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His child.

Our child.

I pictured Richard holding the baby against his chest with Seth beside him, looking down at his new brother or sister. Then Samantha appeared in it too.

My smile faded. I lowered my sweater and looked at myself in the mirror.

Samantha.

His wife.

Seth’s mother.

She already had everything. The ring. The house. His last name. His son. She had the life with Richard I’d spent years imagining for myself while I was hidden away in a house no one was supposed to know about.

For the first time since the gala, thinking about her didn’t make me feel completely powerless.

I looked down at the test.

I was pregnant too.

Samantha wasn’t the only woman who would have a child with Richard anymore.

I looked at the tests again. There would be another Kincaid.

Mine.

Richard could keep me in this house. He could introduce me as an assistant if he needed an explanation for why I existed. He could disappear for days and return whenever it suited him. But he couldn’t change whose baby this was.

He couldn’t erase blood. And he couldn’t pretend forever that Seth didn’t have a brother or sister.

I carried the tests into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed, trying to decide how Richard would react.

Richard would probably be shocked. He’d probably be angry at first too.

I knew him well enough to expect that.

He would ask about the birth control, and I would have to tell him I’d stopped taking it. I could already imagine the look on his face when he realized I’d made that decision without him.

Maybe he’d accuse me of doing it intentionally.

I hadn’t.

At least, I hadn’t consciously decided to get pregnant.

But none of that would matter once the shock wore off.

This was still his baby.

Richard already knew what it felt like to have a son. He knew what it was like to watch his child grow, to hear him laugh, to see pieces of himself staring back at him.

How could he experience all of that with Seth and not want the same thing with this baby? How could he go home every night knowing another one of his children was growing up somewhere else? He couldn’t keep his two lives separated forever after this.

Eventually, Samantha would have to know. I remembered Samantha smiling at me while I stood there lying directly to her face. She had no idea who I really was or what Richard and I had been doing behind her back.

She didn’t know him the way I did. Samantha knew the husband. She knew the father who came home to Seth. She knew the businessman who wore expensive suits and stood beside her at parties while everyone admired them.

I knew what existed underneath all of that.