Chapter 3

"Camila—are you okay? Where does it hurt?" Stanley's voice cut through the room like a blade, drowning out Laura's whimpering entirely. The sound of Laura calling his name might as well have been a figment of Camila's imagination.

The pain was so sharp Camila couldn't form words. Stanley lifted her onto the sofa, and it wasn't until she heard him tell the driver to bring the car around that she forced her eyes open. "I'm not going to the hospital."

"You haven't been feeling well lately. It wouldn't hurt to get checked out." His voice was impossibly tender—the kind of gentle that could melt steel.

Camila refused again.

She dragged her eyelids open and looked past Stanley's shoulder, directly at Laura. "I went with a friend to the hospital the other day. Saw a dead body in the corridor." A pause, perfectly timed. "Traumatized me. Can't go back."

Laura's face drained of color, her eyes narrowing into slits of pure, undiluted hatred—as if she wanted to carve a piece out of Camila right then and there.

"Okay, okay—we won't go." Stanley pulled her closer, his arms a protective cage. "We'll keep an eye on it. If things get worse, we'll figure something out. Deal?"

Only then did Camila nod.

She rested for a while, letting the sharpest edge of the pain dull. She took a few sips of water from the glass Stanley held to her lips, and the nausea finally receded enough for her to sit up slowly.

Laura stood rooted to the spot the entire time, clearly desperate to speak.

"Stanley—" She finally seized her moment, but barely got his name out before he cut her off, his tone glacial.

"What are you doing here?"

Disgust. Anger. Not a trace of anything resembling intimacy between them.

Camila watched the exchange without letting her expression shift.

She'd severed ties with the Gonzalez family years ago—Stanley's unwavering support had made that possible. So his hostility toward Laura in front of her wasn't unusual. It was expected. Rehearsed, even.

"I—I didn't mean to." Laura swallowed hard, her voice small and pitiful. "We were just joking around. I never thought she'd fall."

"Joking?" Camila arched one eyebrow. "Trying to trade my mother's belongings for this necklace—that's a joke to you?"

Stanley's expression transformed. The air around him turned dangerous, crackling with barely contained fury. "You came into my home to threaten my wife?"

"I didn't!" Laura burst into tears on cue. "It was—it was my dad's idea—"

"Tell Victor this." Stanley's voice was ice wrapped in venom. "Whatever else he's kept of Camila's mother's—he hands it over immediately. Otherwise, both his projects this year are dead in the water, and Gonzalez Group can shut its doors for good."

In Silverlight City, when Stanley Martinez decided to destroy a company, it took little more than a phone call. Everyone in their circle knew how ruthlessly he operated.

The only reason the Gonzalez Group still existed was because Camila's mother had poured years of her life into building it. For that reason alone, Camila had never asked Stanley to pull the trigger.

Laura's knees buckled visibly. "There's nothing—there's nothing else. I made it up to scare Camila. I just wanted the necklace."

"This necklace is none of your concern." Stanley's gaze was lethal. "As for whether those manuscripts exist or not—I'll be sending people to search the Gonzalez estate tonight."

At his signal, the housekeeper took Laura firmly by the arm and escorted her out.

Camila watched in silence, tasting nothing but irony.

Even now, she could feel it—his protectiveness, his bias toward her. But the moment she remembered Laura's pregnancy, all of it curdled into something nauseating.

"Camila, I'm sorry. I'll tell security—Laura won't get past the gate again." Stanley drew her back into his arms. "We'll skip the family dinner tonight. I'll stay home with you."

"It's fine. Just a bruise." Camila forced a smile through the pain and gently extracted herself from his embrace. "Your grandfather hasn't been well. We should visit him more often."

She rose from the sofa. "I'm going to nap for a bit. Go handle your work."

Stanley had originally come home to grab documents, but he refused to leave. He set up his laptop in the bedroom instead, working quietly while Camila slept.

Once, his presence beside her had been the surest sedative she knew. Today, the awareness of another person breathing in the room kept her tossing at the edge of consciousness. When sleep finally came, it dragged her into one nightmare after another.

That evening, Camila and Stanley drove together to the Martinez estate.

They arrived early—dinner hadn't been served yet. A staff member appeared to summon Camila to Baron Martinez's private study. Stanley followed, but the old man waved him away.

"Grandpa, I know you're going to pressure Camila about having children again." Stanley planted his feet in the doorway. "Don't."

"When have I ever pressured her?" Baron fixed his grandson with a withering look. "I just want a word. Is that not allowed?"

"It's fine." Camila gave Stanley a reassuring smile—the kind that said I can handle this. He studied her face for a moment, then turned and pulled the door shut behind him.

"You know Stanley's background." Baron never wasted time with pleasantries. "If every last one of my own blood weren't so spectacularly useless, I'd never have needed to bring him into the fold."

"Even without the Martinez name, he'd still be a brilliant entrepreneur." Camila's tone was even, but the defense was unmistakable.

"I'm aware." Baron's displeasure flickered beneath the surface but didn't fully break through. "But I won't have his child born outside this family the way he was."

Camila's heart seized. Did Baron know about Laura's pregnancy?

"I'm old. There's only so much I can still do for him." The old man shifted tactics—sentiment now, carefully deployed.

"This family is full of people—useless grandchildren, every one of them, but each with shares to their name. When I'm gone and they start circling, if Stanley doesn't have an heir, things will get ugly. Fast."

Camila's discomfort deepened. "You're in excellent health. And Stanley is still young—"

She pushed back again and again. Baron's patience visibly thinned.

"What I'm saying is—you have two options." His voice dropped, heavy as a gavel.

"Either Stanley finds another woman to carry a child, and you raise it as your own. Or you divorce him."

"Three years of marriage and no pregnancy. You're too thin—even IVF would be unlikely to produce a healthy child at this point."

"I see how deeply Stanley feels about you. Even after a divorce, he'd take care of you. If you truly have his best interests at heart, you'll agree."

Each word landed like a scalpel—precise, clinical, peeling back her skin layer by layer.

She was the one who'd stood beside him through everything. She was the one who'd been there when he had nothing. And now, somehow, she'd become the one who wasn't enough?

It wasn't as though she lacked ambition or ability. Stanley had insisted she step back from work because he wanted to protect her, to spare her the grind. And now, in everyone else's eyes, she'd been reduced to a single function—one she'd apparently failed at.

"Think it over." Baron took her silence as hesitation. "Stanley has good taste. She—"

The door slammed open before he could finish.

Stanley stood in the doorway, his face carved from stone.