Chapter 5: The Fiancée’s Choice
“Is Gabriel DeLuca the father of your baby?”
Claire felt the question settle over the room like dust. Maya stood between her and the reporter, one hand braced on the counter. The camera operator had lifted his equipment, but the lens pointed at the floor.
Claire tightened her grip on her phone.
“I’m not answering questions about my pregnancy.”
The reporter’s practiced expression softened, though the microphone remained in her hand.
“I understand this is personal. The video is already circulating, and people are curious—”
“Curiosity doesn’t make it your business,” Maya said.
The reporter glanced toward the manager, who had emerged from the back room.
“This is a private workplace,” he said. “You’ll need to leave.”
The camera operator lowered his equipment fully. The reporter studied Claire for a moment, then gave a small nod.
“All right. I’m sorry to have put you on the spot.”
She and the camera operator left without another question.
The door shut. The workplace’s familiar sounds returned in pieces: a register chiming, a chair scraping, Maya exhaling through her nose.
The manager approached Claire, keeping a respectful distance.
“Do you want to take a few minutes?”
“I’m okay.”
“You don’t have to be okay to take a few minutes.”
That kindness nearly undid her. Claire glanced at her phone, where the draft statement remained unsent.
“I’ll finish my shift,” she said. “But if anyone else comes asking, I don’t want to talk to them.”
“Understood. We’ll handle it.”
Claire nodded, grateful he hadn’t asked who the father was or what had happened with the reporter. She put her phone away and returned to work.
For the rest of the shift, she kept her eyes on the ordinary things she could control: a receipt that needed correcting, a supply list, the small pile of returned items by the door. Her thoughts still circled the same question.
Not whether Gabriel was the father. That truth was hers to tell or withhold.
Whether she wanted strangers to turn it into a spectacle.
When her shift ended, Claire found a message from Jessica waiting on her phone.
Would you be willing to meet for coffee? Somewhere neutral. I won’t ask you to forgive me or tell me anything you don’t want to.
Claire read it twice. Her first instinct was to let the message sit. She had only just managed to acknowledge Jessica’s apology. But the woman had offered no excuse for Nathan and made no demand for friendship.
Claire typed:
One coffee. I’ll choose the place.
Jessica replied almost immediately.
Of course.
They met the next afternoon at a café two blocks from Claire’s workplace. Claire chose a small table beside the front window, where she could see the entrance. She arrived first and ordered tea. When Jessica walked in, she was alone, dressed more plainly than she had been at the grocery store.
She paused beside the table.
“Is this seat okay?”
“Yes.”
Jessica sat, setting her purse on the floor. For a moment, neither of them spoke.
“I’m sorry,” Jessica said. “For being there while he treated you that way. I should have said something.”
Claire wrapped both hands around her cup.
“You don’t have to take responsibility for what Nathan said.”
“I know it was his choice. But I stood beside him and let you face it alone.”
“I was angry at both of you.”
“You had every right to be.”
Jessica didn’t rush to fill the silence. That, at least, made the conversation easier.
Claire studied her face. “Why did you want to meet?”
“To apologize in person. And to tell you I’m not going to defend him.”
A server came by. Jessica ordered coffee, then waited until they were alone again.
“He’s talked about you before,” she said. “Not in a way that made me think you’d done anything wrong. In a way that made me wonder why he needed to make you sound difficult.”
Claire’s fingers tightened around her cup.
“What did he say?”
“That you were stubborn. That you wouldn’t let him help you.” Jessica looked down at the table. “He made it sound like your independence was something he’d been forced to put up with.”
The words landed with an old, familiar weight. Nathan had once praised Claire’s determination, right up until it meant she wouldn’t take his money or follow his advice. Then it became a flaw he could list whenever she disagreed with him.
“He said that to you?”
“More than once. He’d tell me how you turned down gifts, how you insisted on paying your own way. He described it like a game you played to make him feel bad.”
Claire looked out the window at a bus easing into traffic.
“I didn’t turn things down to punish him.”
“I believe you.”
Jessica’s coffee arrived. She thanked the server and waited until he walked away.
“I don’t have proof of anything bigger,” she added. “I’m not saying he’s behind the video or the messages you’ve received. I don’t know anything about that. I just recognized the way he spoke about you. He’d make your boundaries sound like an insult.”
Claire searched her expression for an angle, a hidden request to be reassured. She didn’t find one.
“What do you want me to do with that?” Claire asked.
“Nothing. I don’t expect you to do anything. I thought you should know you weren’t imagining the pattern.”
Claire let the words sit between them. She had spent long enough with Nathan wondering whether every disagreement meant she was ungrateful, every refusal meant she was cold. Hearing Jessica describe the same habit didn’t erase those years. It did make them harder to dismiss.
“Are you going to marry him?” Claire asked.
Jessica’s mouth tightened.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s your decision.”
“I know.”
“I’m not going to tell you to leave him.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to.” Jessica held Claire’s gaze. “I need to decide what I can live with. You don’t owe me advice or friendship because I finally noticed something.”
Claire’s shoulders loosened a fraction.
“Thank you for saying that.”
They finished their coffee without becoming friends. Jessica didn’t ask about Gabriel, the baby, or Claire’s finances. Before they parted, she said she would respect Claire’s space and keep Nathan from using her as a messenger.
Claire thanked her, though she didn’t make any promises in return.
Outside, the afternoon wind pressed cold fingers through Claire’s coat. Her phone buzzed before she reached the corner.
An unfamiliar number.
Keep Gabriel away from the meeting tomorrow. He doesn’t know who’s waiting.
Claire stopped beneath the café awning and read it again. The message didn’t say who had sent it. It didn’t say what meeting. It didn’t even prove there was one.
Still, her pulse quickened.
She saved a screenshot. Then she stood with the phone in her hand, caught between the rules she had set and the fear that made every rule feel suddenly inadequate.
She hadn’t asked Gabriel to investigate anything. She hadn’t given him permission to interfere in her life. But she had asked him before to tell her what he knew, and this message named him directly.
Claire opened his contact.
He answered on the second ring.
“Claire?”
“I got another message.”
A brief silence.
“Are you safe right now?”
“I’m outside a café. I’m going home, but I’m not giving you the address.”
“I understand.”
The answer came without a demand, though she could hear tension beneath it.
“I saved a screenshot. I’m sending it to you now. I want you to explain what you know about the meeting. I’m not asking you to find the sender or do anything to them.”
“I’ll tell you what I know. I won’t contact anyone on your behalf.”
The words steadied her, if only a little. Claire sent the screenshot.
Her phone remained silent while he read it.
“Gabriel?”
“I’m here.”
“What meeting?”
“I have a private business meeting tomorrow. The message doesn’t give a location, so I can’t know for sure that it means mine.”
“But you think it does.”
“I think it could.”
“What does the wording mean?”
Another pause. Claire pictured him somewhere behind a closed door, weighing which truth he could afford to say.
“It resembles language used in disputes over territory,” he said. “Not proof of who sent it. Not proof that anyone will be waiting.”
“Whose territory?”
“There’s a rival with influence in the area connected to the meeting.” His voice lowered. “If this is about tomorrow, it may be tied to his territory.”
Claire stared at the warning on her screen. The reporter had asked a question; Jessica had offered an apology. But this message had made no request for her story.
May you like
It had told her what to do with Gabriel.
And it knew enough about his plans to name tomorrow.
