Chapter 58 The echo in the hall
The front door clicked shut, the sound echoing through the quiet house like a gavel. My mother had lingered for a moment, her eyes soft with a mixture of worry and ancestral strength, before she squeezed my hand.
"The ladies from the prayer circle are waiting, Elena. I have to go, but we will talk the moment I step back through this door. Please," she whispered, glancing at the small box on the counter. "Take the test. Do not let the truth hide in the dark."
Then, I was alone.
The silence of the house was oppressive. It was a stark contrast to the roar of the jet engines I had heard only hours ago. I stood in the middle of the bathroom, the air feeling heavy and cold. My hands trembled as I tore open the packaging. Every movement felt robotic, a sequence of actions detached from my soul.
Five minutes. The longest five minutes of my life.
I walked to the kitchen and stared at the clock, the rhythmic tock-tock-tock matching the frantic pulse in my throat. When I finally walked back and picked up the plastic stick, my breath hitched.
Positive.
Two distinct lines. A definitive answer to the nausea, the fatigue, and the strange, metallic taste of the morning. For a full minute, my mind simply froze. I couldn't speak; I couldn't even cry. I just stared at the small window of the test as if it were a portal to a different dimension.
Then, the cold math of reality began to set in.
I leaned against the sink, my head spinning. I wasn't sure. The shadow of my past was still long enough to touch my present. If this child was Liam’s, I would be at least four months along. If it was Victor’s—the man who had given me a reason to breathe again—it would be two, perhaps three months. My heart screamed that it was Victor’s, but my nurse’s brain demanded a calendar and a clinic.
I stumbled into the kitchen, my fingers fumbling for my phone. I needed a voice. I needed someone who knew the wreckage I had come from and the grace I had found. I dialed Maya.
"El? Are you okay? Did the plane get off?" Maya’s voice was bright, filled with the energy of someone who hadn't just had their world overturned.
"Maya," I choked out, my voice cracking. "I took it. The test. It’s positive."
There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end. "Oh, El... oh, my God. Are you... how do you feel?"
"I'm terrified, Maya. I’m paralyzed," I whispered, sliding down the kitchen cabinet until I was sitting on the floor. "Victor is over the ocean right now. He’s going into a surgery that might kill him, and I’m sitting here with two lines on a stick. And the worst part... the absolute worst part is that I don't know for sure."
"What do you mean you don't know?" Maya’s voice dropped, becoming low and urgent.
"The timing," I said, a sob breaking through. "If it’s Liam’s, it’s four months. If it’s Victor’s, it’s less. I need to get an ultrasound, Maya. I need to know whose life I’m carrying before I decide what to tell Victor. If I tell him it’s his and he dies on that table... or if I tell him and it turns out to be Liam’s... I’ll destroy him. I’ll destroy everything we built."
"Listen to me," Maya said firmly. "You are not going to destroy anything. You are a victim of Liam’s choices, but you are the architect of your future with Victor. We will find out. We’ll go to the clinic tomorrow. But Elena, deep down... what does your gut say?"
"My gut says it’s Victor’s," I whispered, closing my eyes and picturing his dark, intense gaze. "It feels like his. It feels like a piece of the light he gave me. But I’m scared, Maya. I’m so scared."
I was so caught up in the confession, so drowned in the sound of my own heartbeat and Maya’s comforting words, that I didn't hear the front door. It hadn't been fully latched when my mother left in her hurry.
I didn't hear the light, hesitant footsteps on the linoleum. I didn't hear the sharp, audible gasp that followed my mention of Liam's name.
It was a sudden chill in the air, a feeling of being watched, that made me freeze. I slowly turned my head toward the kitchen doorway, the phone still pressed to my ear.
Standing there, frozen like a statue, was Mrs. Jenkins.
Liam’s mother looked out of place in our humble kitchen. She was dressed in her usual stiff, expensive wool, but her face was gaunt. She had come, perhaps, to offer a hollow olive branch—not because her heart had softened, but because Liam was awake. He was awake, and the doctors had likely told her that his only path to recovery was the one person he had broken: me.
She stood there, her hand hovering near the doorframe. Our eyes locked for a split second—a moment of pure, unadulterated shock. I saw the shift in her expression. It wasn't pity. It was a sharp, predatory flash of realization.
She had heard it all. She had heard "positive." She had heard "Liam or Victor." She had heard "four months."
Before I could find my voice, before I could drop the phone and demand to know what she was doing in my house, she moved. She didn't enter. She didn't apologize. She simply stepped back, her shadow retreating from the floor, and vanished back through the front door.
I heard the heavy thud of her car door closing a moment later, and the screech of tires as she sped away.
"Elena? El? What happened? Who was that?" Maya was shouting through the phone.
I couldn't answer. I dropped the phone on the tiles, the screen cracking. The secret wasn't mine anymore. I had been worried about telling Victor, but now, the woman who hated me most in the world held the most dangerous piece of information I possessed.
Liam was awake. And his mother now believed I might be carrying his heir.
I pulled my knees to my chest, the cracked phone lying beside me like a bad omen. Victor was in the air, Liam was in the light, and I was caught in the middle of a storm that was no longer about silk and scholarships.
It was about blood.