Chapter 5
The boardroom hallway seemed to shrink into a suffocating vacuum.
The vice presidents, Julianna Sterling, Vivian Vance—all of them faded into the background like blurred figures in a painting.
Adrian stood frozen two feet away from me, his eyes locked onto my midsection, his chest heaving as if he had run five miles in the cold.
"You're pregnant," he repeated, the words stumbling out of his mouth in a broken, hollow whisper.
"Adrian," Julianna said sharply from behind him, her voice tight with irritation and embarrassment.
"We have a board meeting to address."
"Shut up, Julianna!" Adrian roared, not even turning his head to look at her.
The entire floor went dead silent.
No one had ever heard Adrian Moretti speak to Julianna Sterling with anything less than calculated deference.
He took another step toward me, his hands shaking at his sides, his eyes searching my face with a terrifying intensity.
"How long?" he demanded, his voice cracking.
"How long have you been carrying this?"
"Vivian," I said, ignoring him completely, turning to my attorney while leaning heavily against the wall as another dull ache pulled at my pelvis.
"Please deliver the court injunction to the board secretary."
"We are done here."
"Claire, answer me!" Adrian shouted, lunging forward and reaching for my arm.
Vivian stepped directly into his path, her arm raised like an iron bar.
"Do not touch my client, Mr. Moretti."
"If you lay a single finger on her, I will have the federal marshals waiting downstairs arrest you for assault and violating a pending civil protection order."
Adrian looked at Vivian as if she were a ghost, his mind completely incapable of processing the wall that had been built between us.
"She is my wife!" he cried out, his voice echoing off the glass and steel of his empire.
"She is carrying my child!"
"You surrendered your rights as a husband twelve hours ago across your dining room table," I said, meeting his bloodshot eyes with an unyielding coldness that surprised even myself.
"You sat across from me and told me that our marriage was an inconvenience to your ambitions."
"You told me you wanted a clean break."
"I am giving you precisely that."
"I didn't know!" he yelled, tears of rage and shock suddenly glistening in the corners of his eyes.
"You hid this from me!"
"You hid an entire pregnancy from your own husband!"
"I didn't hide anything from you, Adrian," I whispered, the venom in my voice quiet, venomous, and devastating.
"I sat across from you at breakfast every morning for eight months."
"I asked you to come home early on three separate Fridays so we could talk, and you told me you were too busy with Julianna."
"I left medical folders on your desk in the study, and you had your housekeeper shred them because you thought they were unsolicited charity requests!"
Adrian flinched as if I had struck him across the face.
His mouth moved silently, the memory of those forgotten evenings hitting him like a series of physical blows.
"You stopped looking at me two years ago, Adrian," I continued, each sentence landing like an executioner's blade.
"You looked at my dress to make sure it matched your tie for the cameras."
"You looked at my smile to make sure it looked convincing for your donors."
"You never looked at me."
"So do not stand here in front of your employees and your mistress and pretend that you were robbed of something you ever cared to see."
Julianna's face burned crimson with humiliation.
"Adrian," she sneered, stepping back toward the elevator bank.
"This is an absolute circus."
"My father will be pulling our letter of intent by noon."
"We are not doing business with a man whose personal life is a legal catastrophe."
She didn't wait for his answer.
She turned on her high heels and stormed toward the private exit, leaving Adrian completely abandoned in the middle of his own headquarters.
The board members began muttering among themselves, slipping back into the conference room to salvage what was left of their stock options.
Adrian didn't care about the board anymore.
He didn't care about the falling stock ticker on the wall.
He took a step toward me, dropping to his knees right there in the middle of the carpeted hallway, reaching out with both hands toward the hem of my coat.
"Claire... please."
"Don't do this."
"Let me take you to the hospital."
"Let me call Dr. Reynolds."
"Dr. Reynolds is your company doctor, Adrian," I said, stepping backward out of his reach.
"My daughter and I have our own care team."
His head snapped up, his breath catching in his throat.
"A daughter?" he whispered, his face breaking into an expression of pure, unadulterated agony.
"We're having a daughter?"
"I am having a daughter," I corrected him.
"You are having a hostile takeover."
Another sharp contraction seized my abdomen, harder this time, causing my knees to buckle slightly.
Vivian caught my elbow, supporting my weight with practiced efficiency.
"The car is downstairs, Claire," Vivian said softly.
"We need to get to Northwestern Memorial now."
"Claire, wait!" Adrian scrambled to his feet, lunging toward us as we backed into the open elevator cab.
"I'm coming with you!"
"You are not getting in this elevator, Mr. Moretti," Vivian said, hitting the door-close button.
Adrian threw his shoulder against the rubber bumper, trying to force the heavy steel panels apart.
"She is my daughter, Claire!" he screamed, his fingers clawing at the gap between the doors.
"You can't cut me out of her life!"
"You cut yourself out, Adrian," I said, looking at him through the narrow slit of space remaining.
"The moment you decided that success was more important than loyalty."
The elevator doors slid shut with a heavy, final thud.
The last thing I saw was Adrian Moretti's face pressed against the glass, weeping openly, his hands sliding down the polished metal as the carriage dropped toward the street.
The elevator descended sixty floors in absolute silence.
I leaned back against the mirrored wall, my hands gripping my swollen belly, tears finally slipping down my cheeks in warm, silent rivers.
The baby moved frantically beneath my palms, reacting to the surge of adrenaline coursing through my veins.
"Hold on, little one," I whispered, closing my eyes as the pain tightened like an iron band around my waist.
"We're almost free."
"Just hold on."
When the doors opened into the basement garage, two medical escorts arranged by Vivian were already waiting with a wheelchair.
They helped me into the seat, draping a warm blanket over my lap, wheeling me swiftly toward the waiting ambulance parked near the loading dock.
Behind me, the elevators continued to chime, carrying the executives of Moretti Holdings down into the cold autumn rain to watch their empire collapse on the evening news.
I didn't look back.
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My war with Adrian Moretti was finished.
Now, the only battle that mattered was bringing our daughter safely into a world where she would never have to beg for her father's love.
