Lena’s POV

The two pink lines wouldn’t fade.

No matter how long I stared at them. No matter how many times I blinked or turned the stick over. I checked the instructions like maybe I had read it wrong.

All I saw and could read was, the Pregnant! Phrase.

The word clung to my thoughts like fog in my lungs.

My knees buckled, and I sat down hard on the bathroom floor. The cold tiles bit through my thin pajama shorts. I tried to breathe, but the air felt too thick.

I wasn’t ready for this.

I could barely afford rent. I had no job and no income left in this city. And now I was going to be a mother all alone?

I leaned back against the door and stared at the ceiling, praying for clarity that wouldn’t come.

The image of his face wouldn’t leave me - sharp cheekbones, unreadable eyes and the soft rasp of his voice against my ear that night. I remembered the way he didn’t ask questions. The way he let me fall apart in his arms.

And I’d let him touch parts of me no one else ever had. I didn’t even know his name then.

Not until I turned on the television the next morning.

A business news anchor chirped out his name like it was gold-plated, “Damon Blackwood.” The CEO of Blackwood Enterprises. One of the youngest billionaires on the East Coast. He is wealthy, ruthless and untouchable. He is the owner of the same hotel chain that had fired me without a second thought.

The same hotel I had spent three years in, serving the powerful and privileged. The hotel where my dreams had unraveled in a single afternoon over a crime I didn’t commit.

I had fallen into his room that night. I had fallen into his arms.

My body felt like it wasn’t mine anymore.

I curled into a ball on the couch and held my stomach. It didn’t show, not yet. A fragile heartbeat I couldn’t hear. A promise I never planned.

I wanted to tell someone, because my head wanted to explode. But who did I have?

My best friend, Harper? The same woman I had caught in bed with Caleb?

Caleb? The man who told me “you’re overreacting” as I stood in the doorway watching his betrayal?

“And my family?” I laughed bitterly as my heart swayed.

My father hadn’t spoken to me in over a year. Not since I told him I didn’t want to help rebuild his broken business empire.

He would never forgive me for turning my back on the Hart name.

He had spent years blaming Damon Blackwood’s father for everything that went wrong in his life - his business loss, his bankruptcy and our ruined reputation. The Blackwoods were the enemy, the devils he had warned me about since I was twelve.

And now, I had given myself to one of them. Even if he didn’t know it. Even if it was only one night. Even if it was a mistake.

I felt so terrible within me.

The next few days passed in a haze. I barely ate. I didn’t leave the apartment. I avoided the mirror, afraid of what I’d see. A girl who had made the worst kind of mistake. A girl who didn’t deserve to raise a child in the first place.

But when I walked past the mirror, I saw something unexpected. I felt bitter.

Somewhere in the hollow of my chest, a quiet voice whispered, ‘you’re not alone now.’ Goosebumps moulded on my skin.

I pressed my palm against my belly. I wasn’t just running from my past anymore. I was running toward something. And I needed to protect it.

I opened my laptop and typed “Damon Blackwood child scandal” into the search bar.

Nothing surfaced. No ex-girlfriends coming forward. No illegitimate child rumors. No scandal of any kind.

He was clean - too clean for person that frolic around.

The kind of man who had everything to lose.

I bit my lip, my fingers hovering over the keyboard.

What if I told him?

What if I tracked him down and said, “You’re going to be a father”?

Would he believe me?

Would he think I was after his money?

Would he accuse me of setting him up?

The fear in my stomach turned to knots. And worse, what if he tried to take the child from me?

A man like Damon wouldn’t let a Hart raise his bloodline.

Not when he had the power to do anything he pleased. Not when my last name carried a vendetta older than I was.

I opened my father’s dusty old file cabinet, the one I hadn’t touched since leaving his house. Inside were the what happened that I never asked to inherit. Contracts, newspaper clippings and red-marked papers.

One document stood out. It was a legal complaint filed by my father against Blackwood Enterprises that was dismissed in court.

It was a blood feud. One I had tried my whole life to stay out of. And now, my child was in the middle of it.

I slammed the drawer shut with my heart pounding, “No. He mustn’t know.”

Whatever it took, I would find a way to raise this child alone.

I began selling my things the next day. The couch, the microwave and the tiny dining table. Anything that wasn’t essential had to go.

I posted them online and held a moving sale in the lobby of my apartment building. My landlord eyed me warily because he hadn’t gotten last month’s rent yet.

I used the money to buy vitamins, a baby book, and a used suitcase. Then I booked a flight.

That was the only way Harper and Caleb wouldn't find out.

And I sure as hell wouldn’t tell Damon Blackwood.

The further I got from New York, the better.

I searched for cities where Blackwood Enterprises had no foothold. Somewhere he wouldn’t be looking. Somewhere I could be anonymous. Eventually, I chose Paris.

I’d always loved the idea of Paris.

A city full of dreams and reinvention. People always talked about it like it was romantic. For me, it was a chance to start over.

I didn’t even tell my landlord I was leaving.

I left the keys in the mailbox and walked away from everything.

As the plane lifted into the sky, I looked out the window with tears in my eyes and whispered to the bump that barely existed yet “We’re going to be okay. I promise.”