The BILLIONAIRES OBSESSION

The Secret She Ran With

Eva's POV

I threw up every morning for two weeks before I let myself believe it.

I was in my parents' guest room in Paris, staring at a water stain on the ceiling, when the nausea started. I told myself it was the adjustment of a life that had completely fallen apart and been put back together in a different shape overnight. I told myself those things for fourteen days.

Then I bought a test from a pharmacy two neighborhoods away from my parents' apartment so that nobody who knew my mother would see me, and I sat on the cold tile floor and watched two lines appear and I didn't move for a long time.

I called Estel, my childhood friend in Paris.

She was at the door within the hour, coat half buttoned, out of breath, and she took one look at my face in the doorway and came inside without being invited and sat down on the edge of the bathtub.

"How far," she said.

"Two months. Maybe a little more."

"Ken's."

"No." I pressed my back against the wall and looked at the test still in my hand. "Ken and I hadn't been together in months. He was with Sarah long before I caught them."

Estel stared at me. "Then whose?”

"The night of the crash," I said. "The man who pulled me out of the car. He got me looked after and I was broken and alone and I spent the night with him and I left before he woke up."

"Eva."

"I know."

"Who is he?"

I set the test on the edge of the sink.

"His name is Lugard. He's wealthy, Estel. Not comfortable, not successful. Wealthy in the way that means he has people around him at all times and a private doctor on call and a lawyer who picks up on the first ring. He told me I belonged to him the same night we met and he meant it completely. That's just how he sees the world. What he wants, he has."

Estel was very still. "Does he know you left?"

"Yes. I left while he was sleeping. I changed my phone number when I landed."

"And he hasn't contacted you."

"He can't reach me. But that won't hold forever." I looked at her. "A man like Lugard doesn't decide that someone walked out and just accept it. He has resources I can't compete with and he does not like to lose things."

"Eva, if he finds out you are carrying his child—"

"He can't find out."

"You can't just—"

"He cannot find out, Estel." My voice came out harder than I intended and I didn't soften it. "You understand what happens if he does. He will come for her. Not because he loves me but because she is his and men like him do not share what they consider theirs. I will not let my daughter spend her life as someone's claim."

Estel looked at me for a long moment. Then quietly, "Her."

"I don't know yet," I said. "But yes."

We went to the clinic that afternoon and the doctor confirmed it and ran the scan and there she was on the screen. Small and certain. A tiny flickering light that was half mine and half a man I had known for one night in a penthouse above a city that already felt like another life.

I stared at that screen for a long time.

And I made my decision.

I found the cottage through a listing in a regional paper. Stone walls. An overgrown garden. A village four hours south of Paris where the internet was slow and the people minded their business and nobody had ever heard of New York financial news.

I told my parents I needed time to clear my head. My mother looked at me with the eyes that always knew more than I told her and she held me for a long time and slipped cash into my coat pocket without a word about it. My father stood in the doorway of the kitchen and said nothing, which was his way of saying everything.

I didn't give Estel the address until I was already standing in the middle of the overgrown garden with the keys in my hand and the afternoon sun on my face.

"You're really doing this," she said on the phone.

"I'm already doing it."

"Eva, you're twenty six, you're pregnant, you're four hours from anyone who loves you—"

"I know all of that."

"That's not a plan, that's hiding."

"I know that too," I said. "But it's what I have right now and it's enough."

She was quiet for a moment. Then, "Call me every week."

"Every week," I promised.

When I ended the call, my hand went to my stomach.

I was starting life all over again and this time I was starting on my own terms.

Except that the door came open and a man stood out watching me with a smile.

“Hello, Eva.”

Who the f**k was he?