The next morning, the long dining table was laid with a breakfast fit for royalty. Fresh orange juice, croissants, smoked salmon, and a silver coffee pot steaming in the center.
Seraphina walked down the staircase in a simple white silk blouse and black trousers, looking like she'd slept just enough to be dangerous.
Julian was already there, at the head of the table, in a perfectly tailored navy suit, a physical copy of the Financial Times open in front of him. His plate was untouched. He was waiting.
She sat down at the opposite end, the thirty-foot stretch between them like a frozen strait. She reached for the coffee pot, movements still a little stiff.
Julian folded his paper with a crisp rustle. His pale blue eyes fixed on her.
"You'll accompany me to the Children's Foundation charity gala this afternoon."
"Oh." She took a bite of a croissant, chewed, swallowed, then looked up. "Sorry. I already have plans."
"What plans?"
"Horror movie with Chloe. And I'm thinking of googling 'husband returns after six months and breaks phone—should I file a police report.'"
His fingers tapped once against the mahogany table. "This isn't a request."
He slid a thin manila folder across the polished surface. It stopped a few feet from her plate. "Your father's firm is preparing for a new round of funding. It would be a shame if their primary investors suddenly pulled out."
Seraphina flipped it open, scanned half a page, and closed it. She pushed it back across the table. "Julian, my dad's little firm doesn't make enough in a year to cover your watch habit. You want to threaten me, at least come up with something new. This is your third time recycling this one."
Julian's eyebrow moved—almost in acknowledgment. He sounded genuinely curious when he asked: "What would you suggest, then?"
Seraphina leaned back, arms crossed, and considered it seriously. "That Monet in your study. If you pull funding from my dad, I'll buy a knockoff, swap them out, and go live on stream teaching people how to tell the difference."
She grinned.
Julian watched her for two full seconds. Then he unfolded his paper again. "Driver will be downstairs at two. Don't be late."
Seraphina picked up the coffee pot and refilled her cup, raising it toward him in a mock toast. "You talk, I'll not listen."
In the afternoon, Seraphina, completely ignoring Julian's request, stopped at a café on Madison Avenue. She ordered a latte—double sugar
"Mrs. Sinclair?"
The voice was saccharine and pointed. Seraphina looked up to find a blonde woman in a cream trench coat standing by her table, holding what was clearly a prop coffee cup.
Isabelle Beaumont. Socialite. Gossip column regular. And according to every tabloid, Julian Sinclair's true love.
Her coffee cup "accidentally" tipped.
Dark brown liquid splashed across Seraphina's white blouse. Isabelle gasped, fumbled for napkins, mouthing apologies while her eyes gleamed.
"Oh, how clumsy of me! Are you all right?"
Seraphina looked down at her sleeve, then back up. "Do you know how much this shirt costs?"
"I—"
"Thirty-seven hundred. Just bought it. Tags still on." Seraphina sighed. "Next time you want to spill coffee on me, give me a heads-up. I'll find you a cheaper target."
Isabelle's smile flickered, but she recovered fast.
"You must be Mrs. Sinclair?" she said, eyes wide and innocent. "Julian just got back. You must be exhausted. He spent the last six months in Europe dealing with something very personal for me. He's so thoughtful, isn't he?"
Seraphina nodded. "Yeah. Sounds like it. He handled your personal thing, and he handled three months of my credit card bills. By that division of labor, he's been pretty busy."
Isabelle's smile wavered. She changed tactics, placing a delicate hand on her stomach and lowering her voice just enough for nearby tables to hear: "We're both so eager to start a family. A child really makes a house a home, don't you think?"
Seraphina looked at her hand. Then back at her face. "So you're saying you're pregnant?"
Isabelle's eyes lit up with triumph—right before Seraphina continued.
"Then you should sit down right now."
"What?"
"Your weight's on your right foot, and you've got your left hand on your stomach—but that's your stomach, not your uterus." Seraphina took a sip of her latte. "If you actually were pregnant, that stance would mess with your pelvic stability. So either your anatomy knowledge is shockingly bad, or—"
She paused. Smiled.
"You're acting."
Isabelle's composure cracked. She stepped back, heel sliding on the floor—
Seraphina caught her by the trench coat belt before she could fall. "If you're going to stage a fall, at least commit. That move was sloppy. If you'd actually hit the ground, I'd feel bad. And I don't want to feel bad."
The café went quiet for two seconds.
Seraphina let go, patted Isabelle on the shoulder, and leaned in to murmur: "Next time, rehearse. You've got enough plot holes to open a fishing supply store."
She straightened up, grabbed her coffee, and walked out, steps light and unhurried.
Behind her, Isabelle's voice—low, shaking, already on the phone—drifted through the glass.
Seraphina didn't look back.
Isabelle spent twenty minutes in the café bathroom fixing her makeup and angling her phone to capture the perfect "bruised" look. She checked her reflection from multiple angles, deepened the mark with the edge of her powder puff, and kept snapping until she found the one that made her look most vulnerable.
Then she called Julian. The moment he answered, her voice shifted—from the composed woman in the mirror to a carefully calibrated performance of fear and pain.
"Julian…"
She let her voice waver. Just enough.
"My stomach… it hurts so much…"
She paused, let him hear her breath catch, then continued, layering in the details one by one. The unprovoked attack. The shove. The slap. The way she'd fallen, and the way Seraphina had kept going. She even mentioned the coffee—"She spilled it on me on purpose, Julian, and then she said I was clumsy…"
She dropped her voice to a trembling whisper: "She said you'd never be a real father anyway… Julian, I'm so scared. What if something happens to our baby?"
She waited. Silent. Listening.
Three seconds passed.
Then Julian's voice came through, flat and cold as winter pavement: "Stay where you are. I'm coming."
"Okay… I'll wait for you…"
Isabelle hung up. She set the phone down slowly, looked at her reflection in the mirror, and let a small, satisfied smile cross her face. Then she took a tissue and dabbed away the faint moisture at the corner of her eye.
All traces of the performance were gone. She looked composed, almost pleased.
Back at the penthouse, Seraphina was cross-legged on the couch, laptop balanced on her knees, video-calling Chloe.
"Guess what," she said, biting into an apple. "Someone spilled coffee on me this morning and then told me she's carrying Julian's child."
Chloe's eyes went wide. "And? What happened?"
"I gave her a free acting lesson." Seraphina tossed the core into the trash. "She was terrible. But it gave me an idea."
"What kind of idea?"
"His genes." She put her feet up on the coffee table, her tone shifting to something more deliberate. "Height, IQ, face—top tier. I want that, nothing else. Once I've got it, he can knock up whoever he wants."
Chloe nearly dropped her phone. "Seraphina. That's your husband. Not a sperm bank."
"Right now he's a sperm bank that doesn't dispense," Seraphina said, grinning with zero guilt. "But I'll figure out how to make it dispense."
She paused, her smile fading slightly. She stood up, walked to the window. Below, a black Ferrari pulled away from the curb.
"He just left. Going to Isabelle."
Chloe could practically feel the shift through the screen. "Sera—"
"You know what?" Seraphina watched the taillights disappear. "The more he runs to her, the more interesting this gets. He wants to play devoted? I'll play more devoted. Let's see who folds first."
She hung up, tossed the phone onto the couch, and walked into her closet.
She wasn't looking for a dress. She was picking tonight's armor.
Her fingers moved across the hangers, pausing on a black silk slip dress—low-cut, short enough to be deliberate, and carrying the kind of confidence that needed no explanation.
She pulled it out and held it up to the mirror.
The woman in the reflection had sharp eyes, a slight curl at the corner of her mouth, and the look of someone who'd already decided how the night would go.
