“Everyone wants something from me,” he said. “Money. Power. A favor. A signature. A name.”
Abby swallowed.
“I don’t want anything else.”
Grant looked at her.
“You’re the first person tonight who might actually mean that.”
The room went silent.
Outside, Chicago glittered beneath them like nothing painful had ever happened inside those windows.
Abby should have walked out with the money.
She should have taken the elevator down, finished her shift, and never looked back.
But grief makes lonely people dangerous.
And pain recognizes pain.
By morning, Abby left Grant Caldwell’s suite with her uniform wrinkled, her heart pounding, and a secret she promised herself she would bury with everything else.
She paid for her mother’s funeral.
She returned to work.
She kept her head down.
And Grant Caldwell never spoke to her again.
Not in the hallway.
Not in the lobby.
Not when he passed her cleaning cart like she was invisible.
So Abby told herself that night meant nothing.
Just one terrible, desperate mistake between two broken people.
Until six weeks later.
When she fainted in the employee restroom.
The company nurse took one look at her and asked a question that made Abby’s blood run cold.
And when the test came back positive, she knew her life was about to become something no amount of money could fix.
Because the father of her baby was not just any man.
He was the billionaire CEO who had already forgotten her name.
Or so she thought.
