The nausea started three weeks later, a creeping, insidious sickness that had nothing to do with the cheap whiskey or the sheer volume of tears Liana had shed since leaving Michael's apartment.
At first, she dismissed it as delayed emotional trauma—her body reacting to the catastrophic stress of discovering her betrayal. But the sickness persisted, sharp and relentless, clinging to her morning, noon, and night. And then there was the unsettling silence of her missing period.
Liana stood in the cramped, sterile bathroom of the tiny rental apartment she had found on the outskirts of Aurelia, miles away from the gilded towers and painful memories. Her hands, clammy and trembling, clutched the small, white plastic stick. She couldn't breathe. The air in the room felt thick, heavy, and impossible to draw in.
Two lines. Two tiny, aggressive pink lines that had just redefined her entire existence.
A single, strangled gasp escaped her throat. It wasn't possible. It couldn't be possible. The anonymous fire of that reckless night—the night she had sought oblivion—had not only failed to grant her forgetfulness, but had actually planted a profound, undeniable consequence. She was pregnant. She was carrying a child. His child.
Liana stumbled back against the cold porcelain sink, the cheap metal biting into her lower back. The betrayal, the heartbreak, the humiliation of Michael and Juliet—it all suddenly shrank, overshadowed by this single, terrifying, miraculous fact. Her mind spun wildly, trying to reconcile the sheer terror of her situation with the fierce, unexpected surge of maternal protectiveness that had already started to bloom in her chest.
She was alone. She had no job, no savings to speak of (Michael had controlled the finances for the wedding), no family she could trust ( Juliet had seen to that). She was carrying the child of a stranger. The weight of her new reality was crushing.
The shame was the first thing to hit her. How could she have been so utterly reckless? So desperate? She had sought temporary relief and now faced a permanent, monumental commitment. But beneath the shame, a stubborn, protective resolve began to form. This child was innocent. This child was hers. This was the only good thing to come out of the fire.
She knew she had to find him. She had to tell him, even if only to give him the choice, even if she fully intended to walk away again. The memory of his face, his dark, intense eyes, the scar on his shoulder, the sheer presence of his power—it was all she had to go on, along with the single, tangible item she had carried away.
She started with the only real lead she had: the name engraved on the watch.
Walking out of the bathroom, she grabbed her phone and typed it into the search bar: D. Blackwood.
The results loaded instantly.
And there he was.
Articles. Photos. Headlines.
CEO of Blackwood Holdings. Billionaire investor.
The information hit Liana like a physical blow, stealing the air from her lungs. Blackwood. The name was everywhere—splashed across Verona's financial news, tied to power, precision, and a level of wealth that existed far beyond her world.
And then the detail that turned her blood cold: every mention of him came with a title.
Heir and husband to Clara Beaumont.
Liana's heart dropped.
He was married? She had asked and he clearly said he wasn't.
Liana searched her name. Clara Beaumont. A powerful society woman — part model, part socialite, all perfection.
The image that loaded on the screen confirmed her worst fear, but multiplied it a thousand times over. There he was. The man from The Vesper. The man from her night of fire. Damien Blackwood. And standing beside him, in a professional society photo, was a tall, elegant, ice-blonde woman, her hand possessively linked through his arm. Clara Beaumont Blackwood. His wife.
Liana stared at the picture until the faces blurred, the polished perfection of their public image mocking her desperate, secret reality. She remembered the rage in his eyes that night, the cold misery.
Why did he lie about being married?
The question burned through her like acid, sharper than any heartbreak she'd endured. For one reckless night, she had believed in the illusion he offered — not love, not hope, but honesty. That was the one thing she thought they had shared in that room: brutal, stripped truth.
Had he laughed the moment he walked out? Had he returned to his wife, to their marble mansion and sterile vows, pretending the night had never happened?
Her chest tightened.
He had looked at her like he understood. Like he was broken too. That quiet misery in his eyes — was that just another mask?
It was unbearable, not knowing which part of him had been real. The man who touched her like she was something precious — or the man who had lied to her with effortless, practiced ease.
And maybe that was the cruelest part.
He hadn't just lied to her. He had made her believe he was different — that in all the chaos and deceit surrounding her, he was the one person who didn't pretend.
The weight of everything set in. She hadn't slept with a random stranger; she had slept with the Blackwood Heir. And he was married. Legally, publicly, irreversibly married.
The fierce, protective instinct for her unborn child clashed violently with her renewed pain and a devastating sense of ethical violation. She had been betrayed by her own fiancé and sister, and the last thing she would ever do was become the other woman—the mistress, the secret shame that destroyed another person's marriage. She wouldn't be the Juliet in someone else's story.
Liana pressed a hand over her abdomen, where the consequence of her recklessness was already knitting itself into her bones. This child will not be a source of shame. This child will not be a secret stain on a wealthy man's perfect life.
She found a quiet, private, determined strength she didn't know she possessed. She wouldn't tell him. She couldn't. Damien Blackwood was too powerful, too wealthy, too bound by his own high-society prison. If he knew, he would claim the child, absorb the child into the cold, ruthless world of the Blackwood Empire, and Liana would be cast aside—paid off, dismissed, silenced. She would lose the only piece of light she had left.
Outside, a siren wailed faintly in the distance, swallowed by the city noise.
Liana deleted the search history and made up her mind. She would relocate again, moving further out of Aurelia City, choosing quiet, suffocating anonymity over the chaotic, dangerous fire of the Blackwood world.
Damien Blackwood would never know about the necessary mistake that had taken root.