THE PRICE OF ILLUSION

at woman would drag things out out of spite.”

“She tried,” Adrian lied smoothly, kissing Chloe’s forehead before pressing his hand against her round, protruding belly. “But she’s gone now. Completely out of our lives. It’s just us. Me, you, and our boy.”

Margaret stepped forward, setting the orchids down with a practiced, elegant smile. “How are you feeling, Chloe dear? The doctor hasn’t started the high-definition 4D ultrasound yet, has he?”

“No, Mrs. Castillo,” Chloe purred, batting her eyelashes. “Dr. Reynolds said he wanted to review the bloodwork and the genetic screening results one last time before we did the live imaging. He should be here any minute.”

Vanessa immediately set up her phone on a tripod at the foot of the bed. “Perfect. I want to stream the moment we see his face. The caption is going to be: ‘Welcoming the new king of the Castillo Empire.’ It’ll absolutely kill Elena if she’s watching.”

Adrian laughed, a loud, booming sound of pure triumph. He poured himself a glass of real champagne from a hidden cooler in the corner, raising it high.

“To the future,” Adrian toasted, his eyes gleaming with a manic sort of pride. “To a son who will inherit everything I build. To a boy who carries my blood.”

“To the heir,” Margaret and Vanessa echoed, their glasses clinking in the quiet room.

Chloe smiled, but if anyone had been paying close attention, they would have noticed the slight, microscopic tremor in her fingers as she reached for her water glass. They would have noticed how her eyes darted toward the door every time a footstep echoed in the hallway. But the Castillos were too blinded by their own arrogance, too intoxicated by their perceived victory over Elena, to notice the cracks in the foundation of their new paradise.

Chapter 3: 35,000 Feet Above Reality
On the plane, the flight attendant placed a small cup of black coffee on my tray table. I thanked her with a soft smile. For the first time in ten years, my chest didn’t feel constricted by a heavy, suffocating weight.

I took out my laptop and opened a hidden, encrypted folder that Attorney Dawson had sent me weeks ago. It contained the medical records from my own files—records that Adrian had never bothered to look at because he deemed anything related to my health “boring” and “inconvenient.”

Five years ago, after Lily was born, Adrian and I had tried for a third child. It was during a brief period where he was trying to salvage our marriage before he completely checked out. We spent a year trying, but nothing happened. Eventually, we visited a high-end fertility clinic uptown.

The results had been conclusive, devastating, and absolute.

But Adrian had been too busy traveling for “conferences” to attend the follow-up appointment. When the clinic called with the results, I was the one who picked up the phone. I was the one who received the diagnostic report.

I remembered sitting in our kitchen, holding the paper that stated Adrian had developed severe, irreversible secondary infertility due to a silent, untreated varicoceles condition that had worsened over the years. The doctor had explicitly stated that the probability of him biological conceiving another child naturally was statistically zero percent.

When Adrian came home that weekend, I had tried to talk to him about it. I had tried to comfort him. But he had walked into the house, thrown his briefcase on the floor, and yelled at me because dinner wasn’t ready.

“I don’t have time for your medical nonsense, Elena! I’m running a company! If we can’t have another kid, it’s probably your fault anyway. Look at you, you’re always stressed.”

He had silenced me. He had pushed me away. And in doing so, he had never read the report. He had filed it away in his mind as my failure, my defect.

When Chloe miraculously became pregnant eighteen months later, Adrian didn’t doubt it for a single second. Why would he? His ego was a towering, impenetrable fortress. To doubt the child’s paternity would be to doubt his own manhood, his own supreme perfection. He had used the pregnancy as the ultimate weapon to destroy my self-esteem, flaunting her condition in front of his family, allowing his mother and sister to treat me like a barren, discarded piece of trash.

I had kept the medical report hidden. When Dawson found it during the discovery phase of the divorce, he had looked up at me with a slow, dark smile.

“Mrs. Castillo—or should I say, Mrs. Salazar,” Dawson had murmured, using my maiden name. “Your husband is building a house of cards on a windy cliff. Do you want me to knock it down now, or do you want to watch it fall from a safe distance?”

“Let him build it,” I had replied. “Let him build it as high as he can.”

Now, sitting in the cabin of the airplane, looking down at the clouds below us, I knew the wind was about to blow.

Chapter 4: The Sound of a Falling Kingdom
Back in Suite 502, the heavy oak door swung open.

Dr. Jonathan Reynolds walked into the room. He was a senior obstetrician, a man with thirty years of experience dealing with the city’s most difficult and demanding high-society patients. Usually, he carried an aura of calm, professional detachedness.

But today, his face was pale. His eyes were fixed on the tablet in his hand, his brow furrowed so deeply that his eyebrows almost met in the middle. He didn’t look at the champagne, the flowers, or Vanessa’s phone camera, which was currently broadcasting live to over fifty thousand people.

“Dr. Reynolds!” Adrian said warmly, stepping forward and extending his hand. “We’re ready. Let’s see the boy. My mother and sister are here to witness the moment.”

Dr. Reynolds didn’t take Adrian’s hand. He let his arm drop to his side, his gaze shifting slowly from Adrian, to Margaret, and finally landing on Chloe, who was suddenly gripping the bedsheets so tightly her knuckles were turning white.

“Mr. Castillo,” Dr. Reynolds said, his voice unusually grave, devoid of the usual wealthy-hospital hospitality. “Before we proceed with the ultrasound, we have a serious matter to discuss regarding the comprehensive genetic screening and prenatal bloodwork we processed yesterday.”

Margaret stepped forward, her brow furrowing. “A problem? Is there something wrong with the baby’s health? If it’s a genetic defect from her side of the family—”

“The fetus is perfectly healthy, Mrs. Castillo,” Dr. Reynolds interrupted, his tone sharp enough to cut through the older woman’s snobbery. He turned his full attention back to Adrian. “Mr. Castillo, as part of our standard VIP prenatal protocol, we run a non-invasive prenatal paternal match test when requested by legal and financial representatives.”

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