Chapter 307:

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He hadn’t left. He’d started to, his jaw tight with a cold, possessive anger at seeing her there, but his phone had buzzed with an urgent text from his London office. He had stepped back into the relative quiet of the corridor to read it, his back turned. The message was trivial, a distraction, but it had kept him there just long enough. As he was about to turn and leave for good, Maeve’s voice, sharp and conspiratorial, snagged his attention like a fishhook. He froze, melting back into the shadows, compelled to hear the rest of the venomous plot. His face was a mask of cold, hard fury. His eyes, fixed on Elisa, were filled with a disgust so profound it was like a physical blow.

Maeve saw him and gasped, stepping back. “August… I didn’t see you there.”

August ignored her. He walked slowly toward Elisa, his footsteps echoing in the quiet hall. He stopped a few feet away, his gaze sweeping over her like a searchlight.

“A baby,” he said, his voice low and dangerous. “So that’s your grand plan. You want to trap me with a bastard child to get your hands on the trust.”

Elisa felt the blood drain from her face. “No, August, that’s not—”

𝖸𝘰u𝗋 𝗱𝖺𝘪𝗹y 𝖽𝗈ѕe 𝗼𝘧 𝘯о𝗏𝘦𝗹𝘀 𝗼𝘯 g𝖺𝘭𝗻𝘰𝗏е𝘭𝘴.𝘤o𝗆

“Don’t,” he cut her off, his voice like a whip. “Don’t insult my intelligence. I heard every word. You think I don’t know what kind of woman you are? You’re desperate. You’re cheap. And you think a pregnancy test is a winning lottery ticket.”

He leaned in, his face inches from hers. “Let me make one thing perfectly clear, Elisa. You will never have my child. I will make sure of it. And if you try to pull a stunt like this, I will destroy you so thoroughly you’ll wish you’d never been born.”

He straightened up, his lip curling in a sneer. He turned to Maeve, who was trembling with fear.

“And you, Kearney. If I hear one more word of this ‘strategy’ from you or your firm, Chambers Group will pull every contract, every sponsorship, every piece of business we have with you. Do you understand?”

Maeve nodded frantically. “Yes. Yes, Mr. Chambers. I understand.”

August didn’t look at Elisa again. He simply turned on his heel and walked away, his footsteps fading into the distance.

The silence he left behind was deafening.

Elisa stood there, frozen. The misunderstanding was a chasm, wide and unbridgeable. He thought she was a schemer. He thought she was trying to trap him. He didn’t know the truth — that she already had his child, a child he had just called a “bastard” and a “stunt.”

The irony was a knife in her heart.

Maeve let out a shaky breath. “Elisa… I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Elisa said, her voice hollow. “None of it matters.”

She turned and walked away, leaving Maeve standing alone in the corridor. She walked past the ballroom, past the laughter and the music, and out into the cold New York night.

Elisa didn’t go home. She couldn’t face the quiet of the safe house, not with the echo of August’s words ringing in her ears. She needed a drink. She needed noise. She needed to disappear.

She walked back into the St. Regis, but instead of returning to the ballroom, she went to the hotel’s famous bar. It was dark, crowded, and loud — the perfect place to be alone.

She sat at a corner table, nursing a glass of whiskey, staring at nothing. The burn of the alcohol was a welcome distraction from the cold emptiness in her chest.

She didn’t notice the man until he was standing right next to her.

“Hey there, sweetheart.”

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