Chapter 38 Framed

Chapter 38 Framed
Linda’s POV

The Jenkins mansion was unusually quiet when we arrived.

The kind of quiet that felt deliberate, like the house itself was holding its breath. Even the birds that usually moved through the compound seemed absent. The fountain near the entrance still ran but the sound of it felt lonely without the usual activity around it. Not even Rick was visible, moving his usual hideously careful way between the flower beds, pretending to tend to things while listening to conversations that weren’t his.

We walked in through the front entrance without knocking. The door was already open.

John was seated in the main living room in the high-backed chair he always favored, the one positioned slightly apart from the others as though he had arranged the room to establish who was in charge before anyone arrived. He was dressed neatly in a dark shirt and trousers, his reading glasses pushed up to his forehead, his hands clasped together over his knee. His face carried that carefully composed expression he wore whenever he had already decided how a conversation would go.

Nikki sat across from him on the wide sofa, her legs crossed, her back straight. She had changed from what she wore at Charles’s house, dressed now in a fitted blouse and dark trousers that were clearly chosen with intention. Her hair was pulled back neatly. She looked more put together than she had when she appeared at our door, but her eyes carried the same dangerous energy and the slight pallor from the hospital still clung to her skin beneath the composure she had assembled over it.

She looked up the moment we entered and fixed her gaze on me immediately, holding it there with the kind of stillness that was meant to unsettle.

I held her gaze for exactly two seconds then looked away.

John rose slightly and motioned toward the sofa opposite Nikki. “Please sit down.”

Charles and I took our seats together, close enough that our arms touched. I felt Nikki’s eyes on me the entire time, sharp and unblinking, but I kept my focus on John.

“You called for us,” Charles said, cutting through the thick silence with the kind of directness that never asked for permission.

“I’m disappointed in you, Charles,” John began and my heart dropped slightly.

“I never appointed you in the first place, Mr. John,” Charles replied, his voice completely level.

Nikki scoffed.

John paused, then continued as though Charles had said nothing. “I know of your sharp edges and I’ve heard of your negotiation skills. I still find myself wondering how a man of your calibre chooses a decision like this over a business he built from nothing.”

“How good of you to acknowledge that I built it from nothing,” Charles replied. “You can deduce then that I am capable of building another.”

Under the table I extended my leg quietly and pressed it firmly against his. He needed to rein in that tongue before it sharpened the tension beyond what we could manage.

“Sir, you called for us,” I said, bringing the focus back before Charles could add anything further.

John nodded and slid the ultrasound document across the table toward us.

Charles stopped me before I could reach for it. “We have already seen the contents. Nikki is pregnant,” he said, his expression giving nothing away.

“That is the point,” John said.

“Point of what? Nikki is pregnant. How is that my concern? The only woman I have been with is Linda. Is the blackmail your family has subjected us to not enough?” Charles’s voice rose steadily.

I took his hand beneath the table and pressed it firmly between both of mine. “Relax,” I whispered close to his ear, rubbing my thumb slowly across his knuckles.

Nikki watched from across the table, the jealousy sitting so openly on her face she made no effort to conceal it. John simply observed us both, his hands still crossed, his expression carefully unreadable.

When Charles had settled, Nikki leaned forward slightly.

“So you didn’t tell him?” She directed the question at me, her voice carrying that particular smoothness that I had learned over years meant she was about to do something calculated.

My chest tightened immediately. “Tell him what?” I replied, keeping my voice genuinely confused because I genuinely was.

“Wow.” She smiled slowly. “You are so good at keeping secrets. After all those confessions you made to him, you somehow forgot to mention that you handed me his sperm that day.”

The words landed so cleanly and so confidently that for a half second the room felt like it tilted.

“What do you mean?” My eyes widened. “When did we ever reach that kind of agreement? The arrangement was for me to switch places with you and nothing more. That was the entire plan.”

Charles nodded once and kept his hand in mine.

“Are you absolutely sure that was nothing more?” Nikki let out that laugh. The one I had grown up hearing. The one she only produced when she believed she held something solid.

I turned to Charles immediately. “I need you to understand that whatever she says from this point forward is not true. Please don’t let her manipulate you,” I said directly.

He reached up and pressed a brief kiss to my cheek. The heat of Nikki’s stare was almost physical from across the table.

“I know exactly the kind of family I’m dealing with,” he said quietly. “You don’t have to worry.”

“Stop the innocent act and explain this,” Nikki said flatly and held her phone across the table toward me.

The screen showed a paused video. I was in it. I could tell immediately by the cottage skirt and black top, the same ones I had worn that afternoon at the Jenkins house weeks ago. My back was to the camera, my face completely invisible. But the hair, the build, the way I stood were undeniably mine. Nikki was facing the camera directly, her expression open and earnest, the way she looked when she was performing sincerity.

“What is this?” I asked, my heartbeat climbing.

“Play it and find out,” Nikki said.

Charles reached across and pressed play.

The voice that came from the speaker was mine. The cadence, the tone, the slight softness at the end of certain words. All mine.

“I’ll bring his sperm and you make sure my mum gets her kidney donor.”

The video ended.

The room was silent.

I felt the tears threatening before I could stop them and I blinked hard against them. That sentence had never left my mouth. Not once. Not in any version of any conversation I had ever had with Nikki or anyone else. But the voice was mine and the figure on the screen was undeniably mine and the Nikki in the frame was real and present and looking directly at whoever held the camera.

Charles turned to me slowly.

The expression on his face broke something in my chest. It was not anger. It was worse. It was the look of a man trying desperately to hold onto certainty while the ground shifted beneath him. Doubt and confusion moving behind his eyes in equal measure.

“Linda,” he said quietly. “Is this true?”

I opened my mouth but the words jammed somewhere between my chest and my throat.

“I told you,” Nikki said. “The Linda you think is innocent is very far from it. She knows exactly what she is doing.”

“Linda.” Charles turned fully to me, shutting Nikki out entirely. “Talk to me.”

“Why would you even ask me that?” I finally found my voice. “This is fabricated. I could never do something like this and if by some impossible chance I had, I would have told you long before now.” My voice nearly cracked at the end of it.

“Fabricated? I fabricated your voice as well? And your hair? And your posture?” Nikki’s voice rose sharply. “Save that defense for someone who hasn’t known you your whole life.”

Charles’s fist came down on the table suddenly and everyone in the room startled. John was the only one who didn’t move.

“Send me a copy of that video. Now,” Charles ordered, his voice dropping to something dangerously quiet.

“Why? Is what you’re seeing not sufficient? Can you not see that Linda is with you purely because she needs a large catch to pull her out of the miserable life she was born into?” Nikki shot back.

“I do not repeat myself,” Charles said.

Nikki held his stare for a moment then looked away. “Fine.” She forwarded the video without another word.

John cleared his throat deliberately, drawing the air back into the room.

“Dispute the video however you like, Charles. The fact remains that Nikki is pregnant and the child is yours,” he said, his voice carrying the weight of a man who had already made up his mind.

“I won’t conclude anything without evidence. But if the child turns out to be mine, I will assume full responsibility,” Charles replied.

John unfolded his hands and leaned forward slightly. “I am prepared to reinstate the merger. This time you would automatically assume the head of Jenkins Group.”

I noticed Charles’s eyes shift almost imperceptibly.

“But on one condition,” John continued.

“Which is?” Charles asked.

“Abort the child.”

The words arrived like something physical. I felt them land in the center of my chest and stay there.

“Sure,” Charles said without hesitation and my heart collapsed completely.

The tears arrived before I could negotiate with them. I looked at him and felt everything we had built begin to slide sideways. How quickly. How easily.

Nikki smiled and it was the smile of someone who had been waiting all morning for exactly this moment. “You have made a genuinely great decision, Charles. That bastard in Linda’s womb does not deserve to—”

“Hold on a moment, John.” Charles raised one hand calmly. “I want to be sure we are all on the same page. It is Nikki’s baby we are discussing aborting. Correct?”

I exhaled so hard my shoulders dropped with it.

“The only child I would ever describe as a bastard,” I said, turning to face Nikki directly, “would be one whose father is sitting right beside me at this table and still needs a paternity test to know his own child.”

Nikki’s face turned a deep furious red. “Dad. Do something,” she said, her voice losing its composure entirely.

Desperation had replaced the victory on her face so quickly it was almost satisfying to witness.

“Don’t trouble yourself, John. I will never have anything to do with your daughter,” Charles added, standing.

“For the last time, Charles. Reconsider. Your business is at stake,” John said, his voice carrying a final warning.

“Reconsider yours as well,” Charles replied, buttoning his jacket. “Your business is equally at stake.”

Nikki stood abruptly, knocking her knee against the table, and stormed out of the room without looking back.

I rose beside Charles and straightened myself, avoiding John’s eyes which had settled on me with an expression I could not fully interpret.

“Let’s go, Linda,” Charles said.

I gathered my bag and turned toward the door. Then I stopped.

“How is Jessica?” I asked and turned back to John.

The question visibly surprised him. He blinked once, his composure faltering for just a moment, and something genuinely human moved across his face before he composed himself again.

He hesitated long enough that the silence itself became an answer.