Page 88 of Forbidden Boss (Manhattan Billionaires)

My mother pursed her lips and arched her brows. Her silence said,Really?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s impressive that you kept it under wraps for as long as you did, darling, but the truth will come out eventually. We can’t have an escort sitting at the head table.”

“She’s not an escort,” I bit off.

My mother made a soft hum, her disagreement more than clear.

“Forget about me coming as well, then,” I said, mind racing.

“Rome!”

I stomped away, waving off the butler who tried to accost me and direct me to the dining room. I cut through the backyard to the helipad, blood boiling, wanting only one thing.

To see Nikki.

I needed to hold her in my arms, because my world felt like it was crumbling around me. My best friend had found a new job. My family… I was seeing my family for who they really were. Callous, cold people who cared more about appearances than they did about their own people.

And how did my mother know? How could she possibly have found out? Did she have a spy on my legal team? Cole?

No, not Cole. He wouldn’t. Would he?

I’d figure this out, and I’d fix it. I wouldn’t let my mother’s callousness ruin the biggest business deal my company had ever made. I wanted to believe she wouldn’t do that, but how could I be sure?

She and my father had shipped me off to a top-rated boarding school because they didn’t have time for me. My brother was treated completely differently, the little prince of the family who could do no wrong. Those people didn’t love me. They didn’t care about me. None of them did.

The only person in my life who did was Nikki. She had the ability to make me soften with nothing more than a look. She made me feel like I wasn’t raging against the storm on my own. She was my shelter. My woman. My rock.

And she’d finally sent me a text message.I’m beat,she wrote.Going to bed. Can I get a rain check on the snuggles?

Clipped into the helicopter as it took off, I read and reread the message a dozen or so times. Then I dropped my hands between my knees and let my head sink down, defeated.

THIRTY-SIX

NIKKI

It was a lie,of course. I wasn’t going to bed. I was pacing my apartment, staring at boxes, looking at my bed, opening the fridge, and trying to distract my mind from running circles around me.

Five minutes after telling Rome not to come over, I stared at another text message I’d typed out telling him to come over anyway. But my finger hovered over the “send” button, and I couldn’t make myself press down.

What was Idoing?

Me, the placeholder, the stepping stone, the woman that no onereallywanted. Did I honestly think that a handsome, successful, wealthy, charismatic man would chooseme? Did I really think this was anything more than convenience?

I was a special kind of delusional.

Frustrated with myself, I stripped my shirt off and looked at myself in the mirror. I knew it was weeks and weeks too early to see a bump, but I still studied my reflection from all angles.

Maybe I’d made the whole pregnancy thing up. Maybe the tests I’d taken were faulty. And yes, I’d bought a new pack of three and taken them all today, and all of them proclaimed me well and truly pregnant.

There were probably things I should be doing—doctors’ appointments, vitamins, ultrasounds, and whatnot. I didn’t even know.

But doing them would require admitting to myself that I was pregnant. And it still didn’t feel quite real.

Or maybe it felt a littletooreal. Every little twinge, every slight wave of nausea that I normally would have dismissed as a strange quirk of my body was a reminder that there was an embryo inside me, and it was growing with every minute that passed.

And a little niggling thought made itself at home in my brain. If I was so replaceable, what would happen when Rome found out about the baby? Would I just be an incubator? Someone to carry his child, who was then tossed aside?

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