Page 180 of Nine Months to Bear
She stares at me for a long moment. Something comes across her face—hope, maybe, or just the ghost of it—before it’s gone again, leaving no trace behind.
“No.” She shakes her head. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to make pretty, heartfelt speeches when I’ve seen the evidence in black and white. In your ownfuckinghandwriting.”
She turns away from me.
“Tell me about the acquisition. The real timeline.”
“It doesn’t matter?—”
“It matters to me!” she interrupts. “I want to know how you were going to do it.”
I run a hand through my hair and exhale. This is going exactly how I knew it would go if she ever found out.
“How long ago did it start, Stefan?”
“Six months.”
She goes very still. “Six months. Before you ever met me.”
“Yes.”
“And the baby? Was that always part of it, too?”
“The baby was… It was… A way to make things make sense. Legitimacy.”
“So I was your cover.” The words fall out of her mouth like she’s testing them, seeing how they taste and spitting them away in sheer disgust. “A clean, respectable medical practice to wash your dirty money through, and a pretty baby mama to make it all look nice for the tabloids.”
“No—”
“God, it’s perfect, isn’t it? Honestly, I’m impressed.” She takes a step back, nodding to herself like puzzle pieces are clicking intoplace. “A fertility clinic. All those cash payments from desperate couples, wire transfers from overseas clients. Who’s going to question large deposits at a place that deals with international surrogacy? It’s such a nice, heart-warming business, you know? Nobody will look too close. Nobody will suspect a fucking thing.”
“That’s not what this is about.”
“Then whatisit about, Stefan?” she cries. “Because I’m looking at these documents and all I see is a parasite. A way to get the baby you need as legacy insurance while you use my life’s work as a fucking front. Until you’ve sucked it all dry and you can just throw me away and move onto the next.”
I want to grab her, shake her, make her understand. But she looks like she might bolt if I move wrong. “The clinic was never about money laundering.”
“Oh, sure, of course not. Maybe it was just a way to put your boot on my throat and make sure I did what you wanted me to do. Tell me, was the baby part of that bit, too?”
“What?”
“The baby, Stefan. Our baby.” Her hand hovers over her stomach but doesn’t quite touch. “Was getting me pregnant part of the control plan? Lock me down, make sure I couldn’t walk away?”
“Jesus Christ, Olivia. No.”
“Because it’s brilliant if you think about it. Knock up the desperate clinic owner. Now, she needs you for financial support. For protection. She can’t exactly testify against the father of her child, can she?”
“Stop.”
“Plus, you get your heir. Your legacy. All wrapped up in one convenient package.”
“Stop this!” I slap my hand on the desk.
She jumps but doesn’t back down. “Why? Am I getting too close to the truth?”
“You’re so far from the truth you can’t even see it anymore.”
“Then enlighten me. Tell me which part of this—” She jabs a finger at the journal. “—is the lie. I’m all fucking ears, Stefan.”
