"Gretchen—"
"Shut up." She doesn't raise her voice. Doesn't need to. "You don't get to talk yet."
I close my mouth.
"Do you know what you did?" She takes a step toward me. "Do you have any idea?"
"I ended the relationship. I—"
"You fired a pregnant woman."
The world stops.
"What?"
"Bailey came to your penthouse to tell you she's pregnant." Her voice is deadly calm. "She had this whole speech prepared. She was scared but also hopeful because she thought—stupidly—that you might actually care."
No. No, she would have told me. She would have—
"But you didn't let her finish, did you?" Gretchen continues. "You cut her off. Called her a liability. Fired her while she was carrying your child."
The floor tilts beneath me.
"She tried to tell me—" I can barely form words. "I didn't know—"
"You didn't know because you wouldn't listen." She moves closer. "You were too busy destroying her to hear what she was actually saying."
Bailey was pregnant. She came to tell me. And I—
I called her a liability.
"Congratulations," Gretchen says. "You became your father after all."
She walks away, leaving me standing in the empty lobby.
Her words echo in the silence.
You became your father after all.
***
I make it to my car before I break.
My hands shake so badly I can't get the key in the ignition. I grip the steering wheel instead, trying to breathe through the panic crushing my chest.
Bailey was pregnant. She tried to tell me.
And I wouldn’t listen.
The flashbacks come unbidden. My father's voice, cold and cruel: "You're worthless. You'll never be enough." His face when my mother tried to leave. The way he pushed her away, hurt her, controlled her until there was nothing left.
I hear my own voice now, layered over the memory: "You became a liability."
I pushed Bailey away. Hurt her. Controlled the situation until I destroyed everything good between us.
Just like he did.
The realization breaks something fundamental inside me. I'm crying—actually crying—for the first time since I was thirteen years old. Gasping, ugly sobs that tear out of my chest.
