Emily looked down at Noah. Her lashes trembled.
“I tried to tell you,” she said. “So many times.”
I almost snapped back that she hadn’t tried hard enough. The words rose easily, fed by months of hurt and the raw shock of what I had just discovered. But then I saw her hands. They were shaking.
So I forced myself to be quiet.
Margaret sat on the edge of the armchair beside the Christmas tree. “Emily found out she was pregnant shortly after you separated.”
The room seemed to press inward.
“Shortly after?” I repeated.
Emily nodded. “Three weeks after you left.”
I remembered that week with cruel clarity. The signed separation agreement. The box of her books she refused to take from the penthouse. The way she had stood by the elevator with red eyes, and I had pretended to read an email because looking at her felt like looking at the only failure my wealth couldn’t fix.
“You should have told me,” I said, my voice rough.
“I was going to.”
“When?”
Her eyes lifted to mine.
“The day you announced the Singapore expansion.”
I went still.
That had been four months ago. A black-tie event. Cameras. Investors. Applause. I had stood on a stage and spoken about vision, discipline, and the future of Rowan Technologies. Emily had been there because my mother invited her, saying appearances mattered until the divorce was final in the eyes of society.
I remembered seeing Emily near the terrace doors. Pale. Nervous. Waiting.
I also remembered my assistant pulling me away, telling me a board member wanted to speak privately.
“I waited for you in the hallway for almost an hour,” Emily said. “When you finally came out, you were with Vivian.”
Vivian Cole. My chief financial officer. Brilliant, ambitious, polished. The kind of woman business magazines loved to place beside me in photographs because together we looked like power had learned to smile.
“We were discussing a deal,” I said.
Emily gave a faint, sad smile. “She was touching your arm. Laughing. Then she looked straight at me and said you were unavailable.”
I swallowed.
The memory sharpened.
Vivian had indeed intercepted me that night. She had been unusually insistent, dragging me into conversations, steering me away from the edges of the room. At the time I had thought she was managing investors. Now unease crawled through me.
