The boardroom was silent.

Not the comfortable kind of silence the heavy, suffocating kind that came right before I made grown men sweat through their custom suits. I leaned back in my chair, I let the silence stretch three beats too long watching the CFO's left eyelid twitch. The quarterly reports lay untouched on the table between us. They were perfect. Flawless. Which made what I was about to do even more satisfying. watching as Richards from Marketing tugged at his collar like it was strangling him.

Good.

"Burn them."

My voice cracked through the room like a whip.

Twelve Armani clad executives froze mid breath.

"E-Excuse me, Mr. Cross?" The CFO's fingers

trembled against his pen.

I leaned forward. "You heard me. Light a fucking match." My knuckles rapped against the glass tabletop. "These numbers are bullshit. I know it. You know it.

The question is..." I stood slowly, circling the table like a shark, " ...did you think I wouldn't

notice?"

The junior analyst vomited into his designer briefcase.

I didn't blink.

"Let me make this simple," I said, my voice calm, sharp. "You had one job. One. And yet somehow, our competitor now has our prototype designs. So tell me, Richards was it incompetence? Or did you just forget which side signs your paycheck?"

Richards opened his mouth, then closed it. His Adam’s apple bobbed.

I didn’t blink.

Across the table, my CFO, Mark, cleared his throat. "Elijah, maybe we should—"

"Fire him?" I finished. "Yes. We should."

Richards paled. "Mr. Cross, I swear, I didn’t—"

"Security will escort you out." I didn’t raise my voice. Didn’t need to. "And if I ever see you near another Cross Industries project, I’ll bury you in lawsuits so deep you’ll need a shovel to breathe. Understood?"

The room was ice. No one moved. No one dared.

Richards stood on shaky legs and left without another word.

I waited until the door clicked shut before turning to the rest of the board. "Next item."

As if nothing had happened.

Because to me, it hadn’t.

My phone buzzed as I stepped into my office. Isabella.

I swiped to decline.

She called again.

I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. "What."

"Elijah, please" Her voice was thick with tears. Fake ones. Isabella didn’t cry unless there was an audience. "You can’t just ignore me. Not after what we—"

"After what you did," I corrected, my voice lethally quiet. "You went behind my back. You lied. You manipulated—"

"I love you!"

I laughed. A cold and hollow sound. "You love my name. My money. My empire." I paced to the window, staring down at the city below. "Did you really think I wouldn’t find out you tampered with your birth control?"

Silence.

Then, a whisper: "I just wanted—"

"A baby. Yes, I know." My grip tightened on the phone. "Not with me. You wanted a paycheck. A legacy. Well, congratulations, Isabella. You just lost both."

I hung up. Blocked her number. Tossed the phone onto my desk.

Pathetic.

Women always wanted something. Always thought they could play me, manipulate me, trap me.

But no one trapped Elijah Cross.

No one.

The call came at midnight.

I was in my home office, reviewing acquisition files a half empty glass of whiskey sitting untouched on my desk. My phone buzzed with a call from an unknown number. I almost ignored it.

"Mr. Cross." The voice on the other end was tight, professional, but with an undercurrent of something else. Fear. "This is Dr. Bennett from Silverthorne Fertility. There's been... an incident."

I swirled the whiskey in my glass, unimpressed. "I don’t do business with clinics."

A pause. Then, carefully: "It's about your sperm sample."

My hand stilled.

"What about it?"

Another pause. Too long. My fingers tightened around the glass.

"There was a mix up," the doctor said, each word measured. "It was accidentally administered to another patient."

Silence.

The words didn’t make sense. They couldn’t.

"Administered," I repeated, my voice dangerously calm.

"An injection. The labels were switched. We only just realized

"Explain."

The doctor’s breath hitched. "There was a labeling error during processing. Your sample was injected into another patient during what was supposed to be a routine vitamin shot."

My grip on the phone tightened. "You're telling me," I said, each word slow, deliberate,

"that someone injected my sperm into a

Stranger?"

Silence. Then a quiet "Yes."

The glass shattered in my hand.

Whiskey and blood dripped onto my desk, but I barely felt it. My pulse roared in my ears, a white hot fury rising so fast it blurred my vision.

I stood so fast my chair slammed into the wall behind me.

"Who." It wasn't a question.

"We can't disclose that information due to

HIPAA-"

"Who!" The word tore from my throat, raw and guttural.

"A female patient," the doctor stammered.

"Late twenties.

No prior fertility treatments.

We've already contacted her-“

I ended the call before she could finish.

Then I destroyed the office.

The chair went first hurled into the wall hard enough to crack the plaster.

It wasn't enough. The rage burned too hot too deep.

First Isabella's little stunt this morning and now this. Two tricks in one day. Two attempts to trap me, control me and tie me down with obligations I never chose.

My phone buzzed again. The same number

I answered on the last possible ring.

"Fix. It." Each word was a bullet.

"Mr. Cross, we're doing everything we can-"

"You have twenty four hours to terminate this

pregnancy," | said, my voice terrifyingly calm now. "Or I will personally ensure every doctor at your

clinic never practices medicine again."

The line went dead.

Somewhere out there, a woman was carrying my child against both my will. A woman whose name I didn't even know.

The file landed on my desk with a slap.

My lawyer, Carson, stood stiffly in front of me, his expression carefully blank. "The clinic finally caved. Here’s everything they have on the patient."

I didn’t touch it. Just stared at the plain manila folder like it might detonate.

"Name?"

"Layla Carter."

The air left my lungs in one sharp exhale.

Carter.

A name I hadn’t heard in years. A name that still tasted like bile in my mouth.

I flipped open the file.

Her photo stared back at me dark hair, defiant eyes, the same stubborn tilt to her chin she’d had at the gala. The woman from the fundraiser. The one who’d looked at me like I was something she’d scraped off her shoe.

And now she was carrying my child.

The universe has a sick sense of humor.

I kept reading.

Age: 28. Occupation: Marketing director. Father: Daniel Carter.

My fingers curled into fists.

Daniel fucking Carter. The man who’d smiled at my father over whiskey and cigars before plunging the knife in his back. The man who’d stolen millions and left our family name in ruins.

And now his daughter his precious, virginal daughter was pregnant with my blood.

The irony was almost poetic.

I closed the file.

"Get me everything on her. Work history. Bank statements. Medical records." My voice was eerily calm. "And dig deeper into that clinic. I want to know exactly when and where my sample was taken."

Carson hesitated. "You think this was deliberate?"

I smiled. It wasn’t pleasant.

"Does it matter?"

Because whether this was an accident or some twisted scheme, the outcome was the same.

Her father had stolen from mine.

Now she thought she could steal from me.

Funny.

Daniel Carter’s daughter was mine now.

And I was going to make sure he knew it.