The Don Tore Up Our Divorce (Gemma and Cassian) novel Chapter 446

Chapter 446
Zina's POV

Haley just stares at me, her face a perfect blank slate of shock. She looks like I’ve just told her water isn’t wet. Completely lost for words.

“So,” she finally manages, her voice a thin thread, “what if you are pregnant with his child?”

The question lands like a rogue missile. My own mask of gaudy confidence slips. “You are pregnant?!” The exclamation pops out before I can stop it. My mind short-circuits. Peter? The man who styles himself as a dignified, if slightly lecherous, gentleman? He got this twenty-something bombshell pregnant? The hypocrisy is almost impressive.

Haley’s hand moves unconsciously to rest on her still-flat stomach. “Yes.”

My brain is a whirlwind. I came in here to suss out a gold digger, maybe stir the pot a little. I’ve stumbled into a full-blown telenovela plot twist. This is… bonus drama. Unexpected, but not unwelcome.

I scramble to recover, leaning in with what I hope looks like sisterly concern. “So, are you planning to keep the baby?”

She looks at me like I’ve asked if she plans to keep her head. “What else would I do?”

Time to play devil’s advocate, Fanny -style. “You are still so young,” I say, my voice dripping with faux-wisdom. “Having a child means your life is over. Besides,” I add, dropping my voice and repeating the crude chest-dragging gesture, “once you have a baby, how will you… you know… mess around with that old man’s son?”

Haley’s brow furrows in genuine confusion. “It does not have to be messing around with his son, right?”

I’m momentarily speechless. She has a point. My gold-digger playbook might be too one-dimensional. “Well… I suppose not,” I concede lamely.

The treatments finish. We wash off the masks and change back into our street clothes. As we’re packing up, I pull out my phone, all business. “Let’s exchange contact info. I still need to transfer the money to you.”

Haley hesitates, her eyes darting between me and the phone. The promise of a hundred thousand dollars wins. She nods, and we swap details.

Leaving the perfumed sanctuary, I feel the weight of the new intel. I spot our rented sedan and slide into the passenger seat with a heavy sigh, not bothering to look at the driver.

“It is over,” I announce to the interior, slumping back. “She is pregnant.”

The voice that replies is not Jeremy’s deep, familiar baritone. It’s lighter, tinged with amusement. “Who is pregnant again?”

I jolt upright as if electrocuted. Swiveling my head, I find myself staring not at my boyfriend, but at Liam. He’s lounging in the driver’s seat, looking rumpled and utterly out of place.

“Damn, are you a ghost?” The words burst out. This is Florisdale! What is he doing here?

Liam smirks, that infuriating, pretty-boy smirk. “Have you ever seen such a handsome ghost?”

I roll my eyes so hard I’m surprised they don’t stick. “If ghosts looked like you, Hell would be packed with souls eager to be reincarnated just to get away from the sight.”

I don’t have time for this. I don’t care how disheveled he looks. I yank the car door open and practically tumble out onto the curb. As I slam it shut, I mutter under my breath, “Such a crazy person.”

It’s only then I notice it. Parked right next to the car I just exited is another sedan. Same make. Same model. Same color. Different license plate. My face heats with embarrassment. In my post-revelation daze, I got into the wrong damn car. Of course we’d rent a common model to blend in. Of course Liam, inexplicably here, would rent the same one. The universe is mocking me.

I stomp over to the correct car and slide in, this time making sure it’s Jeremy’s stony profile I see.

“That woman,” I repeat, the words heavy. “She’s pregnant.”

Jeremy’s hands freeze on the steering wheel. His head turns slowly toward me. The shock on his face is real, stark. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. She said so herself.” I watch him process it. The Hartley family is already a circus. Jeremy, the difficult Matthew, Rachel off being ‘treated’ abroad… Adding a new baby to Peter’s late-life crisis is like adding a clown car to a three-ring circus.

The hospital in Florisdale is a clean, white labyrinth of quiet efficiency. Mr. Smith’s preparations were thorough; Mikhail is checked in and assigned a private room with a speed that feels surreal. The major surgery is locked in for tomorrow morning.

Standing by his bed, the sterile smell tickling my nose, a wave of practical anxiety hits. “Do we need to do any more tests or anything?” I ask, my voice sounding too loud in the hushed space. “For something this big, shouldn’t they check his other functions… his heart, his lungs?”

“They’ll do all that this afternoon,” Mikhail replies, his voice utterly calm. He’s already settled against the propped-up pillows, and in his hands isn’t a medical pamphlet or his phone, but a book. A real, physical book.

I lean closer, squinting at the cover. My eyebrows shoot up. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

A flicker of genuine surprise cuts through my worry. Mikhail, with his worn boots and military bearing, reading Mark Twain? It’s so strange it feels almost poetic. My estimation of his cultural depth, for lack of a better term, quietly revises itself upward several notches.

“Do you understand it?” The question slips out before I can stop it. It’s not meant to be condescending, just… honest. Twain’s prose, the dialects, the satire is a lot, especially for someone who grew up with a gun in his hand more often than a book…

He doesn’t look up from the page. His tone is dry, flat. “Is it that my brain is bad or my eyes?”

The retort is so perfectly, infuriatingly Mikhail that I’m momentarily speechless. An immediate, powerful urge to whack him on the head with his own pillow surges through me. I clench my fists at my sides. He’s a patient. He’s about to have brain surgery. Do not assault the brain surgery patient.

I swallow my irritation, turning to stare out the window at the unfamiliar palms. The silence stretches, filled only with the soft rustle of a turning page.

Then, after a while, his voice cuts through again, thoughtful now. “How would you feel if you escaped from your father’s imprisonment?”

The question, so bizarre and plucked from the heart of Huck’s journey, hangs in the antiseptic air. I turn back to look at him, lying there in his hospital gown, contemplating a fictional escape from a fictional father while awaiting a very real, very dangerous liberation from a piece of lead in his own skull.

I feel utterly, completely speechless.