TOO LATE MR.BILLIONAIRE

THE TRUTH

"Is it mine?"

The question hung in the air of the coffee shop like smoke, and every head in the place turned to look.

Sophia felt her face go hot, then cold, then hot again. Her hand was still frozen on the door handle. She thought about walking out anyway. Just leaving him standing there with his phone in his hand and his mother's spies already knowing more about her body than he did.

But that was a coward's move, and Sophia Bennett had spent five years learning she wasn't one.

"Not here," she said.

Ethan crossed the café in four strides, tossed cash on the counter without looking at the total, and steered her out onto the sidewalk with a hand hovering near her elbow, not quite touching, like he wasn't sure he had the right anymore.

He didn't.

They ended up in his car two blocks down, parked in a loading zone, engine off. The silence pressed in thick enough to touch.

"Talk to me," Ethan said.

"Your mother had me followed."

"I'll deal with that. Later. Right now I need you to answer the question."

Sophia turned to look at him fully for the first time since the café. Up close, in daylight, she could see it, the exact moment hope and terror collided behind his eyes.

"Yes," she said. "It's yours."

He didn't move. Didn't breathe, it seemed like, for three full seconds.

"How far along?"

"Ten weeks."

"Ten weeks." He said it like he was doing math in his head, counting backward, landing on a night neither of them had talked about since it happened. His grip on the steering wheel tightened until his knuckles went white. "That's before the engagement was announced."

"I know when it happened, Ethan."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"When?" Her voice cracked sharp, all the fear finally finding an exit. "Last night, in front of Isabella and your mother and three hundred cameras? Or this morning, while you were sliding a check across the table to buy me off?"

"That's not fair."

"None of this is fair." She pressed both hands flat against her stomach, an instinct she hadn't even realized she'd developed until this exact moment. "I found out three days ago. I was still figuring out how to tell you when you stood on that stage and promised your life to someone else."

Ethan closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, something had shifted, some wall coming down that Sophia hadn't seen move in seven years.

"I'm calling off the engagement."

"Ethan..."

"I mean it. Isabella, the merger, all of it. None of that matters if you're carrying my child."

"You can't just call off a merger your entire family is counting on because of me."

"Watch me."

"Your mother will destroy you."

"Let her try."

Sophia almost believed him. That was the terrifying part, the way his voice had gone hard and certain in a way she hadn't heard since before his father died, before Richard Kingsley started tightening his grip on every decision Ethan made.

Her phone buzzed in her bag.

She almost ignored it. Then she saw the caller ID and her stomach dropped for an entirely different reason.

"It's my landlord," she said, frowning. "That's strange, he never calls."

She answered. Listened. Ethan watched her face change in real time, confusion sliding into something colder.

"What do you mean the lease is terminated," Sophia said into the phone. "I paid through the end of the year."

A pause. More talking on the other end, tinny and indistinct.

"That's not—no, I have a signed contract. You can't just—" She stopped. Her jaw tightened. "I understand. Thank you."

She hung up.

"Sophia."

"I have thirty days to vacate." Her voice came out flat, stripped of everything but shock. "He said the building was sold. New owner wants tenants out."

"That's not a coincidence."

"No," Sophia said slowly, and something cold settled in her chest as the pieces started sliding into place. "It isn't."

She thought about the investigator following her for two weeks. She thought about Victoria's face last night, cold and satisfied, the way she'd looked at Sophia like she was something to be handled, managed, removed.

"Your mother didn't just have me followed," Sophia said. "She's already trying to erase me."

Ethan's hands curled into fists on the steering wheel.

"She wouldn't."

"Wouldn't she?"

He didn't answer, and that silence told Sophia everything she needed to know about exactly how far Victoria Kingsley was willing to go to keep her son on that stage, ring in hand, family legacy intact.

Sophia's phone buzzed again.

Unknown number this time. She stared at it, heart hammering, before finally sliding her thumb across the screen.

"Hello?"

"Miss Bennett." A woman's voice, clipped and businesslike, one Sophia had heard exactly once before, at a charity dinner two years ago. "This is Victoria Kingsley's office calling. Mrs. Kingsley would like to meet with you. Today. Alone."

Sophia's eyes lifted to Ethan's face.

"She says it's about your future," the assistant continued. "And your daughter's."

Sophia went very still.

"I never told anyone the baby's gender," she said quietly.

The line went silent for one long, damning second.

"We'll see you at four o'clock," the assistant said, and hung up before Sophia could say another word.