A broken laugh escaped me.
“Then how should I say it? Make it sound more professional?”
The unbelievable part was that he actually looked ashamed.
“Where is my baby?”
His lips pressed into a thin line.
“Safe.”
That was the exact moment I stopped seeing him as my husband.
“Where is she?”
He refused to answer.
Instead, he kept repeating the same empty phrases.
“You need to calm down.”
“Think about Max.”
“If this gets out, everything falls apart.”
Only then did I realize I had been the last person to learn the truth.
Then he spoke the sentence that still wakes me in the middle of the night.
“This only worked because you agreed.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
The room seemed to tilt beneath my feet.
“You said yes,” he whispered. “After the doctor told you.”
Before he even finished speaking, I was already shaking my head.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“You did.”
He slowly rose from his chair.
“You were crying. You kept saying we couldn’t lose everything. You asked what my parents would do if they cut us off. You said Max deserved stability. You said if Nicole wanted money and didn’t want the baby, then maybe—”
“Stop.”
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