His Billion-Dollar Regret: The Forgotten Wife Returns

Chapter 7 — The Referral

POV: Yessica | Location: New York

She sent the message at seven AM.

Not impulsively — she'd been awake since five, lying in the grey pre-dawn with the draft on her phone and her hand on her stomach and the silver box in the drawer, running the decision forward and backward until it stopped feeling like a decision and started feeling like the only logical conclusion to everything that had happened since the anniversary.

I need the referral you mentioned. Family law. When you have a moment.

She pressed send.

Put the phone face-down.

Got up.

Made breakfast for herself — just herself — and ate it standing at the kitchen window, watching the city below. Lewis's bedroom door was still closed. He'd been on calls until late; she'd heard the murmur of his voice through the wall at midnight.

Rafferty replied at seven forty-three.

Of course. Diana Osei — Osei & Partners. She's the best I know. Tell her I sent you. She'll take the call today.

Below that: I hope you're all right.

She stared at the last line for a long time.

Three words. Genuinely meant, she thought. Rafferty Montague had a reputation in the circles she'd moved through — not as someone who wanted anything from Lewis Sterling's wife, but as someone who noticed things. Who saw the shape of situations clearly and quietly and didn't pretend otherwise.

She saved Diana Osei's number.

Didn't call yet.

Lewis was in the kitchen at eight-thirty.

He'd slept. He looked more rested than he had in weeks — the Dubai trip had done that, whatever else it had done. He poured coffee and looked at her at the counter and said good morning with a question underneath it. Are we okay? Where are we?

"I have a follow-up with Dr. Patel this morning," she said.

"I'll come."

She looked at him.

"You don't have to."

"I want to." He held her gaze. Something deliberate in it. "I missed the last one. I'd like to come."

She thought about the draft message sent at seven AM. About Diana Osei's number in her phone.

"Okay," she said.

Dr. Patel's office was on the Upper East Side. Clean, quiet, the particular hush of a medical practice that charged enough to afford good soundproofing.

They sat side by side in the waiting room. Not touching. Lewis had his phone out but wasn't looking at it — it sat in his hand like a prop he'd forgotten he was holding.

"Yessica Sterling?" The nurse appeared.

They went in together.

Dr. Patel shook Lewis's hand with the neutral expression of a man who had formed no opinions about absent fathers and intended to keep it that way.

The ultrasound again.

Cold gel. The wand.

And then — the heartbeat.

Stronger. Clearly, unmistakably stronger than it had been four days ago in the emergency room. Steady and rapid and completely unaware of everything happening outside its small universe.

"That's your daughter," Dr. Patel said.

Lewis went very still.

Yessica watched his face.

She'd been watching for this — for the moment it became real for him. For some indication of how he'd receive it. Whether the word daughter would land the way it had for her, or whether it would remain abstract, a future problem to be scheduled.

Lewis looked at the screen.

At the small shape. The flutter of the heartbeat.

"She's okay," he said quietly. Not a question. Almost a confirmation. Like he was saying it to make it real.

"She's fighting," Yessica said.

His jaw tightened in a way she recognised — not anger. The controlled response of a man who felt more than he was prepared to show and was applying pressure to keep it contained.

"What do we need to do?" he said to Dr. Patel. "To keep her fighting. Tell me what we need to do."

"Continued bed rest for at least another week. Low stress. Follow-up in ten days." Dr. Patel looked between them. "The heartbeat is significantly stronger than Thursday. The subchorionic bleed has reduced. This is genuinely good news."

"But not guaranteed," Lewis said.

"Nothing in pregnancy is guaranteed. But this baby is doing better than she was four days ago." He paused. "She wants to be here."

Lewis looked at the screen for a long moment.

Then he looked at Yessica.

Something passed across his face. Quick. Complicated. The expression of a man encountering the gap between who he'd been and who the situation required him to become.

She looked back at him without expression.

In the car afterward, Lewis was quiet.

He drove without the phone in his hand — both hands on the wheel, eyes forward, the particular focus of someone thinking hard about something they hadn't thought about before.

"A daughter," he said.

"Yes."

"You've been calling her that. She."

"Since the first test." Yessica looked out the window. "I knew."

He was quiet again. Two blocks.

"I handled this badly," he said.

"Yes."

"I called her — I said it was complicated, the timing—"

"Yes."

"That was—" He stopped. "I don't have a good explanation for that."

"I know."

"Yessica." He pulled up to a red light. Looked at her. "I'm asking for a chance to do better. I know I've said that before. I know I haven't—" He paused. "I'm not asking you to believe it. I'm asking for a chance."

She looked at him.

At the man who had left for Dubai three days after the hospital. Who had called twice in eight days. Who had sat in the doctor's office this morning and gone completely still at the sound of a heartbeat.

The gap between who he'd been and who the situation required him to become.

Some men crossed that gap. Some didn't.

"I have a follow-up in ten days," she said. "Come to that one too."

His jaw tightened again. "I will."

"Don't just mean it right now," she said. "Mean it in ten days."

"I will."

She looked out the window.

Diana Osei's number was still in her phone.

She hadn't deleted it.

Three days later, Lewis came home at seven.

Dinner together. He'd had Maria cook. He asked about how Yessica was feeling — not the logistical version, but the actual version. She answered. He listened.

Four days after that, he came home at six-thirty.

Asked about the baby. She told him about the nausea that had started, the way she was constantly either famished or nauseated, the fact that she'd been craving specifically the soup from that small place on Lexington that they'd gone to on their third date.

He ordered it without asking twice.

He was trying.

She could see it. The effort was visible in a way it hadn't been before the hospital. Like the ultrasound had recalibrated something — not fixed it, not replaced three years of absence — but shifted the angle.

She kept Diana Osei's number in her phone.

She told herself she was keeping it in case she needed it.

She told herself that was different from knowing she would.

On the ninth day, the doorbell rang while Lewis was at work.

She opened it.

Catherine Sterling stood in the doorway.

No assistant. No warning call. Just Catherine, in her coat, with the expression of a woman who had decided something and arrived to deliver the consequences.

"We need to talk," Catherine said. "About the baby."

Yessica looked at her.

"Lewis isn't here," she said.

"I know." Catherine looked at her directly. "I didn't come to see Lewis."