Chapter 70 Before the storm
Chapter 70 Before the storm
Jocelyn’s POV
Richard’s car disappeared through the gate and I stood there until there was nothing left to watch.
The weight of everything settled back immediately.
The paparazzi. The hotel. Lauren’s sudden reappearance. The paternity results sitting in a hospital somewhere, waiting.
“Are you planning to stand there all evening?”
I turned.
Lilian stood in the doorway, head tilted, one eyebrow raised.
Despite everything, something in me loosened.
“Come inside,” she said.
She made me sit before I’d properly entered the living room.
She made tea appeared without my asking and biscuits placed firmly beside the cup.
Lilian settled across from me with the patience of someone who had all afternoon.
“Tell me,” she said. "Everything"
So I told her most of it. How Colton appearing uninvited, the tension of the evening, Richard feeling unwell, the two of us leaving early.
The whole truth pressed at my teeth twice.
"Why then does Richard look so pale?" She asked
"He was drug-" I stopped instantly
"He was what?"
"The trip was so hard on him that why. You know how these travels can be" I tried releasing the tension
she paused and looked at me slowly, then nodded in
agreement.
The second time, she asked about the hotel with that knowing smile.
I swallowed it both times.
What good would it do her? Lilian already carried more than she showed, the blood pressure, the daily medication Martha monitored quietly, the way certain conversations made her hands tremble if they ran too long.
The truth about Eric. About how deep the rot went. About what her other son had built in the shadows of this family.
That was not mine to place at her feet today.
So I gave her the version that left her smiling.
“You handled yourself well,” she said finally. “Better than most would have.”
My throat tightened unexpectedly.
“Richard is lucky,” she added. “Though he would never say so directly.”
I laughed—genuinely, for the first time all day.
Martha served lunch quietly. Pepper soup, white rice, fried plantain I didn’t need and ate completely anyway.
Lilian watched me finish the plantain with satisfaction.
“Big boy,” I said, rubbing my bump.
“You don’t know that yet.”
“I feel it.”
“I felt Richard was a girl for eight months,” she said. “Had a name chosen and everything. He arrived and proved me entirely wrong.” She pointed her spoon at me. “Don’t trust feelings.”
I looked down at my stomach.
Four months. It had crept up the way significant things do—gradually and then all at once. Four months of carrying this child through everything that had happened.
A soft flutter moved beneath my hand.
“He kicked,” I said.
Lilian was around the table instantly, her palm pressing gently beside mine. We sat in silence.
The flutter came again.
Something moved across Lilian’s face that she didn’t try to contain.
“You're Stubborn,” she whispered. “Just like your father.”
We moved to the sitting room afterward. Lilian with her tea, me with water, settling into comfortable silence.
A dull ache had been sitting low in my abdomen since lunch. I shifted position and it eased.
“You’re fidgeting,” Lilian observed.
“The baby’s being dramatic,” I said.
“What kind of discomfort?”
“Just pressure. Random.” I waved it off. “Is this normal at four months?”
Lilian settled back with the confidence of a woman consulting a deep personal archive.
“With Richard I called the doctor so many times in the fourth month that he politely suggested I trust my body unless I was bleeding or couldn’t walk.” She sipped her tea. “Richard arrived perfectly healthy and has been loud every single day since.”
I smiled and the tension in my shoulders dropped.
“Turn on the news,” she said. “Let’s see what the world is getting wrong today.”
Martha appeared and switched on the television before withdrawing silently.
The segment opened with the Asher Group.
Lilian straightened automatically beside me.
The coverage was strong. Market performance, international expansion, Richard’s Lagos trip referenced favorably. Numbers that confirmed the company was doing exactly what it was built to do.
We were both smiling.
Then the anchor’s tone shifted by half a degree.
“In personal developments surrounding the Asher family, questions continue regarding the pregnancy of Jocelyn Hayden, currently residing at the Asher estate. A paternity test is expected to yield results imminently. Sources suggest significant internal tension surrounding the child’s parentage—”
My own face appeared on the screen.
A photograph from this morning—outside the hotel, chin level, Richard’s hand at my back. A caption beneath it that reduced everything I had survived to a tabloid question.
“Turn it off,” Lilian said quietly.
The screen went dark.
“Jocelyn.” Her voice was firm. “Look at me.”
I looked at her.
“They discuss you because you matter. Inconsequential people don’t make news.” She held my gaze. “Richard knows the truth. I know the truth. That child knows the truth. Everything else is noise.”
I exhaled slowly.
Then I coughed. A reflex that comes from swallowing emotion too quickly.
Martha appeared almost instantly with a glass of cold water, as though she had been waiting just beyond the doorway.
I drank and handed the glass back.
As she turned away, I noticed her hands were not entirely steady.
I attributed it to the tension of the hour.
I should have looked more carefully.
“I’ll rest before dinner,” I said.
“Good. Tomorrow is a big day.”
The paternity results. Tomorrow.
I nodded and went to my room.
I changed slowly and sat on the edge of the bed.
The ache returned—more deliberate now. I breathed through it and it passed.
I lay back and stared at the ceiling, one hand resting on my bump.
I thought about Richard’s face at breakfast. No one touches you. Said simply, carrying the weight of a promise.
I thought about his hands gathering the loose strands of hair from my face. Careful even then. Even through everything.
I closed my eyes.
The pain arrived without warning.
Not the dull ache. Something entirely different, sharp and absolute, spreading outward with a speed that erased every thought. A sound tore from my throat I didn’t recognize as my own.
Then I felt running footsteps,The door opening and voices.
Then it pulled back. Completely. As suddenly as it had come.
“I’m fine,” I managed before anyone spoke. “It passed. Please—I’m fine.”
The workers looked at each other.
Lilian and Martha stayed when the others filed out.
“We should go to the hospital,” Martha said. Her voice was careful. Measured in a way that registered somewhere beneath my awareness.
“It was a cramp,” I said firmly. “She moved sharply. It’s completely passed.”
Martha looked at Lilian.
Lilian looked at me with the expression of a woman who was unconvinced and knew she was losing the argument regardless.
“We’ll be right outside,” she said, pressing my arm. “You call immediately if anything changes.”
“I promise.”
They moved toward the door.
Martha paused at the threshold.
Her hand on the frame. Her back to me.
That stillness again of someone carrying something too heavy to fully conceal. Her shoulders held a tension that had nothing to do with this moment and everything to do with something I couldn’t name.
Then she stepped out and pulled the door closed.
I lay back down.
Breathed.
I thought about tomorrow. About Richard’s face when the confirmation came. About what finally shifts when the ground moves irrevocably beneath Colton.
I thought about Lauren pulling me into a run without a moment’s hesitation.
I thought about a bridge. Eight years ago. A stranger I had talked back from an edge, not knowing he would one day hold my face in his hands and ask with complete sincerity whether I was hurting.
Better?
Yes.
The pain returned.
This time it was total. It erased everything—the room, the ceiling, thought itself. A sound came from me that brought the door open in seconds.
Running. Lilian’s voice. Others overlapping. It all blurred in my eyes
Then one voice cutting through everything, stripped of its usual quiet composure, high and sharp and unmistakably afraid.
Martha’s voice.
“Blood! Blood!”
And the room went dark.