Chapter 192: Anastasia’s Reveal

Damian stood frozen, the silence in the room heavier than a tomb.

​"Oh, you absolute idiot, Henry!" Valerie groaned in utter defeat, burying her face in her hands before she could filter the venom. "You couldn’t have kept your mouth shut for five more minutes?!"

​Henry blinked, visibly recoiling at her outburst, entirely baffled as to what crime he had committed by reporting a corporate disaster.

​The sound of her voice snapped Damian out of his trance. His head whipped toward Valerie, his obsidian eyes narrowing into lethal slits.

​"You knew?" The question came out in a low, gravelly rasp that felt sharp enough to draw blood.

​Valerie winced, shrinking backward against the edge of the mahogany desk. "Damian, wait—it’s not what you think, okay? It’s not like that—"

​"Quiet," he commanded, his chest heaving with a harsh, ragged breath. He turned his terrifying focus onto his assistant. "How do you know this, Henry? Where did this come from?"

​Henry swallowed hard, stepping forward with his company tablet outstretched. His fingers trembled slightly as he handed it over.

​"The internal communications network, sir," Henry reported, his voice tight. "The private employee forum. It started fifteen minutes ago."

​Damian ripped the tablet from Henry’s grip. His eyes tore across the rapid-fire thread of messages—whispers of an heir, congratulations pouring in through encrypted department channels, speculation on stock stabilization. It wasn’t framed as idle, speculative office gossip. They were speaking with absolute certainty.

​"Why are they discussing this as an established fact?" Damian snarled, his knuckles whitening against the glass frame. "Why is half my staff acting as if it’s already an official press release and not just baseless chatter?!"

​"It was Garry, sir," Henry admitted, bracing for the fallout. "From Systems. Apparently... he saw something on Mrs. Sterling’s device during the cloud transfer. He made an offhand comment in the thirty-fifth-floor lounge, and it ignited the floor."

​The final piece of the puzzle slammed violently into place.

​The bizarre scene in the penthouse kitchen. The broken glass on the marble. Arthur Vance’s knowing wink in the corridor. The ransacked desk.

​Damian lowered the tablet, his gaze locking onto his sister with an intensity that made the air in the room turn arctic.

​"This is why," Damian said, his voice deadly calm, tilting the replacement phone in his palm. "This is why you were tearing my office apart. You weren’t looking for a charger. You were hunting for this phone."

​Valerie let out a long, shuddering sigh, the fight completely draining from her posture. She dropped her arms, knowing there were no lies left that could shield her.

​"Yes," Valerie confessed, her voice barely above a whisper. "I knew. I saw it before the screen broke. I just... I wanted Ana to see it first, Damian. She was supposed to find out on her own terms, not have it shoved in her face by your security team, and certainly not like this."

​Damian stared at her, genuine shock cracking through his ruthless exterior. His chest rose and fell in heavy, disbelieving strokes.

​"Did Mother know?"

​Valerie hesitated for a fraction of a second, then gave a shameless, guilty nod.

​"Damian, she was just trying to—"

​"Damn it!" Damian cursed violently, raking a hand through his dark hair as he spun away toward the panoramic windows.

​A wave of profound, suffocating disappointment settled in his chest. His own family. His mother and his sister had conspired under his own roof, playing games with something this monumental while he walked around his own headquarters like a blind fool.

​He whipped back around, his face hardened into stone as he raised Anastasia’s phone. His thumb hovered directly over the screen, ready to wake the display.

​"Damian, stop!" Valerie blurted out, taking a desperate step forward. "Ana doesn’t even know yet! She has no idea! She’s the one carrying it—she should be the very first person to look at that screen, not you!"

​"It’s far too late for that courtesy," Damian said coldly.

​He pressed the power button.

​The pristine glass screen flared to life, casting a pale glow across his chiseled features. The unread notifications cascaded downward in rapid succession, but the high-priority banner at the very top seized his entire existence:

​Cycle Tracker Alert:Period is 4 weeks late. High probability. Please log your symptoms or take an at-home test.

​Damian stopped breathing.

​The bustling Manhattan skyline outside, the frantic chatter of the corporate servers, the faint hum of the air conditioning—everything vanished into a vacuum of absolute silence. Four weeks. A month.

​His mind flashed back to the hospital room, the smell of smoke, the oxygen mask pressed to her pale face, and the ghost of the nursery they had locked away two years ago. His fingers gripped the cold edges of the phone, his heart slamming against his ribs with a force so violent it made his vision blur.

The rhythmic click of designer heels echoed down the private corridor, breaking through the suffocating vacuum of the room.

​The double frosted-glass doors swung open with an easy, unhurried push.

​"Damian?"

​Anastasia walked into the executive suite, a bright, genuine smile curving her lips. The color had returned to her cheeks after lunch, and a faint lightness lingered in her step as she carried her handbag over one arm, completely relaxed.

​"I finished down at the plaza, and Clara said tech had already sent the replacement unit up to your—"

​Her voice trailed off.

​The words died in her throat as her eyes swept across the room.

​The silence hanging in the air was so heavy it felt tangible. Valerie was pressed against the edge of the mahogany desk, her shoulders hunched, her head bowed in deep, suffocating guilt. Near the door, Henry stood completely rigid, his face drained of every drop of color, staring fixedly at the floor as if the room itself were on the verge of detonating.

​And then there was Damian.

​He was standing dead-center in the office, tall and motionless as carved marble. He wasn’t looking at the papers on his desk or the skyline behind him. His obsidian eyes were fixed entirely on her, wide with a raw, shattered intensity she had never seen on his face before.

​In his hand, gripped so tightly his knuckles were stark white, the screen of her restored phone blazed brightly against the dim room.

​Anastasia’s smile slowly faded, replaced by an uneasy, creeping confusion. She looked between the three of them, the knot of cold dread tightening in her chest.

​"What’s going on?" Ana asked softly, her gaze drifting to Damian’s pale, unreadable expression. "Why are you all looking at me like that?"