Page 51 of Filthy Rich Silver Foxes

She didn’t ask me to show up here. And, although she told me about the pregnancy, she hasn’t asked for help. She didn’t even tell me what she was going through until she cracked under the weight of it. And now that I’m here, she keeps trying to protect me from it—like her pain is a burden, her truth too heavy to share.

That’s not a grifter. That’s not a gold digger or a social climber.

That’s someone who’s scared out of her mind and still trying to handle it alone.

I watch the way she curls her fingers tighter around mine without thinking. Her shoulders sag with exhaustion. She flinches like she’s expecting me to pull away.

I won’t.

I lean back just enough to see her face, to read the guilt and confusion swimming behind her eyes.

“You don’t have to be ashamed,” I say, my voice quieter now. “Not with me.”

She presses her lips together. “You don’t even know me.”

I smile. Not a cocky one. Not flirty. Just soft. “Maybe not. But I know what it looks like when someone’s trying to hold themselves together with duct tape and a smile.”

That earns me a snort. Barely.

I take a breath. Swallow down everything I probably shouldn’t be feeling.

She’s young. So much younger than me. And she’s pregnant. With someone else’s baby. Probably Sebastian’s. And that should bother me.

So, why doesn’t it?

Maybe because when I look at her—really look at her—I don’t see someone else’s mistake. I see her. The curve of her spine as she bends under pressure, but doesn’t break. The fire behind her eyes when she thinks no one is watching. The softness in her voice when she talks to people like they matter. Her soul is loud, even when she’s quiet.

And somehow, without ever meaning to, I’ve already started falling.

Hard.

Chapter15

Sebastian

It’s been five weeks.

Five weeks since the event wrapped. Five weeks since I handed Dom the note, boarded the plane, and convinced myself it was the cleanest exit. The right decision. The only one that didn’t end with regret.

But I was wrong. Because I regret it a little more each day.

I’m a coward. And now I’m stuck with a constant, slow ache that spreads through my chest. I feel like I’m bleeding somewhere that I just can’t see.

I’ve seen all her messages. I haven’t responded to a single one, which is a different kind of cruelty. I tell myself silence is better. That an unanswered message hurts less than the truth: I didn’t walk away because she wasn’t enough. I walked away because she was.

She’s still a goddamn distraction and she’s not even here.

I’m sitting in my office, staring at a contract that’s been open on my screen for forty minutes. I haven’t read a word of it. The coffee on my desk is cold. My phone buzzes with a new email, and I don’t look, already knowing who it’s from.

Heather Langley.

That woman never gives up.

She’s pitched herself three times this quarter, each proposal more desperate than the last. This one is probably titled something aggressively creative, sent with a winky face, and a request to “grab drinks and discuss synergy”.

I don’t open it.

Heather’s work has always been passable. Flashy, but shallow. She cuts corners, leans too heavily on style without substance. Her reputation is built on proximity—who she knows, who she’s slept with, who she’s angling for next. I’ve never touched her. Never planned to. But I’m not blind to the fact that she’s tried. Is still trying.