Chapter 2: The Lion's Den

The lawyers scrambled out of the room so fast they nearly left their briefcases behind. Within seconds, the heavy double doors clicked shut, leaving only Julian, myself, and our daughter in the vast, cold office.

"Clara, let me hold her," Julian pleaded, stepping toward me. The fierce billionaire looked entirely unraveled, his tie slightly crooked.

I instinctively stepped back, shielding Rose. "No, Julian. You don't get to just skip to the fatherhood part after ignoring me for a year. Do you have any idea what it was like? Delivering her alone in a county hospital while your face was on the cover of Forbes? Working twelve-hour shifts at a bakery, my stitches still healing, just to buy her formula?"

Julian flinched as if I had physically struck him. A deep, agonizing guilt flashed across his handsome features. "I didn't know. Clara, swear to God, if I had known—"

"But you should have cared enough to check!" I shouted, the tears I had held back for months finally spilling over. "When we argued before I left, I told you I felt sick. I told you something was changing. You told me I was being dramatic and that you had a board meeting to attend. You chose this tower over me. Don't act like the victim now."

Julian ran a hand through his dark hair, pacing the length of the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Manhattan. "I made mistakes. Terrible mistakes. I let the pressure of this company turn me into a monster. But I will not abandon my blood. I will not let a Hartwell grow up in poverty."

"She isn't a Hartwell," I said coldly. "Her name is Rose Independent Hartwell. I registered her with my maiden name."

Julian stopped dead in his tracks. His jaw tightened, the corporate predator reawakening. "We’ll see about that. I’m pausing the divorce proceedings. I am ordering an immediate DNA test—not because I doubt she's mine, but because I need the legal documentation to amend my estate. Until then, you and Rose are staying with me."

"I have an apartment in Queens, Julian. I’m not moving back into your mansion."

"That apartment in Queens is currently being monitored by paparazzi who followed you into this building," Julian said, pointing to a security monitor on his desk. Surely enough, a small crowd of reporters was already gathering outside the tower. "The press knows something is happening. If you walk out those doors, they will swarm you and the baby. Is that what you want for Rose?"

I looked at the screen, my stomach dropping. I had been so focused on confronting Julian that I hadn't realized how the media would react to a secret baby.

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"Fine," I whispered, holding Rose tighter. "But we stay in the guest wing. And the moment the DNA test is done, we discuss a co-parenting agreement. Not a marriage."

Julian looked at me, a strange, determined glint in his grey eyes. "We’ll see, Clara. We'll see."