Chapter 4I Was Her Seven Year Secret

We met at a secluded coffee shop the next morning.

Harrison looked at me without a shred of surprise. "Silas. I knew about you the day I proposed to Madeline. In our world, a wife having a little something on the side isn't a scandal—it’s a Tuesday. Madeline was actually quite disciplined; she only had you."

"I wasn't 'something on the side,'" I spat.

"What you were is irrelevant," Harrison said, sliding a new medical report across the table.

Twelve weeks had become thirteen.

"Madeline is carrying the Starling heir. I won't have your little temper tantrums staining my child’s name. I had to clean up your mess on social media."

He pushed a non-disclosure agreement and a blank check toward me.

"Sign this. Film a video admitting you fabricated the whole thing for clout. Leave the city in forty-eight hours. Fill in whatever number makes you feel like a man again."

I pushed the check back and stood up to leave.

"Silas," Harrison called out, his voice chillingly calm. "You won't survive in this city. If you change your mind, you know where to find me."

He was right.

By noon, I’d been rejected by four different firms. The HR managers looked at my resume, then at their screens, and shook their heads.

"Character issues," one said. "We can't have our brand associated with... well, your situation."

Someone took a photo of me leaving an interview and tagged Madeline.

Seconds later, she called.

"How much more of a fool are you going to make of yourself, Silas? I offered you a job, and you’d rather go out and be a laughingstock? Stop this. Now."

"Is that all I am to you, Madeline? A joke?"

The wind in the city was biting, cutting through my thin jacket.

Madeline was silent for a long beat. "Silas, I—"

I hung up.

Minutes later, my phone vibrated again. This time, it was my mother. Her voice was a ragged, sobbing mess.

"Silas! What have you done? People are saying you’ve been someone’s kept man for seven years! Your father... he saw it on the news. He had a heart attack, Silas. The surgery is fifty thousand dollars... we don't have it..."

A snowball hit the side of my head, thrown by a couple of teenagers across the street.

"Hey, look! It’s the gold-digger!" they yelled, laughing as they ran off.

I fell to my knees in the slush, my tears hot against the cold screen of my phone.

I took a breath and dialed the number I had vowed to forget.

Harrison answered on the first ring, his voice dripping with amusement. "Decided to be a realist?"

"I'll do it," I whispered.