Chapter 227

~Franklin~

Olga had been up to give me my morning coffee.

The coffee in my mug had gone completely cold, but I couldn’t bring myself to put it down. I stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows of my study, staring blankly. Tate’s words from the night before were still looping in my mind.

"Mr. Flemington... Bella is pregnant."

My hand trembled slightly, the ceramic rattling against my wedding ring. I set the mug down on the edge of the desk.

If the baby was mine...

A cold, suffocating dread wrapped tightly around my throat. I closed my eyes, desperately trying to calculate the timeline in my head. The weeks leading up to her staged suicide, the chaotic aftermath of the trial, the bitter overlaps of our past, the math was agonizingly close. It was possible. It was entirely possible.

A suffocating wave of guilt crashed over me as I looked down at the desk. Resting right next to my laptop was the small, neon sticky note Octavia had left this morning after I went for my protein shake.

My chest ached with a physical, crushing pain. We had sworn to each other that there would be no more secrets between us. We had promised that the lies, the omissions, and the shadows of our past marriage would never cross the threshold of our new life together.

Octavia was currently carrying my child, our miracle, our fresh start. How could I possibly look into her warm, trusting eyes and tell her that the woman who tried to ruin her life was out there, carrying a permanent reminder of my past mistakes?

It was so twisted. If the baby was mine, it would break her. It would be a constant, living echo of the pain, the betrayal, and the toxic history she had fought so hard to escape. And yet, if I kept this from her to protect her fragile pregnancy, I would be violating the very foundation of our marriage.

My phone buzzed on the desk, shattering the heavy silence of the room. I snatched it up, finding Clinton’s name flashing across the screen.

"Clinton," I answered, my voice rough and exhausted.

"Franklin, we need to meet. Right now," Clinton said, his tone tight, frantic, and entirely unyielding. "I’m outside your building."

Ten minutes later, I was sitting across from Clinton in the dim, quiet corner of a private gentlemen’s club a few blocks away from the house.

Clinton looked incredibly stressed. His tie was loose and he was aggressively tapping his fingers against his glass of water.

"What’s going on, Franklin?" Clinton asked, leaning forward, resting his elbows on the small table. "Your text message sounded like the world was ending."

I ran a hand over my face, the sheer weight of everything I had been carrying since last night finally breaking through. I leaned in closer, dropping my voice to a harsh whisper. "Clinton, it is about Bella."

Clinton looked curious, his fingers stopping dead against his glass. "What?"

I explained rapidly, the words spilling out of me. "She’s currently operating out of a safe house in North Carolina. Tate managed to trace her burner phones and encrypted routing protocols last night. And it gets worse."

Clinton’s jaw tightened. He nodded slowly, absorbing the information. "So they’re working together to tear Octavia down from the inside."

"Yes, but that’s not even the real nightmare," I said, my voice cracking slightly as a wave of pure emotion threatened to pull me under. "Tate uncovered her travel and medical history under her assumed aliases before she fled New York. Clinton... Bella is pregnant."

The color completely drained from Clinton’s face. He stared at me, the gravity of the situation passing between us like a physical blow. He leaned back in his chair, completely stunned.

"Franklin..." Clinton whispered, his eyes wide with a mixture of dread and disbelief. "Do you think the pregnancy can be yours?"

The question felt like a physical blow. I looked away, staring down at the table, the silence stretching between us for an agonizingly long moment.

"I don’t know," I confessed, my voice barely audible. "The timeline... it fits. It’s right on the edge of when everything blew apart. If it’s mine, I don’t even know how I’m going to look at Octavia. If I tell her, it will destroy the peace we just built. If I don’t tell her, I’m a liar. She explicitly said no more secrets, Clinton. How am I supposed to tell her this?"

"And if it isn’t yours, it’s just another weapon Bella is going to use to rip your marriage into pieces," Clinton added grimly. He rubbed his temples, trying to process the timeline. "But how are we going to find out the truth? She’s a fugitive hiding in another state. We can’t exactly walk up to her safe house and ask for a prenatal paternity test. The medical records are heavily encrypted under an alias. Short of arresting her, which will take time and go completely public, that could even harm Octavia. How do we find out before she leaks it to Octavia?"

I sank back into my chair, the sheer hopelessness of the situation threatening to pull me under. My mind was a chaotic void of worst-case scenarios. I visualized Octavia’s face, the joy in her eyes when she talked about our baby, and how quickly that joy would turn to ash.

Just as I was thinking, staring down at the table in absolute despair, Clinton suddenly stopped rubbing his temples.

A sharp, calculating light suddenly flared in his eyes. The frantic panic that had consumed him a moment ago vanished, replaced by the cool, sharp focus of a man who had just solved a complex puzzle.

He looked at me, a confident, steady smirk pulling at the corner of his lips.

"Don’t worry, Franklin," Clinton said softly, leaning back in his chair with a renewed sense of authority. "I have the perfect plan."

He said and proceeded to tell me what he thought. A prefect plan it is. I really hope this works out though.