Chapter 2

The embryo transfer took eleven minutes. I counted every one of them while staring at the ceiling of the most expensive fertility clinic in the city, wearing a paper gown that cost nothing in a room that cost everything.

"Perfect placement," Dr. Soren announced, peeling off her gloves with a snap. "You'll take a blood test in ten days to confirm implantation."

I nodded, not trusting my voice. Something was already different inside me — not physically, not yet, but psychologically. The moment that embryo entered my body, I stopped belonging entirely to myself.

"Any questions?" Dr. Soren asked.

A thousand. Starting with: whose DNA is growing inside me right now?

"No," I said.

The first trimester was brutal.

Not the morning sickness — I'd expected that. Not the fatigue that turned my twelve-hour nursing shifts into endurance tests. What nearly broke me was the loneliness.

I couldn't tell Lily. My sister lay in her hospital bed, bald and brave and cracking jokes about her "temporary hairstyle," while I vomited in the staff bathroom and pretended it was a stomach bug. Every time she asked why I looked so tired, I lied. Every time she thanked me for "finding the money" for her treatment, I smiled and said I'd picked up extra shifts.

The lie was a stone in my chest, growing heavier each day.

"You're twelve weeks," Dr. Soren told me at my checkup, turning the ultrasound screen so I could see. "Strong heartbeat. Excellent development."

I stared at the tiny form on the monitor — a bean-shaped blur with a flickering light at its center. That's a heart, I thought. That's a real heart beating inside me.

"Would you like a photo?" Dr. Soren asked gently.

The contract said no emotional attachment. The contract said this wasn't my baby.

"Yes," I whispered. "Please."

I kept the ultrasound photo in my locker at work, hidden behind my spare scrubs. Sometimes during breaks, I'd take it out and trace the outline with my fingertip, memorizing a shape I had no right to love.

At sixteen weeks, I felt the first kick.

I was restocking IV supplies in the pediatric ward when it happened — a tiny flutter, like a butterfly trapped beneath my skin. I gasped, dropping a box of saline bags, my hand flying to my stomach.

"You okay?" asked Maria, the charge nurse, eyeing me suspiciously.

"Fine," I managed. "Just... cramps."

But it wasn't cramps. It was life — insistent, undeniable, already demanding to be acknowledged.

That night, alone in my studio apartment, I lay in bed with both hands on my belly and whispered to the baby I wasn't supposed to love.

"I know you're not mine," I said softly. "But I'm going to take care of you. I promise."

The burner phone rang for the first time at twenty weeks.

I was so startled I nearly dropped it. In four months, it had never made a sound. I'd almost forgotten it existed.

The screen showed the single contact: B.

My thumb hovered over the answer button. Bradford had said emergencies only. Medical emergencies. This wasn't me calling — someone was calling me.

I answered.

Silence. Then breathing — slow, deliberate, as if the person on the other end was deciding whether to speak.

"Hello?" I said.

More silence. Then a voice — deep, low, rough at the edges like someone who hadn't spoken in hours.

"Is the baby okay?"

Four words. That's all he said. But something in his tone made my breath catch — not authority, not detachment, but fear. Raw, unguarded fear wrapped in four simple words.

"The baby's fine," I replied, my heart hammering. "Twenty weeks. Strong heartbeat. Kicking like crazy."

A long exhale. Relief so profound I could feel it through the phone.

"Good," he said quietly. "That's... good."

The line went dead.

I sat on my bed, the burner phone pressed against my chest, replaying those four words over and over. The contract said no contact with the biological father. The contract said this was purely medical.

But the man on the phone hadn't sounded like a client checking on a transaction.

He'd sounded like a father terrified of losing his child.

And I realized, with a sinking feeling that settled deep in my bones, that the wall I'd built between myself and this baby — between myself and the man who'd created it — had just developed its first crack.