Page 202 of Wrong Number Right Doctor

He looks at me over the paper. “The arrangement does not end without my final say.”

For a second I can’t speak.

Because I knew there were clauses. I knew there were protections, conditions, restrictions. I signed them. I sat in rooms and nodded and initialed and told myself that understanding something legally was the same as understanding what it could become when placed in the hands of the wrong man.

It isn’t. It never was.

“That clause was written for a different situation,” I say.

“No,” he says. “It was written for this one.”

My stomach turns. “You can’t possibly think that holds if the child isn’t yours.”

He closes the file. “I think it holds until I say otherwise.”

I laugh again, this time because I genuinely don’t know what else to do with the scale of what I’m hearing.

“That agreement was for your child.”

“That agreement was for this pregnancy.”

He is not speaking like a man whose dream has been shattered. He’s speaking like a man adjusting a route after roadwork. Annoyed, perhaps. Inconvenienced, certainly. But not morally moved in the slightest.

I look at him and for the first time, fully and without dilution, I understand how dangerous he is.

Not because he is cruel in obvious ways. Because he is not.

Because he can say I still want the baby and the arrangement does not end in the same tone he might use to confirm dinner reservations.

Because he can take a thing that should break the entire structure and decide, calmly, that the structure will remain and everyone else will adapt around it.

My voice comes out quieter now. “You really think you can force this.”

“Yes.”

The honesty of it is monstrous.

I shake my head once, not in disagreement anymore, but because I need my body to do something. “If Dalton knows⁠—”

He cuts in before I finish. “Dalton knows enough.”

I look up sharply.

He watches me. There is something almost like satisfaction in his stillness now. Not joy. Not triumph. Just the composure of a man who prefers being ahead of the room and knows that once again, he is.

“What did you do?” I ask.

“Nothing that concerns you.”

That answer tells me everything.

Something cold drops through me.

He checks his watch. The gesture is small. Ordinary. It terrifies me more than if he’d slammed a fist into the desk.

“I have a meeting to attend,” he says.

I just stare at him.