced it. Another flash of lightning lit the room, and in an instant of white light, she saw the faint mark on his left hand—the beginning of a band that used to hold his wedding ring. He had taken it off weeks ago, but the ghost of gold would remain as an indelible mark: a stain he could never wipe away. In fact, a matching band was lying in her drawer upstairs in a lavender bag she had used during their honeymoon. It had remained unworn since that night when he came back home smelling of jasmine and somebody else's perfume. She picked up the pen: Mont Blanc, resin body, platinum trim. He had given it to her on their first anniversary with a note: For all the stories you'll write. At that time, she had been working on a novel, a big sweeping historical romance that she had kept a secret from everyone but him. He had read the first chapter and told her, "You have a voice, Elle. Don't bury it under charity galas." Eight months had passed by since she had last touched the manuscript. Irony had gradually given weight to the pen in her hand. The nib hovered above the blank line. Eleanor Jane Blackwood stared back at her. When was the last time anyone had called her Eleanor Jane? Probably her mother, on graduation day at Oxford. Or her father, before the car crash that had snatched him away so soon. At twenty-eight, she was already a widow to two names: the one she was given at birth and the one that had been chosen, beneath a rose-covered arbor in Tuscany. He glanced at her. Impatience coiled in the line of his shoulders. The rain beat against the windows. She pressed the pen into the paper. Ink flowed out like liquid darkness. E-L-E-A-N… Each letter was like untying stitches from a wound. Alien appeared her signature after she had finished, too loose on the loops, the final r trailing off like a question. She laid the pen alongside, parallel, exact. A small, absurd part of her wanted to align them perfectly as if that order could turn less catastrophic. "There," she said, and the voice that came out was steady and miraculous. Dominic shut the folder without a glance at what she had written, as though her signature were a mere formality. Perhaps it was to him. "The settlement is generous," he said. "The penthouse, the flat in Edinburgh, the Aston, the investment accounts. You'll never need to work again." "I liked working," she said. "You're the one who insisted I quit the magazine." His jaw tightened. "That was never permanent." "Nothing with you ever is." The words slipped out before she could catch them. For a moment, the storm seemed to hold its breath as if waiting. Dominic's gaze flicked to her midriff, quick, involuntary. She felt the ghost of a kick that had not yet come, a secret hidden deep within her ribs like a second heart. Four days ago, she had found out in the guest bathroom, her knees trembling on the cold tile whilst staring at two pink lines. For one delirious hour, she had seen herself telling him: picturing his face softening, imagining him sinking down on his knees, ear pressed against her still-flat stomach. But then she had recalled the woman’s voice from his phone two weeks earlier—deep, laughing, possessive—and the daydream had curdled. It was with difficulty that she folded her arms against her waist under his scrutiny, as if folding now around the tiny life. "Don't worry," she said, forcing a brittle smile. "I am not pregnant." Something untouched with a transient hue crossed his face—a blend of relief or disappointment—name not formed fast enough to be anointed. He nodded once like it was business. "Good. That simplifies things." Simplifies. As if their child were a decimal point in a ledger. She clamped down on the pain in her cheek until she tasted copper. "When do you want me out?" "Tomorrow night. Clive will supervise the movers. You can take whatever you need until you get settled." Settled. A really civilized term for her fall into exile. She looked up to him: the clock standing on the mantel, an antique French one he had bought at auction for her admiration of the cherubs carved into walnut. Eight-fifteen. Less than twenty-four hours to take apart a life. She thought of color-coded rows of dresses, of first-edition books he had hunted down for her birthdays, of photographs hung in silver: two of them on the Amalfi Coast, wind in her hair and his mouth pressed to her temple. All to be boxed and stacked under the gaze of Clive's businesslike efficiency. "I'm going to pack tonight," she said. Dominic hesitated. For a heartbeat, she thought he was going to say something-an apology, a plea, anything. Instead, he picked up the folder and walked toward the elevator that connected the penthouse with the private offices he had built below. He pressed the call button. The doors sighed open, stealing into full view her small form in steel and mirrored glass. He stepped inside, hesitated. "Take the diamond if you want. It's yours legally." The engagement ring sparkled on her finger even now-a ten-carat Asscher-cut stone set in platinum that was so pure, it looked like liquid moonlight. She twisted it, feeling the drag of metal over bone. "I never wanted it for its price." His mouth twisted-not quite a smile. "Sentiment won't pay the bills, Elle." The doors started to close. She saw herself in the mirrored panel-pale, wide-eyed, drowning in silk. And she saw him: tall, dark, ruthlessly beautiful, already turning away. The last thing she heard before the elevator swallowed him was the mechanical whisper of descent, carrying him back to the kingdom he'd built without her. Silence ballooned, heavier than thunder. Eleanor stood extremely still, listening to the rain. Then walked to the windows with her forehead pressed to the glass. Far below, London glimmered wetly, indifferent; a thousand windows to a thousand lives, none of them hers anymore. Within her would have been the tiny cluster of cells, inside her no bigger than a poppy seed, already pulsing with its own fierce rhythm. "We'll make it, you and I," she whispered. The glass fogged beneath her breath. "I promise." Up the stairs, to the bedroom, she opened the safe hidden behind the shoe racks, where two things lay: the velvet pouch with her wedding band and a slim USB stick that housed the only completed chapter of her abandoned novel. She tucked both into the pocket of her robe. Then she dragged a suitcase from under the bed and began to fill it- jeans, sweaters, the battered copy of Rebecca her mother had given her at sixteen. She left the couture gowns, the diamonds, the keys to the Aston. She took nothing that smelled of him. It stormed midnight and the city washed down glistening. Eleanor stood one last time on the threshold of the living room. The folder was in a place other than here, but the tumbler remained, a crescent of amber liquid at the bottom. She lifted it, pressed the rim to her lips where his had been, and set it down empty. Down to the underground garage was the elevator. She slid into the modest Mini Cooper she'd bought long before meeting Dominic, the one she still kept registered under her maiden name. The engine coughed, caught. As she drove up the ramp into the night, she did not look back at the tower. She did not see the figure standing at the sixty-third-floor window, hand splayed against the glass, watching until her taillights disappeared into the dark. And so Eleanor Sinclair-stepping slowly back into being Eleanor Jane-disappeared into London's winding arteries armed with little more than a suitcase, a secret, and the fierce, silent vow that Dominic Blackwood would never know the child who carried his eyes. Not yet.