Chapter 4

Stella

I sat in my office for nearly an hour, doing nothing.

The test strip still lay at the corner of my desk. I hadn't touched it, just stared out the window, turning over in my mind all the consequences this thing would bring. But even as the traffic thinned and the streets grew cold and empty, I couldn't think of a single good outcome this situation could offer me.

My phone screen lit up again. I glanced at it—another call from Danny.

In this hour that belonged to me alone, Maya had called twice and Danny three times. I hadn't answered any of them, just watched the screen brighten and dim, brighten and dim.

It wasn't as if I'd never been through difficult periods before. In Lumière's first two years, I'd juggled three supplier defaults simultaneously, weathered a smear campaign orchestrated by competitors, and still managed to scrape together Leo's tuition and living expenses every month. Back then I slept less than ten hours a week and practically lived in the office. But those problems I could still control, still solve, still get my hands on.

Now, the things I'd once held firmly in my grip were all loosening at once—the shipping dispute at Red Hook remained unresolved, the funding for my upcoming product launch was stretched too thin—and this test strip was the one thing that had slipped completely beyond my control.

I took a deep breath to steady myself, opened my phone's call history, went into the blocked contacts, found that number, unblocked it, and dialed.

The phone rang for a long time, long enough that I thought he wouldn't answer. Then he did.

"It's me," I said. "I want to have a serious conversation with you about the trouble your leaky faucet has caused me."

"—What?" The man on the other end sounded congested, clearly woken from sleep.

But I didn't give a damn about this piece of garbage's sleep quality. I drew a breath, reined in my temper, and tried to use the most polite tone I could currently manage.

"I'm talking about your useless thing," I said, my words coming fast as the anger I'd accumulated over the past hour finally found an outlet. "You look like you should be in your thirties at least—how is it you don't even know how to take basic contraceptive measures? Did no one in your family bother to teach you? Or have you lived this long without knowing what condoms are for?"

"Wait a minute—" His voice held a kind of caught-off-guard pause. "Are you—lecturing me?"

"I'm merely stating facts, sir," I said. "As an apparently normally developed man in his thirties, you barged into someone else's room while not sober and failed to take the most basic—"

"As for who barged into whose room, shouldn't we clarify that first?" He cut me off, the bewilderment in his voice replaced by the arrogance that had made me want to strangle him from the first time I'd heard it on the phone. "And if I remember correctly, you were the one who threw yourself on top of me and kissed me that night."

"I was fucking drunk."

"What a coincidence. I was fucking drunk too."

I sighed, my tone losing some of its edge as guilt crept in. "Someone spiked my drink that night—"

"Someone spiked it? What proof do you have that it wasn't deliberate on your part, that someone else spiked it?"

I felt my temples begin to throb. "Because I have no fucking reason to do that, Mr. Ferretti. And even if I really wanted to approach you at that kind of event, I would at least make sure I'd identified the right person, make sure I wasn't drunk, and besides, I don't need to rely on—"

"Okay, okay, stop," he interrupted me haughtily, his tone clearly impatient. "Even if what you're saying is true, the responsibility for this kind of thing isn't one-sided. After all, you didn't take measures afterward either—"

"I didn't take measures?" I laughed in anger and cut him off, raising my voice to retort. "I didn't take measures because I never anticipated someone would crawl into my room while I wasn't conscious, much less anticipated that an asshole who uses his broken faucet to cause trouble for others would dare to spread his seed everywhere. Can you understand that logic? Or did your Ferretti family education only teach you how to get under other people's skirts while forgetting to mention basic cause and effect?"

Silence on the other end for two seconds. That silence gave me a subtle sense of satisfaction.

"...Have you confirmed you're pregnant now?" he finally said, his voice dropping half a tone, that thread of arrogance suppressed, but only just.

"Shut up. This is none of your fucking business."

I hung up first, slapped the phone face-down on the desk, then glanced at the test strip on the corner of the desk. I stood and walked to the liquor cabinet, wanting to pour myself a whiskey to calm down.

Three soft knocks came at the door—not heavy, Danny's rhythm. His knocks were always gentle.

I took two quick steps to throw the test strip in the trash, drew a deep breath to compose myself, and said softly, "Come in."

When Danny pushed the door open, he was carrying two coffee cups. Seeing me by the desk, his brow furrowed slightly. "Maya called me and said you went out and never came back. I guessed you'd be here, so I told her to go to sleep first. Sure enough." He set one of the cups on my desk. "Warm milk. Drink some—it helps with sleep."

I looked at the milk without speaking.

Danny was Lumière's COO, the actual pillar of the company's operations, and someone I'd known since childhood. His mother had been the caregiver hired by the Conti family to look after my sick mother. When my mother was still alive, Danny lived in the small house behind the Conti townhouse. We grew up together, and after his parents died, my mother kept him on. Later, when my mother passed too, he continued living with us until I moved out with Leo and Maya. He was the one person in my life I never needed to guard against.

The night of the gala, I'd planned to tell him something—words that would make clear my feelings for him beyond friendship. I'd rehearsed in the car many times, the phrasing, the timing, even imagined what expression he might wear when he heard it, whether he'd accept my confession.

But now, my hand unconsciously fell to my lower abdomen, and I couldn't help but sigh again.

Now wasn't the time.

Danny guided me to sit on the sofa. He stood behind me, placing his hands on my shoulders to massage them. His pressure was just right, neither too light nor too heavy. "Stella, you've been pushing yourself too hard lately," he said, his tone gentle but with a finality that didn't invite discussion.

"Lumière isn't in the same state it was two years ago. Lumière doesn't just have you—it has me, it has other people in the company holding things up. Lumière won't collapse. You don't need to shoulder everything alone."

I closed my eyes, leaning back against the chair, feeling the soreness in my shoulders gradually dispersed. "I know Lumière won't collapse, but Leo's starting school soon. I need to have MIT's first-year expenses ready in advance. And there's the Red Hook dispute, the legal fees piling up, the dock contract still unsigned. I'm just not in a position to relax and rest."

"I know, but how many hours have you slept this week?"

I didn't answer, because the answer wasn't dignified.

Danny's hands remained on my shoulders, pushing evenly, patiently. I just sat there, eyes closed, listening to the traffic outside that had already grown sparse, but my mind wasn't quiet at all. Too many trivial matters, yet I didn't dare let go of any of them, because I knew clearly that the moment I relaxed, something would collapse.

And now, I seemed to feel life stirring in my lower abdomen. I knew very well that the little thing in my belly wasn't even the size of a pea yet, so small I wasn't sure it counted as a real existence, but the weight it brought already pressed down on me until I couldn't breathe.

I had no way to tell Danny anything in this situation, no way to drag him into a predicament I hadn't even figured out myself. It wasn't fair—not fair to him, not fair to me either.

I opened my eyes, looking at the neat file folders on the bookshelf opposite, feeling like I was standing at an intersection where every direction was blocked, not a single path open.

I said, "You go ahead. I'm a bit tired and want to be alone for a while."

Danny's hands paused, then lifted from my shoulders. "Alright, rest well. Call me if you need anything." He closed the door behind him, very quietly.

I waited for the door to close completely, opened my eyes, picked up my phone, and opened the browser. My finger hovered over the keyboard for a long time before finally tapping the search bar and typing.

"How to get an abortion"