The Secret Pregnancy of the Billionaire's Ex-Wife

She Left With His Baby The Billionaire’s Secret Scandal 314

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Christopher POV

The Italian villa was exactly as she'd left it. I insisted on that. The cleaning staff came twice a week, dusting and vacuuming, keeping mold from the bathrooms and insects from the kitchen. But they had strict instructions: nothing was to be moved. Nothing was to be thrown away. Not even things that seemed like garbage.

"Sir, the children's old drawings are fading in the sunlight," Maria, the head housekeeper, once pointed out. "Perhaps we could move them to-"

"Leave them," I'd interrupted. "They stay exactly where they are."

She'd nodded, lips pressed together in that way people do when they think you've lost your mind but are paid too well to say so.

Maybe I had. Lost my mind. It would explain why I found myself here again, alone on Christmas Eve, in a house full of ghosts.

I walked the familiar path from the front door to the living room, my fingers trailing along the wall where pencil marks still recorded the twins' growth. Each line had a date beside it, some in my handwriting, some in Angela's.

Ethan, age 3. Aria, age 4 and two months. Both, age 5.

The living room was still arranged the way Angela had set it up years ago. The oversized sectional where we'd spent countless nights watching movies, the twins squeezed between us. The coffee table with a faint ring where I'd once set down a hot mug without a coaster, earning Angela's exasperated sigh.

the one who insisted

furniture care," she'd shot back, but there was no

puzzles were stacked neatly, just as he'd always left them. I reached for the small pink blanket folded at the bottom-Aria's "special blankie" that she'd carried everywhere

was soft with age and countless washings. I pressed it to my face, inhaling deeply, but any trace of that baby scent was long gone, replaced by dust and time. Still, I folded it

Dr. Seuss books stood alongside Italian fairy tales. I remembered reading to them each night,

why is his heart too small?" she'd demanded when

just don't know how to love properly," I'd explained, catching

sad," Ethan had concluded

that changed color when filled with cold liquid. He'd refused to drink from anything else for months. Angela had finally bought three identical cups to rotate when one needed

I found a small rubber pacifier. Aria had been almost three before she'd given hers up, and only after I'd convinced her that big girls didn't need pacifiers. She'd handed it over with great ceremony, extracting a

broke that

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shelves, glow-in-the-dark stars still stuck to the ceiling. I'd helped them place those stars, lifting each child in turn so they could reach. Aria

it lightly around the

hairbrush still held strands of her dark hair. I found myself here more than once, gently removing a single strand, wrapping it around my finger like a

clothes she'd left behind. The sleeves of her sweaters, the silk of her robes. The sundress she'd worn on Aria's fourth birthday, when we'd had a picnic by the lake. The faded jeans with a small paint stain from when we'd repainted the kitchen and she'd

of Christmas ornaments the children had made. Construction paper stars covered in glitter. Popsicle stick frames with their school photos. Salt dough handprints painted in bright

the Christmas tree I'd had delivered and set up earlier that day. Eight feet tall, just like the ones we'd had when they lived here. I'd spent hours decorating it