The Billionaire's Revenge Bride

Chapter Seven

The air in the executive suite turned to lead around me. One moment we were celebrating our legal victory, and the next, silence swallowed everything whole. I could hear my own heart hammering against my ribs like it was trying to escape.

Lucian's hand went cold on my waist. He pulled back, his eyes scanning my face as though he were looking at a complete stranger.

"Lucian?" My voice came out thin, fragile. "What do you mean? You said it was impossible."

He didn't answer me. He walked to the window, turning his back, his shoulders coiled like a predator about to snap. The man who had just dismantled a media empire looked utterly destroyed by a single sentence from a medical report.

"After the crash," he began, his voice low and jagged, "the internal injuries were extensive. The doctors in that back-alley clinic where the Hells Angels took me... they said the trauma was too much. They told me I was sterile. It was the final nail in my coffin, Lily. The reason I threw myself into revenge. I thought I had no future, so I was obsessed with the past."

Dizziness washed over me in a wave. I gripped the edge of the mahogany desk to keep myself upright. "Doctors make mistakes, Lucian. Especially back-alley ones. And what we had that night at the Knight Hotel... it was real. It was us."

He turned, and the expression on his face made my blood run cold. It wasn't just doubt. It was deep, searing agony. "Was it, Lily? Or was that night another part of the 'open marriage' Tobias forced on you? Did you go from his bed to mine?"

His words hit me harder than any slap ever could. My lawyer's mask shattered, and I felt hot tears of pure rage flood my eyes. "How dare you. You know exactly what that night was. You were the one who made me sign the contract! You were the one who claimed me!"

"And Tobias is a man who knows how to play a long game," Lucian hissed, stepping into my space, his shadow swallowing mine. "He knew I was coming for him. What better way to destroy a man like me than to let him think he's finally won a family, only to reveal it's a lie?"

"You think I'm lying?" I whispered.

"I think you might be a pawn in a game you don't even understand yet."

Before I could find the words to respond, Vivian stepped forward, her face pale but set with determination. "Lucian, stop. Look at the timeline. Six weeks. That puts the conception exactly on the night of the Hotel meeting.

Lily hadn't been with Tobias in months, he'd already moved Nora into the house by then. And he was sterile. He knew he couldn't get her pregnant."

Lucian paused, his chest heaving. I could see the logic landing, but six years of trauma had built a wall too thick for reason to simply walk through. He looked at the silver thumb drive in his hand, the footage that had proven Nora's guilt and then his gaze dropped to my stomach.

"Vivian," he said, his voice reclaiming its icy authority, "get the head of the Knight medical team. I want a prenatal paternity test. Discreet. If a word of this leaks to the press or the board, I'll burn this building down with everyone in it."

"Lucian, you can't be serious," I gasped. "A needle in the womb this early? It's risky."

"It's the only way you stay in this tower, Lily." He couldn't even look at me. His gaze dropped to the floor. "I won't raise another man's heir. Especially not his."

The next four hours blurred into sterile hallways and cold needles. Lucian had moved the equipment into a private suite within the tower, refusing to let me anywhere near a public hospital.

I lay on the exam table, staring up at the ceiling while cold gel spread across my skin. Then I turned my head toward the monitor, and for one fleeting, breathtaking second, I saw it, a tiny, flickering pulse. A life. My son.

My son.

I thought of Ava. Then I thought of the other child, the son I had been carrying for Tobias, the one I'd told him about right before the divorce, the announcement he had thrown back in my face.

Wait.

My eyes went wide. Something cold and electric shot through me. I looked at the doctor. "Wait! Stop the procedure!"

Lucian stepped out of the corner where he'd been standing like a dark statue. "What is it?"

"The son..." I whispered, my mind racing so fast I could barely keep up with it. "Tobias... he didn't believe me when I told him I was carrying his son. He thought I was lying to keep him from leaving. But Lucian..." I sat up slightly, my voice barely audible. "I was pregnant before the meeting at the hotel."

Lucian's face went white. "You told me you hadn't been with him."

"I hadn't! Not since the month before our anniversary," I said, my voice rising with panic. "But if I'm six weeks along... and the hotel meeting was four weeks ago..."

I turned back to the monitor, my hands trembling. The doctor frowned, repositioning the wand, his brows drawing together.

"Mrs. Knight," he said softly. "There are two heartbeats."

Lucian and I spoke at the exact same moment: "Two?"

"Twins," the doctor confirmed. "But they aren't the same size. One is approximately eight weeks along... and the other is barely four."

The silence that followed was the most deafening thing I had ever experienced.

Superfetation. I knew the word from a case I'd once researched a rare, almost impossibly rare medical phenomenon where a second conception occurs during an existing pregnancy.

My breath hitched. "One is Tobias's... and the other..."

I looked at Lucian. The math was undeniable. Brutal. Impossible. I was carrying the heirs of two rival empires simultaneously.

Lucian looked as though lightning had passed straight through him. His eyes were fixed on the monitor, on those two tiny, stubborn pulses of life. One was the legacy of the man he hated most in this world. The other was the miracle he had been told would never come.

"This is a disaster," he whispered but his hand reached out and touched the glass of the monitor. Tentative. Terrified.

Then the door burst open.

Vivian ran in, her phone clutched in both hands, her face white with terror. "Lucian! Lily! Turn on the news. Now!"

Lucian snatched the remote and hit power. The screen blazed to life under a red Breaking News banner.

"TRAGEDY AT TWIN TOWERS: Disgraced CEO Tobias Prescott has been found dead in his cell. Initial reports suggest a targeted hit. But that's not the shocker, his final will and testament was leaked to the press ten minutes ago."

The reporter's voice actually trembled. "In a final act of spite, Prescott has left eighty percent of his remaining hidden assets, billions in offshore accounts to his unborn son. But there's a catch: the child must be proven to be his by a Knight-certified physician, or the money reverts to the State. He has named Lucian Knight as the executor of the trust."

I looked at Lucian. Then back at the screen. Then at my stomach.

Tobias hadn't simply died. He had turned my womb into a multi-billion dollar battlefield and he had known. He had known about the twins.

"He did it," I breathed, a tear sliding down my cheek before I could stop it. "He found a way to stay in our lives forever."

Lucian wasn't watching the television. He was watching me, his eyes burning with a new and terrifying resolve.

"He thinks he won," Lucian said, his voice a low, dark promise. "He thinks I'll let a Prescott heir sit at my table." He paused. "He's wrong."

He turned to the doctor. "Prepare the lab. We aren't just testing for paternity. I want to know if there's a way to... selective reduction."

"No!"

I scrambled off the table before anyone could stop me, both hands pressing against my stomach. "You won't touch them, Lucian. Neither of them!"

He grabbed my arms firm, but careful not to hurt me. "Lily, think. If that child is born, the Hells Angels' enemies, the ones Tobias was laundering for, will come for him. They'll use that boy to destroy everything we've built. It's him or us."

I opened my mouth to tell him he was wrong, that there had to be another way.

And then came the thud. Heavy. Outside the door.

"Sir!" a guard's voice exploded through the wall. "We're under fire! The lobby is being breached!"

Lucian shoved me behind him in one swift motion, his weapon already drawn. I pressed my back against the wall, my hands shaking over my stomach, over the two lives inside me that the whole world suddenly seemed to want.