Chapter 501

Chapter 500:

But as she rose from the desk, a wave of nausea — sharp and sudden — moved through her. She gripped the edge of the desk and waited for it to pass. It wasn’t the wine from the night before. This was different. Deeper. Primal.

Her period was late. Only by a few days, but with her clockwork cycle, a few days was enough. The thought took root — wild and terrifying and exhilarating all at once.

Norway.

She returned to her suite and called her executive assistant’s encrypted line. “I need a personal item delivered to my suite. Utmost discretion. No labels. Within the hour p>

Thirty minutes later, a plain courier box arrived at her door. In the quiet of the suite’s bathroom, she followed the instructions with hands that wouldn’t stop trembling. She set the test on the marble countertop, forced herself to walk away, and stood at the window staring at the now-silent warehouse, counting the seconds.

Three minutes. An eternity.

When she looked, the world tilted on its axis.

Two lines. Pink and unmistakable.

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Pregnant.

A sound escaped her — a laugh of pure, unguarded shock. She sank onto the edge of the tub, one hand pressed flat against her stomach, the other still holding the proof. A baby. Their baby. She had to tell Gaston. She had to see his face.

She grabbed her phone and booked the next flight out of Philadelphia in the same breath she dialed his number. He answered on the third ring, his voice low with concern.

“Jocelyn? Is everything okay p>

“Better than okay,” she began, the words rising up joyfully. “Gaston, I p>

The car was already on the highway when the world outside her window dissolved into a maelstrom of shrieking metal and concussive force. A deafening roar swallowed her voice. The phone flew from her hand as the car was thrown violently sideways. Jocelyn was slammed against the door, the seatbelt cutting hard across her chest. She heard the driver cry out — a sound cut short by the sickening crunch of a second impact.

In New York, Gaston heard all of it.

The beginning of her sentence, alive with a joy he had never heard from her before — and then chaos. Tearing metal. Shattering glass. A violence so complete it felt physical even through the phone.

Then silence. Absolute, final, endless silence.

The screen read: CALL FAILED.

He stared at it. The joy in her voice echoed in his mind — a cruel, precise counterpoint to the sound that had erased it. He didn’t know what she had been about to say. He only knew that the future he had just begun to imagine was burning somewhere on a highway outside Philadelphia.

He moved.

He was dialing before he reached the door, his voice a controlled, lethal command to his pilot. “Get the chopper ready. Now. Flight plan to Philadelphia. Every trauma hospital on the I-95 corridor — I want them on standby p>