Julian’s hand closed over the folder before Arthur could pull it away.
I was bent against Julian’s chest, one arm wrapped around my stomach, trying to breathe through a pain that felt as though a steel band had tightened around my entire body.
The red stain on the carpet had already changed the room.
Seconds earlier, Arthur Vance had been speaking to me like I was a problem he could erase with a signature.
Now even he looked frightened.
Julian looked at the page beneath his hand.
His eyes moved once across the addendum.
Then again.
“What is this?” he asked.
Arthur recovered quickly.
“Julian, she needs medical attention.”
“I asked you what this is.”
There was something in Julian’s voice I remembered from our marriage.
He never shouted when he was truly angry.
His voice got quieter.
Arthur glanced toward me.
“A protective provision.”
“For whom?”
Another contraction seized me, and I cried out despite myself.
Julian dropped the folder immediately and caught me with both arms.
“Harper.
Look at me.”
I couldn’t.
He shouted through the open door for someone to call emergency services.
People appeared beyond the glass.
Assistants.
Security.
Executives who had pretended not to watch me walk in were suddenly frozen in the corridor.
My humiliation was complete, but I no longer cared.
“The baby,” I whispered.
Julian’s face broke at the word.
“Eight months?”
I nodded once.
His eyes shut for half a second.
Eight months.
He understood immediately.
The timing.
The night before I left.
The unanswered calls.
The fact that our marriage had ended while I was carrying a secret that belonged to both of us.
When his eyes opened again, there were a hundred questions in them, but he asked none.
He only said, “We’re getting you to a hospital.”
Arthur stepped toward the folder.
Julian pointed at him without looking away from me.
“Touch those papers and you’re finished.”
Arthur stopped.
The paramedics arrived within minutes, though to me it felt like an hour.
They lowered me onto a stretcher while Julian stayed beside me, his suit jacket abandoned on the conference-room floor.
One paramedic asked how far along I was.
“Thirty-four weeks,” I managed.
“Any previous complications?”
“No.”
“Bleeding before today?”
“No.”
Julian flinched when the paramedic mentioned the bleeding.
For the first time, I saw fear overpower everything else in him.
