The Secret Pregnancy of the Billionaire's Ex-Wife

She Left With His Baby The Billionaire’s Secret Scandal 314
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Christopher POV
The Italian villa was exactly as she'd left it. I insisted on that. The cleaning staff came twice a week, dusting and vacuuming,
keeping mold from the bathrooms and insects from the kitchen. But they had strict instructions: nothing was to be moved.
Nothing was to be thrown away. Not even things that seemed like garbage.
"Sir, the children's old drawings are fading in the sunlight," Maria, the head housekeeper, once pointed out. "Perhaps we could
move them to-"
"Leave them," I'd interrupted. "They stay exactly where they are."
She'd nodded, lips pressed together in that way people do when they think you've lost your mind but are paid too well to say so.
Maybe I had. Lost my mind. It would explain why I found myself here again, alone on Christmas Eve, in a house full of ghosts.
I walked the familiar path from the front door to the living room, my fingers trailing along the wall where pencil marks still
recorded the twins' growth. Each line had a date beside it, some in my handwriting, some in Angela's.
Ethan, age 3. Aria, age 4 and two months. Both, age 5.
The living room was still arranged the way Angela had set it up years ago. The oversized sectional where we'd spent countless
nights watching movies, the twins squeezed between us. The coffee table with a faint ring where I'd once set down a hot mug
without a coaster, earning Angela's exasperated sigh.
"You're the one who insisted on real wood," I'd teased.
"And you're the one who insisted on ignoring basic furniture care," she'd shot back, but there was no real anger in it.
I crouched down by the toy chest in the corner, lifting the lid slowly. Inside, Aria's collection of stuffed animals stared up at me
with glassy eyes. Ethan's wooden puzzles were stacked neatly, just as he'd always left them. I reached for the small pink blanket

folded at the bottom-Aria's "special blankie" that she'd carried everywhere until age four.

The fabric was soft with age and countless washings. I pressed it to my face, inhaling deeply, but any trace of that baby scent
was long gone, replaced by dust and time. Still, I folded it carefully and placed it back exactly as it had been.
On the bookshelf, a row of Dr. Seuss books stood alongside Italian fairy tales. I remembered reading to them each night, Ethan
serious and attentive, Aria constantly interrupting with questions.
"But why is his heart too small?" she'd demanded when we read about the Grinch.
"Some people just don't know how to love properly," I'd explained, catching Angela's eye over Aria's head.
"That's sad," Ethan had concluded solemnly.
I moved to the kitchen next, where a child's plastic cup still sat on the counter. It was Ethan's favorite-blue with dinosaurs that
changed color when filled with cold liquid. He'd refused to drink from anything else for months. Angela had finally bought three
identical cups to rotate when one needed washing.
In the drawer next to the sink, I found a small rubber pacifier. Aria had been almost three before she'd given hers up, and only
after I'd convinced her that big girls didn't need pacifiers. She'd handed it over with great ceremony, extracting a promise that I'd
keep it safe "just in case.
I never broke that promise.
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Upstairs was harder. Their bedrooms remained frozen in time-twin beds with cartoon character sheets, toys arranged on
shelves, glow-in-the-dark stars still stuck to the ceiling. I'd helped them place those stars, lifting each child in turn so they could
reach. Aria had insisted on making the Little Dipper, though her version looked more like a deformed spoon.
In Angela's bedroom, her scent lingered faintly. I'd purchased her signature perfume-Acqua di Parma Gelsomino Nobile-and
instructed Maria to spray it lightly around the room once a month. An artificial reminder, but necessary. I couldn't bear the thought
of the last traces of her disappearing completely.
On her vanity, a silver hairbrush still held strands of her dark hair. I found myself here more than once, gently removing a single

strand, wrapping it around my finger like a promise, before forcing myself to place it back. Beside the brush stood a half-empty
bottle of the lotion she'd used every night, the one that smelled like vanilla and something uniquely her.

I opened the closet, running my fingers along the clothes she'd left behind. The sleeves of her sweaters, the silk of her robes.
The sundress she'd worn on Aria's fourth birthday, when we'd had a picnic by the lake. The faded jeans with a small paint stain
from when we'd repainted the kitchen and she'd insisted on helping.
In the back corner of the closet, wrapped in tissue paper, I found what I'd come for-a small box of Christmas ornaments the
children had made. Construction paper stars covered in glitter. Popsicle stick frames with their school photos. Salt dough
handprints painted in bright colors.
I carried the box downstairs and placed it beside the Christmas tree I'd had delivered and set up earlier that day. Eight feet tall,
just like the ones we'd had when they lived here. I'd spent hours decorating it with the same ornaments we'd used then,
arranging the
lights in the same pattern Angela had always insisted upon.
From my briefcase, I removed three carefully wrapped packages and placed them under the tree. For Angela, a first edition of
Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice“- her favorite book, one she'd mentioned wanting to collect during a lazy Sunday
conversation years ago. For Aria, a custom-made music box that played the lullaby I used to sing to her. For Ethan, a telescope
more advanced than any six- year-old needed, but perfect for the boy who used to point at the night sky and ask endless
questions about the stars.
Presents they would never open. But I bought them every year anyway.
I poured myself a glass of the scotch I kept in the cabinet-the expensive kind I never drank during those five years because
Angela hated the smell. Settling onto the sofa, I raised my glass to the empty room.
"Merry Christmas," I said to the ghosts that filled the space. "I miss you all."
The silence that answered was deafening.
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