The CEO's Regret: Too Late To Beg

Bennett introduced Elia as our "angel," the surrogate who would carry the heir his genetic condition supposedly prevented us from having.

But as he guided her to the sofa, fluffing a pillow behind her back while ignoring me standing in the cold draft, I realized the danger wasn't medical.

My suspicions were confirmed at the anniversary gala. I overheard Elia bragging in the restroom-she wasn't a clinical third party. She was his lover of fifteen years. I was just the "safe" wife on paper, the placeholder used to secure his inheritance until the time was right.

When Elia staged a fake fall near the champagne tower, Bennett didn't hesitate.

He roared at me, scooping her up to rush to the hospital for a "shock," leaving me standing alone in the foyer, blood dripping from a shard of glass embedded in my arm.

He didn't look back. Not for a second.

Sitting in the ambulance alone, I didn't cry. I didn't panic.

I realized I wasn't fighting for his attention anymore. I was calculating the cost of my freedom.

While he was holding her hand at the hospital, I returned to the empty house. I walked straight to his study and unlocked the filing cabinet containing the illegal financial records he thought I never checked.

He thought he was building a family.

He didn't realize he was handing me the weapon to dismantle his entire life.

Chapter 1

Bennett ushered the woman into our living room and introduced her as the vessel for our future, but the way his hand lingered on the small of her back told me she was already the center of his present.

"This is Elia," Bennett said. His voice held a warmth I hadn't heard in two years. "She's agreed to help us with the heir situation."

I looked at Elia. She was petite, with wide, innocent doe eyes that seemed to beg for forgiveness while demanding submission. She didn't look like a clinical surrogate. She looked like a secret kept in a glass box.

"It's nice to meet you, Kelsey," Elia said. Her voice was soft, like spun sugar.

I nodded, my throat too tight to speak. I was remembering the night Bennett sat me down, his face a mask of tragic resolve, telling me that his genetic condition made natural conception nearly impossible. He had told me that for my safety, for the sake of the Randolph legacy, we needed a third party.

I had cried. I had offered to take the risks, to undergo the hormone injections, the invasive procedures. I wanted to carry our child. I wanted to feel that connection.

"It's too dangerous for you," he had said then, kissing my forehead. "I can't risk losing you."

Now, watching him guide Elia to the sofa, fluffing a pillow behind her back before she even sat down, I realized the danger wasn't medical.

"Is the room temperature okay?" Bennett asked her, pointedly ignoring the fact that I was standing there in a thin silk blouse, shivering slightly from the draft.

"It's perfect, Ben," Elia smiled.

Ben.

I had never heard anyone call him Ben. To his family, he was Bennett. To his business partners, Mr. Randolph. To me, he was simply mine. Or so I thought.

I sat on the armchair across from them. I felt like a guest in my own home. They talked about appointments, about diets, about the timeline. Bennett leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his body physically shielding her from me, completely absorbed in her answers. I was a ghost haunting the perimeter of their conversation.

My mind drifted back to the early days. The pressure from his father, Mr. Randolph Senior. The constant lectures about the bloodline. Bennett had always seemed so burdened by it, so reluctant. I had comforted him, told him we would figure it out together. I had sacrificed my gallery openings, my art tours, just to be the supportive wife he needed during those stressful family dinners.

Now, looking at his animated face, I saw no burden. I saw eagerness.

"Kelsey?"

Bennett's voice snapped me back. His jaw tightened, looking at me as if I were a stain on an otherwise perfect picture.

"We need to clear out the guest wing," he said. "Elia will be staying with us for the duration. To ensure the baby is safe."

"Staying here?" I asked. My voice sounded hollow. "I thought we agreed on an apartment in the city."

"Plans change," Bennett said, waving his hand dismissively. "It's better this way. I can monitor everything personally."

Elia looked down at her hands, a small, triumphant smile playing on her lips. It was quick, almost imperceptible, but I saw it.

I stood up. The floor seemed to tilt beneath me, my legs numb and unresponsive.

"Do whatever you want," I said.

Bennett didn't even watch me leave. He was already pouring Elia a glass of water.

I walked into my studio and closed the door. The smell of turpentine and oil paint usually calmed me, but today it smelled like stagnation. I looked at the canvas on the easel. It was a chaotic mix of greys and blues.

I reached for my phone and opened the calendar. I scrolled back to the dates Bennett claimed he had fertility treatments. Then I opened his shared schedule, which he thought I never checked.

Business dinners. Late meetings. "Ben."

I felt a cold clarity wash over me. It wasn't panic. It was the absolute, freezing realization that I was standing on a trapdoor that had already opened.

I didn't cry. I walked over to the filing cabinet where Bennett kept the household financial records. My hands were steady as I pulled out the files. I walked to the scanner in the corner of the room.

One by one, I began to copy them.

Downstairs, I heard laughter. It was Bennett's laugh, loud and uninhibited. A sound I hadn't heard directed at me in months.

He thought he was building a family. He didn't realize he was dismantling one.

The house was slowly being colonized by things that weren't mine.

Pastel blankets were draped over the distressed leather sofas like flags of conquest. Bottles of prenatal vitamins cluttered the kitchen island, gleaming under the pendant lights. One Tuesday, a rocking chair materialized in the corner of the living room, usurping the space where my favorite reading lamp used to stand.

Bennett didn't ask.

He just displaced.

He dedicated his mornings to chauffeuring Elia to appointments and his evenings to reading parenting books aloud to her swelling belly. I became a specter in my own home, gliding through hallways, unseen and unheard.

"You're working late again?" Bennett asked one evening.

He was standing in the doorway of my studio, fastening his cufflinks. The scent of expensive cologne wafted into the room-the heavy, musk-based kind he reserved only for special occasions.

"I have a deadline," I lied. In truth, I was organizing old sketches, sliding them into portfolios. Preparing.

"Elia and I are going to dinner," he said, adjusting his collar. "She's craving Italian. You should come. It would look good."

It would look good.

Not I want you there. Not we miss you.

"I can't," I said, refusing to look up from my desk. "Enjoy the pasta."

He lingered for a second, a frown marring his forehead. "You're being distant, Kelsey. Ideally, you should be bonding with her. She's doing this for us."

"For us," I repeated. The words tasted like ash on my tongue.

"Yes. For us." He checked his watch, dismissing my tone. "Don't wait up."

When the front door clicked shut, the silence of the house felt heavy, almost suffocating.

I didn't work.

Instead, I went upstairs to our master bedroom and opened the walk-in closet.

Bennett's clothes were pressed and color-coded, a testament to his obsession with order. Mine had been pushed to the far end of the rack. On the floor, a shopping bag from a high-end boutique caught my eye. I peeked inside to find a cashmere wrap, soft and cream-colored.

I pulled it out, letting the fabric run through my fingers. It wasn't my style. I wore structured coats, dark colors, armor against the world. This was soft, helpless-feminine in a delicate way I had never been.

It was for her.

I put it back exactly as I found it.

Later that week, the sound of Bennett's low voice drew me to the library door. He was on the phone, his back to the entrance.

"Don't worry, little sister," he was saying, his tone unusually tender. "I'll handle it. You just rest."

Little sister.

I stood frozen in the hallway, gripping a stack of my art books until my knuckles turned white. He hung up and turned, spotting me. He didn't look guilty. He looked annoyed that I was existing in his peripheral vision.

"Who were you talking to?" I asked, though I already knew the answer.

"Elia," he said flatly. "She was feeling anxious."

"You called her little sister."

Bennett rolled his eyes, a gesture of supreme impatience. "It's a term of endearment, Kelsey. We grew up in the same circles. Our families know each other. You know that."

"I know a lot of things," I said, my voice steady.

"What is that supposed to mean?" He stepped closer, looming over me to assert his dominance. "You're acting paranoid. Is this about the hormones? Oh wait, you're not the one taking them."

The cruelty was casual, tossed out like a candy wrapper.

"No," I said quietly. "I'm not."

"Then stop making this difficult," he snapped. "I'm doing everything I can to secure our future. All you have to do is be supportive."

He walked past me, his shoulder brushing mine hard enough to make me stumble.

I went to the living room. It was raining outside, a gray, relentless drizzle that matched the coldness spreading in my chest. I looked at the wedding photo on the mantelpiece. We looked so young then. So stupid.

I took the photo down. The glass was cool against my fingertips.

I walked to the drawer where I kept the scissors and tape, but realized I didn't need them. I simply opened the back of the frame and slid the glossy print out.

I looked at Bennett's smiling face one last time.

Then, I folded the photo in half.

The crease ran right down the middle, severing his hand from my waist.

I didn't tear it. Not yet. I just placed it face down on the table, like a card I was refusing to play.

I went back to my studio and pulled out the binder I had hidden behind a large canvas. It was filled with photocopies of bank statements, property deeds, and tax returns.

Bennett thought I was jealous. He thought I was insecure about another woman carrying his child.

He had no idea that I wasn't fighting for his attention anymore.

I was calculating the cost of my freedom.

The Randolph Anniversary Gala was a suffocating sea of black ties and diamonds, a glittering monument to wealth and pretense.

I stood anchored by the champagne tower, nursing a glass of tepid sparkling water, forced to watch my husband parade his mistress around the ballroom.

Technically, Elia wasn't his mistress. In the sanitized language of our arrangement, she was our "angel."

But the way she clung to his arm, the way she whispered in his ear, told a different story. She was glowing, draped in a gown that deliberately accentuated the proud swell of her stomach.

She looked like the queen of the ball.

I was just the fading scenery, a ghost in my own life.

"They look so close, don't they?" a woman next to me whispered. It was Mrs. Gable, a woman whose smile was as sharp as her gossip. "It's wonderful how involved Bennett is with the process."

"Wonderful," I echoed, the word tasting like ash.

I needed air. The walls felt like they were closing in. I slipped away from the main hall and headed toward the powder room. The corridor was quiet, the muffled sound of the orchestra fading behind me.

I pushed open the heavy door to the restroom and froze.

Elia was standing by the mirrors, under the unforgiving glare of the vanity lights, touching up her lipstick. She wasn't alone. She was holding court with a group of young socialites, girls fresh out of debutante balls.

"Oh, Ben and I go way back," Elia was saying, her voice echoing off the marble tiles. "Since prep school. We were practically inseparable."

I stepped into a stall and locked the door, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

"Really?" one of the girls asked. "I thought he met Kelsey in college."

Elia laughed. It was a sharp, brittle sound. "Kelsey came later. Ben and I... we have history. Fifteen years of it. He paid for my art school in Florence, you know. Even when his father tried to cut him off for it. He said he'd burn the whole legacy down before he let me struggle."

I pressed my hand over my mouth. The tiles seemed to spin.

Fifteen years.

The realization hit me like a physical blow.

Every time Bennett had missed a birthday because of "work." Every time he had flown to Europe for "conferences."

Every time he had told me we couldn't afford a vacation because the company was tight, yet money had quietly siphoned from our accounts.

It was her. It had always been her.

"So why didn't you marry him?" another girl asked.

"Timing," Elia sighed, checking her reflection with a satisfied smirk. "And family pressure. He needed a wife who looked the part on paper. Someone safe. But look where we are now. I'm the one giving him the heir. I'm the one fulfilling his dreams. He told me last night that this baby is our second chance."

Our second chance.

I wasn't the wife. I was the placeholder. I was the beard.

The door to the restroom opened. Heavy, urgent footsteps broke the sanctuary.

"Elia? Are you in here?"

It was Bennett. He had crossed the line into the ladies' room without a second thought.

"I'm here, Ben," Elia cooed.

I peered through the crack in the stall door. Bennett walked up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder. He looked at her reflection with a hunger he had never, not once, shown me.

"Are you okay?" he whispered. "Do you need to leave? I can get the car."

"I'm fine," she said, leaning back into him. "Just telling the girls about us."

Bennett stiffened slightly. "Elia, be careful."

"Why?" She turned in his arms, running a hand down his lapel. "Everyone knows, Ben. Everyone can see it. Except maybe her."

Her.

Bennett didn't defend me. He didn't pull away. He just sighed, a sound of surrender, and kissed her forehead.

"Let's go," he said. "I don't want you on your feet too long."

They left together.

I waited until the door clicked shut. I waited until I could breathe without feeling like my lungs were full of glass.

I walked out of the stall. I looked at myself in the mirror. My face was pale, my eyes dark holes. I looked like a stranger.

I washed my hands. The water was freezing.

I remembered the vows Bennett had made to me. To love and cherish. To be faithful.

Lies. All of it.

I dried my hands on a paper towel and tossed it into the bin.

I wasn't going to cry. I wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of a scene.

I walked back out to the party. The music was louder now, a jarring counterpoint to the silence in my head.

I saw them across the room. Bennett was hand-feeding Elia a strawberry.

I watched them, feeling a strange, cold calm settle over me.

The puzzle pieces had finally snapped into place. The picture they formed was grotesque, but at least it was real.

I wasn't confused anymore. I wasn't hoping anymore.

I was done.