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All at once I understand that whatever I thought this conversation was, whatever version of it I had prepared myself for, I was already behind.

“You knew,” I say. The words barely sound like mine.

“I suspected,” he replies. “The result confirmed what I already considered likely.”

I can’t move for a second.

I think about the party. About him watching the room. About the photographer. About Dalton going still when Alester kissed my cheek. About Petra in my hallway. About every quiet little shift I told myself I’d examine later, once things calmed down.

My hand tightens around the strap of my bag so hard it hurts. “You knew and you let me stand here and say all that.”

“Yes.”

I take one step back. Then another.

Not because I’m leaving.

Because I need distance from him all of a sudden, urgently, instinctively, the way you step back from something hot after realizing it’s not warm, it’s on fire.

“You are insane,” I say.

“No.” He says it the way he says everything. No heat. No offense. Just a correction. “I’m informed.”

I laugh once, and it sounds close to panic. “Informed?”

“Yes.”

“About what? About my body? About my life?”

His gaze doesn’t flicker. “You and Dalton were seen entering a room together during the party,” he says. “You were both gone long enough to make the conclusion straightforward.”

My whole face burns.

Not with guilt. With humiliation. With rage.

I look at him and suddenly understand something I should have understood much earlier: Alester doesn’t need to raise his voice to threaten people. He simply keeps speaking until your options become smaller than his certainty.

I say, very clearly, “I’m ending this.”

“No,” he says. Just like that.

Not let’s discuss this. Not you can’t be serious. Not even I don’t think that’s wise.

Just no.

I stare at him. “You don’t get to say no.”

He turns, walks back to the desk, and opens a drawer.

For one irrational second I think he’s pulling out another test result. Another file. Another trapdoor in the conversation.

Instead he takes out a copy of the agreement. He lays it on the desk, opens it without hurry, and flips through the pages with the ease of a man who has read every line and already knows exactly where to place his finger.

When he looks up at me again, his voice is still even. “Clause seventeen,” he says.

I don’t move.

He reads anyway. “‘The surrogate shall not terminate, suspend, or materially withdraw from the arrangement without the express written consent of the intended parent, except in the event of medically documented incapacity as determined by the supervising physician.’”