Chapter 6: You'll Be Nothing Without Me

Lena's POV

I drew a slow breath and forced down the nausea clawing at the back of my throat. At the far end of the hallway, the elevator numbers were counting down. I turned and started back toward the VIP ward.

I needed to find Julian. I needed to tell him everything.

I had barely taken a few steps when I heard the sharp slap of footsteps behind me.

"Lena!"

I stopped and turned around, my expression cold.

Elliott had come back. He had his car keys pinched between his fingers — he must have forgotten them — but the moment he saw me, the flicker of surprise in his eyes hardened almost instantly into undisguised contempt.

"I knew you were following me." He crossed the distance between us in a few long strides and planted himself in my path, looking down at me from his full height. "When are you going to stop?"

I looked at the face I had once loved for three years and felt my stomach turn.

"Move," I said flatly. I had nothing left to say to him.

He didn't move. His gaze traveled over the bandage on my forehead and my pale face, and a thin, contemptuous smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. "Drop the act, Lena. You made enough of a scene at the clinic today. Did you really think showing up here would change anything?"

"I said move."

"Stop pretending." He cut me off, his tone carrying the particular brand of arrogance that belongs to men who have never once been told no. "I know the marriage certificate hit you hard. But you need to face reality. You're an orphan. No connections, no money. Walk away from me and you won't even have a roof over your head." He stepped closer, dropping his voice. "For the sake of three years together, I'm offering you something reasonable. Apologize to Cecilia, stop making trouble, and I'll buy you an apartment, give you a monthly allowance. You can stay in my life. As my mistress. That's the best arrangement I can offer you."

His mistress.

The two words landed like a blow to the back of the skull.

His audacity was breathtaking — and it had just reached a new level. He had spent three years lying to me with a fake marriage certificate, lacing my milk with contraceptives, and now he stood here demanding that I apologize to his stepmother and thank him for the privilege of becoming his side piece.

I had no idea what I had ever seen in this man. No idea how I had ever convinced myself he loved me.

I didn't hesitate. I raised my hand and slapped him across the face.

The crack of it rang down the empty corridor. His head snapped sideways. A vivid set of red finger marks bloomed across his cheek.

He turned back slowly, his eyes burning.

"You just hit me."

"Consider it long overdue," I said, my voice completely level. "Take your nauseating sense of superiority and get out of my sight, Elliott."

Something snapped in him. He lunged forward and seized my wrist, his grip crushing, the kind of grip designed to make you understand exactly how much stronger he is. "Don't push me, Lena. You think you're something? Without my protection, you're nothing in this city. Nothing." He started dragging me toward the elevator. "You're coming with me right now. You're going to apologize to Cecilia."

"Let go of me—"

"Let go of her."

The voice came from the other end of the hallway — low, unhurried, and carrying the kind of authority that doesn't need to be raised to be obeyed.

Elliott went rigid.

His grip on my wrist went slack.

I wrenched my arm free and stepped back.

Julian was standing outside the VIP ward door. He still wore that long, dark coat. The dim overhead light fell across the sharp angles of his face and his gray-blue eyes, which held no warmth whatsoever as they moved between us.

The air in the corridor seemed to stop moving.

Elliott turned. The moment he registered who was standing there, every trace of bravado drained from his face and left something rawer behind — fear, clean and unconcealed. Julian wasn't just his father. Julian was the man who controlled every dollar he would ever touch, every opportunity he would ever be handed. In Julian's presence, Elliott barely remembered how to breathe.

"F — Father?" His voice cracked on the word.

He had clearly not expected this. And in the space of a second, acting on pure panicked instinct, he reached out and pulled me against him, one arm locking around my waist hard enough to compress my ribs.

"What are you doing—" I hissed.

He dug his fingers into my side in warning and smiled up at Julian, his whole face rearranging itself into something warm and solicitous. "Father, what brings you here? Lena wasn't feeling well tonight, so I brought her in. I was worried about her."

He said it easily, as though the man who had just tried to drag me down the hallway by force was a stranger who had nothing to do with him. And then he bent his head to my ear, his voice dropping to something that didn't travel. "Say one word about me and Cecilia to him, and I will make your life hell. I promise you that."

Nausea rolled through me in a fresh wave. I could smell Cecilia's perfume on his jacket.

I reached down, found the soft skin on the inside of his forearm beneath the expensive fabric of his sleeve, and pinched. Hard. I twisted.

Elliott's breath hissed sharply through his teeth. His body flinched, but with Julian watching, he couldn't do anything except clench his jaw and absorb it, the muscle in his cheek twitching with the effort of staying still.

I shoved him away and put several feet of corridor between us.

Julian had watched all of it. His gaze moved from Elliott's arm — still trembling slightly — to my face, which I knew was not doing a very good job of hiding my disgust. The corner of his mouth curved in something that wasn't quite a smile.

"Is that right," he said. Not a question. "You brought her here."

Elliott swallowed. "Yes, Father, Lena was—"

"I seem to recall," Julian said, cutting through the sentence without raising his voice, "that she arrived in my car. With me."

The hallway went completely silent.

The color left Elliott's face in one clean sweep. He stared at Julian, then swung his gaze to me, his jaw working. "You — you came here with him?"

He couldn't make sense of it. I was an orphan with nothing to her name, and somehow I had arrived at this hospital in Julian Anderson's car. The math didn't work for him, and I could watch him trying to make it add up and failing.

"What were you two doing together?" His voice had gone tight, the careful mask of a moment ago entirely gone. "Lena. Why were you with my father?"

I looked at him steadily. "That's none of your business."

"You're my—" He stopped himself.

I watched him remember the fake marriage certificate — the one I had already thrown back in his face — and I watched his complexion cycle through several unpleasant shades.

Then the elevator chimed.

The doors slid open, and Cecilia stepped out, one hand cradling her rounded belly, the other holding a thick fold of papers — prenatal documents, by the look of them. She was wearing a pale yellow knit top and looking down at her feet as she walked.

"Did you find your keys? The baby's been kicking again. The doctor said—"

She looked up.

The smile died on her face the instant she saw Julian. She went completely white. Her entire body shook once, violently, as though the floor had moved beneath her.

The papers fell from her hand. They fanned out across the cold tile — white sheet after white sheet, each one printed with the unmistakable gray shadows of an ultrasound image.

The temperature in that corridor seemed to drop ten degrees all at once.