During my 3-month ultrasound, I heard my husband tell the doctor, “Get rid of the baby and make sure she can never become a mother again.

Three weeks before Preston was scheduled to be transported on a black-site federal flight to ADX Florence, Reese granted his desperate, fifth request for a visitation.

The meeting took place in the maximum-security interview bunker at the federal detention center.

Preston sat behind a reinforced steel table, his arms and legs shackled to heavy steel rings bolted into the concrete floor. He was surrounded by two armed federal correctional officers with tasers drawn.

He looked fifty years older. His hair had thinned dramatically, turning gray at the temples. His hands shook with an uncontrollable tremor, the consequence of prolonged solitary confinement and severe anxiety.

The door opened.

Reese walked in alone, wearing a simple, elegant cream cashmere dress. Her pregnancy was now seven months along, her silhouette glowing with radiant health and untouchable grace.

Calvin Mercer waited just outside the door, visible through the reinforced glass panel.

Preston looked up. When he saw her, tears spilled instantly down his hollow, sallow cheeks.

"Reese..." he choked out, his voice a hoarse whisper. "You came. You actually came."

Reese sat down across the table from him. She kept her hands folded over her lap, maintaining a cool, measured distance.

"I didn't come for you, Preston," she said softly. "I came to close the door."

"Look at me, Reese," he sobbed, raising his chained hands in a pathetic gesture of surrender. "Look at what they’ve done to me. I’m living in a cage. The lights stay on twenty-four hours a day. I can’t sleep. I can’t breathe. In three weeks, they’re flying me to Colorado. They say I’ll never see another human face without a partition again."

"You chose that destination, Preston," Reese said without a trace of anger. "Every step of the way, you chose it."

"I was stupid!" he screamed, his voice cracking with hysteria. "I was blind! I was so terrified of being ordinary, Reese! My whole life, I was terrified that people would see I wasn't special. When Lyle Holdings succeeded, I thought it was me. I thought I was a god! Sabrina fed my ego every single day... she told me I deserved a queen, not an orphan!"

He leaned across the table as far as his chains would allow, his bloodshot eyes begging for mercy.

"If I had known who you were... if I had only known that you were Augustus Sutherland’s granddaughter... Reese, I would have treated you like an empress! I would have worshipped the ground you walked on! Why didn't you tell me? Why did you hide it from me?"

Reese stared at him, and for the first time, a faint, sad smile touched her lips.

"You still don't understand, do you?" she said quietly.

Preston blinked, confused. "Understand what?"

"You think you lost everything because you didn't know I was rich," Reese whispered, leaning in just enough so he could hear every syllable. "That is the tragedy of your existence, Preston."

She touched her belly, feeling the gentle, miraculous kick of their child inside her.

"If you had loved me when you thought I had nothing... you would have had everything. You would have had my loyalty, my heart, my grandfather's entire defense empire, and the mother of your child. I was ready to give you the world, Preston. Not because of Altair Capital. Not because of my family name. But because I believed your heart was good."

Preston’s breath stopped. The words hung in the sterile air like falling glass, shattering every remaining defense mechanism in his shattered mind.

"I built your company because I wanted my husband to achieve his dreams," Reese continued, her voice steady and relentless. "I watched you succeed and cheered for you from the shadows, asking for nothing in return except your fidelity and your love."

She stood up slowly, smoothing the fabric of her cream dress over her rounded stomach.

"You had the world in your hands, Preston. And you threw it away for eighteen million dollars and an operating table in Georgetown."

"Reese..." Preston whimpered, his head shaking violently, the full, crushing weight of his colossal stupidity collapsing onto his soul. "No... no, please... Reese, please don't leave me... please..."

"The child will be born in two months," Reese said, looking down at him from her towering height of moral and spiritual victory. "A girl. Healthy, strong, and protected by an army of people who know the true meaning of honor."

Preston began to sob, heavy, guttural wails tearing out of his throat, his forehead hitting the cold steel table again and again.

"She will never know your name," Reese said with finality. "On her birth certificate, the father’s line will be left completely blank. As far as history is concerned, Preston Lyle never existed."

Reese turned toward the door.

"Guard," she called out smoothly.

The steel door unlocked with a heavy click.

"Reese! Reese! Don't leave me in the dark! REESE!" Preston screamed, thrashing against the chains, the metal clanging furiously against the floor.

The guards lunged forward, pinning Preston down onto the table as he wailed like a damned soul in the depths of purgatory.

Reese walked out of the bunker. She didn't look back once.

As the steel doors sealed shut behind her, cutting off Preston’s agonized cries forever, Calvin Mercer stepped up beside her.

"Are you all right, Miss Sutherland?" Calvin asked gently.

Reese took a deep, clean breath of fresh Virginia air, looking up at the azure sky above.