Your levels are rising faster than expected.
Please come alone at four so we can repeat the scan.
Do not tell Blake until we confirm the number.
Underneath was the clinic’s full name, appointment address, and Julian’s medical title.
Blake lowered himself into the chair.
“I only saw the previews.”
“You saw what supported the conclusion you had already chosen.”
He turned another page.
The first ultrasound report documented three viable embryos.
The next page listed the date.
It was two days before he confronted me in the penthouse.
“I tried to show you this,” I said.
“You said there was no other man.”
“There wasn’t.”
“You could have said you were pregnant.”
“I tried.
You shouted over me.
You took my phone, read three lines, and called me a liar.
When I said I was protecting something until I knew it was real, you told me to save the performance for court.”
His hand tightened around the report.
“I would remember if you told me about children.”
“You left before I could.”
I placed the certified-mail receipts beside the medical records.
The first packet had been sent to his penthouse.
Returned unopened.
The second had gone to Harrington Energy headquarters.
Refused by recipient.
The third had been delivered to his divorce attorneys three weeks after the boys were born.
That one had been accepted.
Attached to it was the response from Blake’s legal team.
All future personal communications from Ms.
Winters must proceed through formal litigation.
Unsupported claims involving Mr.
Harrington will be treated as harassment and attempted financial coercion.
Blake read the paragraph twice.
“I never saw this.”
“But you gave the order that created it.”
His eyes lifted.
“What order?”
“Return everything.
Block every call.
Treat any contact from me as manipulation.”
He looked away.
The silence answered for him.
I remembered arriving at his office when I was six months pregnant, wearing a loose coat because I had not yet learned how to move comfortably with three babies pressing beneath my ribs.
Security stopped me in the lobby.
They called upstairs.
Someone returned to tell me that Mr.
Harrington had instructed staff not to accept personal visits from his former wife.
I had stood outside in freezing rain for twenty minutes, holding the clinic folder against my stomach, trying to decide whether to create a public scene.
I did not.
At the time, Blake’s company was negotiating a major government contract.
Reporters followed him constantly.
I knew that if I shouted his name in a lobby while visibly pregnant, the story would become a spectacle before the children were even born.
So I went home.
“I should have filed a paternity case immediately,” I admitted.
