CHAPTER 81: IT WORKED

Clara sat on the cold tiles of her bathroom floor, the chill seeping into her bones, prickling against her bare skin where her oversized sweater had slipped off her shoulder.

The air still smelled faintly of Adrian’s expensive cologne, mixed now with the sour bite of her anxiety—and something else.

Victory.

It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t beautiful. But it was a victory.

Her phone sat on the tile beside her, a small web of cracks blooming across its screen, a metaphor almost too fitting to stomach. She’d dropped it earlier when her hands had started shaking after Adrian left the room, the enormity of what she’d just done slamming into her like cold water.

But she wasn’t crying now.

Not because she didn’t want to—but because she couldn’t afford to. Not anymore.

She drew in a sharp breath, steadying herself. The softness, the tears, the fragility—it had worked. It always worked. And now, she just needed to finish what she started.

With trembling fingers, she picked up the phone and dialed the only person who’d ever taught her how to survive by bleeding pretty for the cameras.

Her mother answered on the second ring.

"Clara." Vanessa’s voice cut through the bad reception like a blade, sharp and assessing. "What’s going on? Did you speak to Adrian? Did you handle it?"

Clara smiled faintly. Weakly. The kind of smile she used to give reporters on red carpets when her heels were blistering her feet and her stomach was empty. The kind of smile that screamed, Everything’s fine, when the world was actively collapsing around her.

"It worked."

Silence hummed at the other end, deliberate and evaluating. Clara could feel her mother calculating every angle, every implication of those two words like she was running mental spreadsheets behind her eyes.

"Worked how, exactly?" Vanessa’s voice was like ice against silk. "Don’t get clever with me, Clara. I don’t have the patience for riddles."

Clara exhaled shakily, letting her head fall back against the door behind her. The bathroom bulb buzzed softly, its hum oddly comforting in the stifling quiet.

"He stayed," she whispered. "I told him about the baby. I broke down. And... he stayed."

There it was. Simple. Ugly. True.

Another sharp inhale from Vanessa. "Did he agree to get married as soon as possible?"

"Not yet," Clara admitted. "But he didn’t run. And that’s all I need."

Vanessa’s voice lowered to something venomous, dangerous. "One night doesn’t mean you’ve won, Clara. Do you really think men stay out of love? They stay because of leverage. Because of appearances. Because it’s easier than losing. You know that."

Clara did know that. She’d learned it at the dinner table, at charity galas, in whispered conversations between her mother and powerful men in darkened hallways. Love was the lie you told other people while building the real empire underneath.

But this wasn’t just strategy. It was personal.

"I told him we’d announce it soon," Clara said quietly. "That we wanted to wait for privacy. I already went live to get the pity votes rolling in. Poor Clara, abandoned and pregnant. They love that story. They need

that story. And when we stand together in front of the cameras, it’s going to be the comeback of the year. No one will remember Ella."

The name was acid in her throat.

Ella.

She doesn’t deserve him.

Clara’s knuckles whitened against the phone. "He is mine now."

Vanessa was silent for a beat. Clara could hear the faint background noise of her mother’s ever-busy life—the clink of crystal, the dull murmur of another elite dinner party happening just beyond the door.

"Do not get comfortable," Vanessa finally said, the crisp sharpness of her words cutting straight through any victory Clara thought she’d earned. "You’ve humiliated this family enough. I won’t have my grandchild born into scandal. I want it clean. I want it secured. And if you screw this up again—"

"I won’t." Clara’s voice cut sharper than she meant it to, trembling with fury beneath the surface.

For a heartbeat, there was stunned silence on both ends of the line. Clara never spoke back like that.

But something inside her had snapped tonight. Maybe it was watching Adrian hesitate at the door, maybe it was the helpless shame curling in her gut after crying in his arms like some lost girl begging to be loved.

Maybe it was Ella’s stupid, too-good smile living like a ghost behind her eyelids.

Whatever it was—it was bigger than her mother’s threats this time.

"I know what I’m doing," she added, quieter now but no less sure.

Vanessa let out a dark, quiet laugh. "Do you? Because I saw that live too. Clever, yes. But you looked weak. And men don’t stay for weakness, darling. Not forever."

Clara’s hand drifted to her stomach again, fingers spreading gently over the flatness of it, as if she could will the life inside into existence faster—make it real, make it permanent, make it hers.

Weak? Maybe. Desperate? Definitely.

But Adrian was here. And where there was proximity, there was power.

"I’m pregnant," she whispered, more to herself than her mother. "And by the time I’m finished, Adrian won’t be able to remember what it felt like to breathe without me."

Silence again.

Then—"That’s my girl," Vanessa murmured finally, satisfaction curling like smoke in her voice. "Make them need you, Clara. Make them terrified of losing you. It’s the only way."

The call ended with a sharp click, leaving Clara alone with her echoing breath and the buzzing hum of the light above her.

She stared down at the cracked phone in her lap, her reflection fractured into tiny shards across the glass.

For a long, hollow moment, she hated herself.

But she hated Ella more.

And beneath it all, beneath the shame, the fury, and the despair, there was only one thought left—hot, poisonous, unwavering:

He will not leave me again. I will make sure of it.

No matter what she had to break to make it true.