Page 89 of Heart of Stone (Dark Billionaires)

“On my life.”

“Good.” She lifted her chin. “Then you’ll agree to give up your parental rights overmydaughter. The daughter you denied. The daughter youliterallytreated like shit on your shoe.”

Warren began to protest, like a condemned man facing the gallows, but she spoke over him.

“How would you feel if a man treatedmydaughter the way you’ve treated me?”

He reared back slightly. “Kitten… That’s not fair. I love you. I love you both.”

Kate just shrugged. The words meant nothing to her. “And I’ll never love you again,” she spat, almost believing it. “You’ve made sure of that.”

Kate had never lived alone before.

Perhaps that was why, when she heard that Sarah and Mattie were looking for a place of their own, she suggested they get somewhere together. Admittedly, she might have gone abitoverboard with renting a property. Did she really need a Victorian house with ten acres in the Surrey Hills? Absolutely not.

But it wassopretty. And it even had a games room for Mattie!

Plus Warren was footing the bill. So why not try and bankrupt him?

An unexpected benefit of her suggestion had been that, for the first time in her life, she had a maternal figure. A maternal figure providing advice and support in what was arguably the most vulnerable time in a woman’s life: pregnancy.

“Hold still, sweetheart,” Sarah murmured, dabbing antiseptic onto Kate’s stitches with a shaky hand. She placed the dark bottle onto the kitchen countertop, screwing the lid back on. “You need to remember to eat today.”

“I know. It just came on so suddenly.” One minute she had been coming out of the shower, and the next thing she knew she was lying flat on her back with Sarah looming over her, on the phone to an ambulance. She’d promptly received four stitches to the gash above her eyebrow, had an emergency ultrasound to check the baby was okay, and been sent on her way.

From the way Sarah’s phone had blown up with messages whilst they were in hospital, Kate knew who was on the other end.

Thatwas the disadvantage of her current arrangement. It was hard to have nothing to do with Warren when she was living with his mother and brother. It was especially difficult to refuse his gifts. The strange cot he’d bought that, as best she could work out, would vibrate and hum the baby to sleep by itself. The belly band that he’d bought her in three different colours. Acid reflux tablets. The expensive massage gun. The compression socks. An entire wardrobe full of babygrows and sleepsuits, all with zips instead of poppers. A memory foam pregnancy pillow.

The memory foam pregnancy pillow had quickly become her best friend, but Kate would never tell him that.

“All done,” Sarah leant back against the kitchen countertop, observing her handiwork. “It looks much better than it did yesterday.”

“Thank you,” Kate replied. She idly scrolled through her phone. A notification pinged up at the top of the screen; her weekly pregnancy update app. “The baby is the size of a cabbage now,” she read out to Sarah, tilting the phone slightly to avoid the reflection of the late autumn sun coming through the vast kitchen skylights. “And apparently at thirty weeks she’s starting to put on a layer of fat.”

Sarah’s adoring gaze landed on her bump.

“Apparently,” Kate continued, “she’s forty centimetres long and weighs more than a kilo.” Kate snorted. “And yet I’ve put on two-and-a-half stone.”

“Tch,” Sarah chided, waving away Kate’s complaint. “You’re growing an entire human in your stomach. You’re allowed to put on as much weight as you want.”

“Ooh,” Kate sucked in a breath, her hand going to her stomach.

“Are you okay?”

Kate nodded. “She’s in a kicking mood lately. I can only assume her aim is to deprive me of any sleep whatsoever.”

“Babies tend to do that,” Sarah grinned, fiddling with her headscarf.

“And this is just the beginning.” The gentle chiding of the doorbell rang through the house. Leo, who had been snoozing peacefully in a customised dog bed in the corner, jumped up, barking incessantly. “That should be Rhys and Alison.”

It was.

Walking through the duck-egg blue front door, Rhys crowded Kate in an enormous bear hug in the entrance hallway. “Hello, darling. What have you done to your eye?”

“Fainted,” she exclaimed, hugging Alison in turn and leading the two of them towards the living room. A bright, airy space furnished with plush sofas, complete with a view out into the vast garden, currently bathed in golden autumnal light. “But I’m fine. Apparently it’s normal.”

Alison frowned. “Have you been eating?”

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