Chapter 3

The next morning.

When the door of the hospital's operating room closed, I drew a deep breath.

Forty-four years old.

Lying on that table, I felt steadier than I had twenty years ago giving birth to Melissa.

When I came out of the operating room.

There were plenty of private messages waiting from media outlets I'd worked with before.

They had photos of Melissa, big belly and all, cozied up with Sanjay's family, and they wanted their hush money.

In the old days I'd have had PR contact them to bury the story and told finance to wire the payment that same night.

Now I looked at those photos on my phone.

And I said, calm, to the tabloid vulture on the other end of the line:

"That's not right. I've seen her in person. A belly almost eight months along doesn't look that small."

I hung up and set the phone face-down on the table.

That afternoon, the internet blew up.

#SwansonHeiressDatingBlackMan#

#SwansonHeiressSecretlyMarriedAndPregnant#

#MelissaSwansonsInLawsBathingInAScenicFountain#

In the pictures, Melissa hung on Sanjay's arm with her big belly, beaming ear to ear.

The comments underneath had gone feral.

【Has Melissa Swanson lost her mind? What's wrong with being single? She just had to marry some loser and embarrass herself in public.】

【I'm dying, so this is what her mom's tuition money bought?】

【The one where they bathe in the fountain is even better. The whole in-law family got in on it, the tourists standing around were dumbstruck. Video's linked below…】

I clicked the linked video.

Sanjay was crouched at the edge of the fountain scrubbing his back, a cigarette hanging off the corner of his mouth.

His aunts and uncles and every cousin twice removed had stripped down and were scrubbing each other's backs like nobody else existed.

The video shot straight to number one, and someone in the comments jeered:

"So this is the family the Swanson heiress hand-picked to marry into?"

I put down the phone and went out to the balcony to water the plants.

At four-thirty, the secretary's call chased me down.

"Ms. Dickerson, the group's stock is down three points. PR wants to know if we should get the trending topics pulled."

I set the watering can back on the shelf. "Leave them up."

The next day, Melissa showed up at my door with Sanjay's whole family.

I didn't have the butler stop them. I let every last one of them in.

Sanjay took one look at the furnishings and his eyes glazed over.

His aunts and uncles and cousins sized up the seven-figure antiques on my entry console without the slightest shame,

gaped at the crystal chandelier that had cost tens of millions,

like farmhands who'd walked straight out of the fields into a palace, none of them had ever seen the world.

"Sanjay, Mom, Dad, aunties, uncles, whatever catches your eye, take it, don't be shy. It's all going to be mine one day anyway, so think of it as me taking care of you early."

Melissa played host, smug and gloating.

She sat across from me on the sofa with her big belly, giving me a heavy, meaningful look.

"You saw it trending, right? I hear Swanson Group's stock dropped five points too."

I sipped my herbal medicine, unbothered. "Mm."

"Carolyn Dickerson, quit playing sick and pitiful in front of me. Now hurry up and transfer me a hundred million."

Just like the countless times before, when she'd come to bargain with me.

She braced the upper half of her body against the coffee table, eyes boring into me.

"The money lands, and I'll cooperate right away to clean up all that bad press."

I looked at her, a little taken aback.

She thought the pregnancy tonic I was drinking was me faking illness to milk sympathy.

I had, in fact, used that trick before to coax her back to visit me.

But now, I truly didn't have it in me.

This was plain pregnancy medicine, nothing more.

Half an hour earlier.

The hospital's director had just told me the IVF had taken.

"Don't worry." She pulled her hand back and sprawled across the sofa, no manners at all.

"This money's for the wedding."

"Sanjay and I already worked it out. Once the wedding's done, he marries into the family. I'll give him a fifty-million bride price. The other fifty million is you supporting this new family of ours."

"But on top of that, you also have to sort out Sanjay's family getting settled here in the country, jobs and all."

"Carolyn Dickerson, a hundred million to send Swanson stock back up, that's a bargain, isn't it?"

"Besides, I'm your only child. Every asset you have is going to be mine in the end. This is just an advance on it."