Chapter 2
Three days later, Navina moved into a secured house overlooking Lake Geneva in Wisconsin.
The property deed belonged to a trust created by her attorney. The staff consisted of one person — Sanja Madak, the housekeeper who had served Navina’s mother for twenty years and knew how to keep a secret. When Sanja found the ultrasound photograph beside the bed, her eyes filled.
“Both?”
Navina nodded. “A boy and a girl.”
“Does that cold-blooded bastard know?”
“He knows nothing.”
“You plan to do this alone?”
Navina placed Sanja’s hand over the faint swell beneath her sweater. “I’m not alone. There are three of us.”
The joke was brave. The nights were not.
Twin pregnancy came with additional monitoring. Navina hired an obstetrician affiliated with a private Milwaukee hospital and authorized strict confidentiality. She learned the language of chorionicity, cervical length, preeclampsia risk, and fetal growth discordance. She read every report twice.
She also rebuilt her professional life. Before marrying Marco, she had been a forensic accountant at Burk Holdings. During the marriage, the Gerbick family treated her education as a charming hobby — something pretty a woman could mention at dinner parties without embarrassing anyone. Now she created a consultancy that traced undervalued assets in distressed family businesses — the exact technique used to strip her father’s company.
Six hundred million dollars provided safety. Her work restored dignity.
At twelve weeks, the twins moved like flickers of light on the monitor. Their heartbeats struck the room in alternating rhythms.
“Both developing well,” the specialist said. “No concerning findings today.”
Navina cried after the lights came back on. Not because she wished Marco were beside her — but because she did not.
At seven months, a call arrived from an unfamiliar number.
“Is this Navina?”
“Who is calling?”
“Wioletta Rutkowski. Marco’s fiancée.”
Navina sat straighter on the terrace. “Congratulations. I heard you’re carrying his child.”
Fear flashed cold through her. Only her physician, attorney, Sanja, and one old friend knew.
“You heard incorrectly. Don’t embarrass yourself. Marco hates women who use babies as leverage. If there is a pregnancy, terminate it before the engagement gala.”
Navina activated the call recorder — permitted under Wisconsin’s one-party consent law. “Did Marco ask you to say that?”
Wioletta laughed. “He doesn’t need to. I understand what protects his future.”
“So do I. You signed away everything.”
“No. I signed away a husband.”
Navina glanced at the encrypted backup icon on her screen. “Thank you for calling.”
She ended the call and sent the recording to her attorney, Voychek. Then she reviewed access logs for her medical portal. Someone had attempted to enter the account twice from an IP address belonging to a Rutkowski-controlled clinic.
Navina documented every detail while Wioletta believed she was intimidating a discarded wife. She did not realize she had just provided evidence of coordinated medical harassment.
The engagement gala appeared online a month later. Wioletta wore a diamond large enough to anchor a boat. Marco stood beside her with one hand at his back, his expression carved from ice.
Navina studied the photograph for three seconds and closed it.
Her friend Zofia Lysowski paced the sitting room. “You are carrying his twins while he puts a ring on her.”
“I’m aware.”
“You loved him.”
“I loved the man I invented from the spaces between his absences.”
“And when the children ask about their father?”
Navina rested both hands on her abdomen. One baby kicked beneath each palm. “I will tell them the truth when they are old enough to understand it. I will not teach them that blood entitles a man to ownership.”
“Marco will come when he knows.”
“Then he can come through a court. Not my front door.”
The twins arrived by planned cesarean at thirty-seven weeks. The boy weighed six pounds two ounces. The girl weighed five pounds eight. Both screamed with impressive outrage. Navina named them Luca Burk and Mila Burk.
Sanja took a photograph after the nurses settled them against Navina’s chest. Her hair was damp, her face colorless, tears streaking toward her ears. Luca’s fist closed around her smallest finger. Mila rooted angrily beneath the blanket.
It was the most beautiful photograph Navina had ever seen.
She posted it to a private account visible to selected family and friends: “Twins safely arrived. Their mother is exhausted, grateful, and entirely in charge.”
The post escaped the private circle within forty minutes.
Zofia called first, crying so loudly the nurse laughed. Navina’s father called from Florida and said, after a long silence, “You are stronger than I was.”
Marco called next. Navina watched his name flash across the screen until it stopped. He called four more times. Then a message appeared: “The children are mine.”
She replied with a photograph of page thirty-eight. “You signed after independent counsel reviewed it. Contact Voychek.”
His response arrived instantly. “An agreement cannot erase paternity.”
She typed back: “Correct. It also cannot erase my evidence, your voluntary absence, or the danger attached to your household.”
May you like
She shut off the phone and placed it face-down beside her sleeping children.
For the first time in three years, Marco Gerbick had asked for her attention and failed to receive it.
