Chapter 2 Deals In Daylight

Selina spent the next forty-eight hours trying to disappear.

She tossed the designer dress she'd "borrowed" into a charity bin outside the hotel. Her heels snapped on the marble lobby floor as she fled, mascara smudged and shame clinging to her like second skin. She left Monaco on a train, watching the sea blur into fields, her reflection in the window a woman she no longer recognized.

Back in Paris, in her shoebox apartment above a crêperie, reality came crashing down. No glitter. No champagne. No Dax St. James. Just a voicemail blinking red and a stomach that wouldn't stop turning.

At first, she thought it was the nerves.

Then the nausea came.

The third morning in a row, she barely made it to the sink.

"No," she whispered to the faucet, as if water could undo it.

Two pink lines said otherwise.

Three weeks later, Selina stood outside an office that didn't belong to her, in heels she couldn't afford, holding her breath.

The receptionist was too busy scrolling on her phone to question her fake appointment. Darian's assistant had scheduled it by accident-well, technically, Selina's voice disguised by a VPN number and a ridiculous British accent had helped. She didn't like being sneaky.

But she was getting good at it.

The door buzzed open. Darian's office was less a workspace and more a statement of power-glass walls, chrome accents, a single framed newspaper article of the brothers on Forbes' "Top 10 Richest Under 30."

He didn't look up when she entered.

"I have five minutes," he said without glancing her way.

Selina shut the door softly. "Then I'll only ruin four."

He finally looked up. His eyes narrowed.

"You."

"Yes, me."

"I should have you arrested for fraud," he said coldly.

She smiled tightly. "Or you can hear what I have to say and avoid the headline: 'Billionaire Twins' Secret Baby Scandal.'"

That got his attention.

He stood slowly. "You're pregnant?"

"Yes."

"With...?"

"That's the part I need help with."

He circled the desk like a lion, calculated and silent. "My brother hasn't returned my calls in two weeks. He does that when he's running from consequences."

Selina didn't flinch. "I didn't ask to be in your little war."

"No," he said. "But you're in it now."

She opened her purse, pulled out the sonogram, and placed it gently on his desk. The grainy photo looked alien, unreal-but to her, it was already everything.

"I don't want your money," she said. "I want the truth. And maybe... protection."

"From what?" Darian asked, voice like steel.

She looked him dead in the eye.

"From Dax."

Outside the office, a black car idled quietly, tinted windows rolled halfway down. A woman inside snapped a photo through a long-range lens.

She zoomed in on the sonogram in Darian's hand.

Then she picked up the phone.

"Yeah," she said. "You're gonna want to see this."