Updated Oct 1, 2025 • ~9 min read
Sienna stared at the stick in her hand like it was a live grenade.
Two lines.
Two unmistakable, life-altering, universe-shattering pink lines.
Her bathroom was too small suddenly, the walls pressing in, the fluorescent light buzzing too loud. She set the test on the counter with shaking hands, then picked it up again, squinting at it from different angles like the result might change if she just looked at it the right way.
It didn’t change.
She’d taken three tests. All positive. All screaming the same impossible truth.
“No,” she whispered to her reflection. “No, no, no.”
But her body had been trying to tell her for weeks, hadn’t it? The exhaustion that sleep couldn’t touch. The way her favorite coffee suddenly smelled like battery acid. The tenderness in her breasts that she’d written off as PMS, except her period was now two weeks late and denial wasn’t going to cut it anymore.
She was pregnant.
Pregnant.
With Damon Cross’s baby.
The thought hit her like a physical blow, and she sank onto the closed toilet lid, head in her hands, trying to remember how to breathe.
This couldn’t be happening. She’d been careful—they’d been careful—but apparently not careful enough, and now her entire carefully constructed life was imploding in real time.
Her phone buzzed on the counter. A message from her assistant: Hartwell decision expected this afternoon. Fingers crossed!
Right. The Hartwell contract. The promotion. The career trajectory she’d sacrificed everything for. All of it suddenly felt impossibly distant, like it belonged to a different version of herself—the one from three weeks ago who hadn’t made the catastrophic mistake of sleeping with her rival.
Another buzz. This time from Bianca: Lunch? You’ve been weird all week.
Sienna typed back: Can’t. Crisis.
What kind of crisis?
She stared at the cursor, then at the pregnancy tests lined up on her bathroom counter like evidence at a crime scene.
The kind we don’t text about.
Coming over.
No—
But Bianca had already sent a gif of someone kicking down a door, and Sienna knew better than to try to stop her. When Bianca Whitaker decided you needed intervention, intervention was happening whether you liked it or not.
Twenty minutes later, Sienna heard her spare key in the lock.
“Sienna? Where’s the—” Bianca’s voice cut off as she appeared in the bathroom doorway, taking in the scene: Sienna still on the toilet, eyes red, three pregnancy tests on the counter.
“Oh, honey.” Bianca’s expression cycled through shock, concern, and grim understanding in about two seconds. “Please tell me it’s not—”
“It’s Damon’s.” The words tasted like poison. “It has to be.”
“Has to be? Sienna, have you been seeing someone else?”
“No! God, no. There’s been no one for months. Just that one night, and apparently that was enough to destroy my entire life.” Her laugh was borderline hysterical. “I don’t even like him, Bianca. I hate him. He’s arrogant and infuriating and we’ve been trying to ruin each other’s careers for three years, and now I’m pregnant with his baby.”
Bianca sat down on the edge of the bathtub, processing. “Okay. Okay, we can work with this. First question: are you sure it’s his?”
“Who else would it be? I haven’t had sex in eight months, and that was with Marcus, who I broke up with last January. The timeline doesn’t work for anyone but Damon.” She pressed her palms to her eyes. “This is a nightmare.”
“Have you told him?”
“Are you insane? No. Absolutely not. I’m not telling him anything.”
“Sienna, he has a right—”
“He has a right to nothing.” She stood abruptly, pacing the small bathroom. “This is my body, my life, my decision. And I’ve decided that telling Damon Cross I’m pregnant with his child is the fastest route to complete professional annihilation.”
“You can’t just not tell him.”
“Watch me.” But even as she said it, Sienna knew it was an empty threat. She wasn’t cruel enough to hide this forever—but she needed time. Time to think, time to plan, time to figure out how to survive the detonation this news would cause.
Her phone rang. The Hartwell Group.
She and Bianca locked eyes.
“Answer it,” Bianca whispered.
Sienna’s hand trembled as she accepted the call. “This is Sienna Laurent.”
“Ms. Laurent, James Hartwell. I wanted to personally inform you that after careful deliberation, we’ve decided to move forward with Cross Industries for our expansion project.”
The words hit like a gut punch, but she kept her voice steady. “I appreciate you letting me know personally, Mr. Hartwell. May I ask what decided the vote?”
“Frankly? It was close. Your proposal was exceptional. But Mr. Cross offered some additional value propositions that aligned more closely with our long-term vision.” He paused. “I hope we’ll have the opportunity to work together in the future.”
“Of course. Thank you for the opportunity.” She ended the call before her voice could crack.
“Sienna—”
“He won.” The room tilted slightly. “Damon won the contract, and I’m pregnant with his baby, and I think I’m going to be sick.”
She barely made it to the toilet before her stomach rebelled.
Bianca held her hair back, and when the retching finally stopped, pressed a cool washcloth to her forehead. “Okay. New plan. We’re getting you off this bathroom floor, you’re going to drink some water, and then we’re going to figure this out like the badass problem-solver you are.”
“I don’t feel very badass right now.”
“That’s the hormones talking. Come on.”
They relocated to the living room, where Sienna curled into the corner of her couch with a glass of water she couldn’t make herself drink. Outside, the city hummed with normal life—people going to work, running errands, living in a world where their biggest rival wasn’t the father of their unborn child.
“I need options,” Sienna said finally. “Logical, rational options.”
Bianca pulled out her phone, already typing. “Okay. Option one: you tell Damon, deal with the fallout, figure out co-parenting.”
“Next.”
“Option two: you don’t tell him, raise the baby yourself, hope he never connects the dots.”
“That’s insane and probably illegal.”
“Option three—” Bianca hesitated. “You don’t keep it.”
Sienna’s hand moved to her stomach instinctively, protectively. “I… I don’t know if I can do that.”
“Then you need to start thinking seriously about options one and two.”
But there was another option forming in Sienna’s mind, dangerous and desperate and probably insane. An option that involved Lucas Cross—the charming twin, the one who’d smiled at her across that brunch restaurant, who had Damon’s face but none of his sharp edges.
What if…?
No. That was crazy. That was soap opera levels of delusional.
Except.
“What if it’s not Damon’s?” she said slowly.
Bianca’s head snapped up. “What are you talking about? You just said—”
“What if I tell people it’s not Damon’s? What if there was someone else, someone more… appropriate?”
“Sienna, you can’t just make up a fake father—”
“Not fake.” Her mind was racing now, grasping at straws that might hold her life together. “Lucas.”
“Lucas Cross? Damon’s twin brother?”
“Think about it. They’re identical. No one would question the resemblance. And Lucas is…” She trailed off, searching for the right words. “He’s everything Damon isn’t. Approachable. Kind. The kind of man who’d make sense as a father.”
“Except he’s not the father, and that’s insane.”
“Is it? Is it really crazier than telling Damon Cross—the man who just stole my biggest contract, who’s spent three years trying to destroy my career—that I’m carrying his child? Because I promise you, Bianca, that conversation ends with him either accusing me of trying to trap him or using this as ammunition to ruin me professionally.” Her voice rose. “I can’t give him that power. I can’t.”
“So your solution is to what, seduce his identical twin and convince everyone the baby is Lucas’s?”
Put like that, it sounded unhinged. But Sienna’s back was against the wall, and desperate times called for desperate measures.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know anything right now except that I’m pregnant, I’m terrified, and I need time to figure out how to survive this without losing everything I’ve worked for.”
Bianca was quiet for a long moment. “You’re spiraling.”
“I’m problem-solving.”
“You’re in denial.” But her voice was gentle, and when she moved to sit beside Sienna on the couch, pulling her into a hug, Sienna finally let herself break down.
She cried for the life she’d had three weeks ago. For the promotion that was probably never coming now. For the control she’d lost in Damon’s penthouse suite. For the tiny cluster of cells growing inside her that represented both a miracle and a disaster.
“It has to be Lucas’s,” she whispered into Bianca’s shoulder, trying the words out like a spell that might make them true. “When people ask, when this starts showing, it has to be Lucas. It’s the only way this works.”
“And what happens when the baby is born looking exactly like Damon?”
“They’re identical twins. No one will know the difference.”
“Sienna—”
“Please.” She pulled back, wiping her eyes. “Please just let me have this delusion for a little while longer. Let me pretend there’s a version of this that doesn’t end with my career in ruins and Damon Cross having power over me for the rest of my life.”
Bianca’s expression was torn between concern and resignation. “Okay. But eventually, you’re going to have to face reality.”
“I know.” Sienna took a shaky breath. “Just not today.”
Her phone buzzed again. Another message from that blocked number she’d never actually blocked, just muted.
I heard about Hartwell. For what it’s worth, your pitch was better.
She stared at the screen, imagining Damon on the other end—smug, victorious, completely unaware that their one night together had created something neither of them could walk away from.
“It has to be Lucas’s,” she breathed, closing her eyes against the wave of nausea that had nothing to do with morning sickness and everything to do with the lies she was already building.
It had to be.
Because admitting the truth—that Damon Cross had left a mark on her that would last a lifetime—was a surrender she wasn’t ready to make.
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