I spent the next day pretending everything was normal. Adrian left for work after kissing my forehead and reminding me to stay off my feet. The second his car disappeared, I went into his study. He never said I couldn’t enter it, but he had a way of making certain rooms feel off-limits without ever speaking the rule aloud. The drawers were neat, the shelves color-coded, the desk surface almost bare. For ten minutes, I found nothing except contracts, receipts, and an expensive fountain pen. Then I noticed a locked cabinet tucked behind a row of framed travel books. The key was taped beneath the desk.
Inside were three folders with labels I had never seen before. One held copies of legal documents under another surname. One contained statements from bank accounts I didn’t recognize. The third had my name written across the tab in Adrian’s handwriting. My hands shook as I opened it. There were printouts of my inheritance portfolio, my late mother’s trust schedule, and handwritten notes about timing. One line had been underlined twice: “access after birth”. I sat back so abruptly that I felt the fetus move inside me.
