Page 14 of Nine Months to Bear

As I read, my blood runs cold, then hot, then cold again. Each bullet point feels like another shot fired, but this time aimed directly at my professional integrity.

“But I… I help women… I need— I needed money,” I blurt. “But you need…” I read the document again. “You want ababy?”

7

OLIVIA

“A surrogate,” Stefan corrects, like he’s explaining something to a particularly slow child.

I shake my head to clear the cobwebs. “You want me to find you a surrogate?”

“In a manner of speaking. I suppose you were right at the start. The surrogate is a means to an end. I want an heir.” His voice is matter-of-fact, as if he’s ordering coffee, not a human being.

“What kind of business do you think I run, Stef—” I catch myself. “Mr. Safonov?”

The almost-familiarity charges the air between us. All I can think is,This must be a mistake.Actually, everything about this interaction has been a mistake. The shooting lesson. The proximity. The moment our eyes met and I thought?—

Well, what exactly did I think? That there was something other than self-interest driving his decisions?

“I know exactly what kind of business you run. Your clinic has resources. Contacts. A reputation for discretion.” He leans against the stall divider, but his eyes never leave mine.

“My clinic helps women with fertility issues,” I correct. “We’re not a—a breeding program for billionaires playing eugenics bingo!”

My indignation rises to fill the space where my professional composure should be. This must be why he insisted on the shooting lesson first: to get me off-balance, to create false intimacy, to make me malleable.

The worst part is that it almost worked. For half an hour, I forgot who and what Stefan is.

A man who thinks everything has a price.

“Your high horse is adorable, Dr. Aster,” he says, pulling up his phone. “But let’s discuss reality.”

On the screen are my clinic’s financials—every overdraft and denied loan highlighted in red. My stomach drops to my scuffed shoes.

How on earth did he get this information? What else does he know?

“Your clinic is months from bankruptcy. Dr. Walsh is circling like a vulture. You know what you need to do to get out, which is why you’re here. The Mass Gen partnership you’re chasing?” His smile is cruel now, nothing like the almost-warmth I thought I glimpsed earlier. “It could be yours. I could hand it to you on a silver fucking platter without even blinking. Or it could vanish. Without me, everything you’ve built collapses within six weeks. It’s your choice: financial ruin, or one simple favor.”

My nails bite into my palms as I weigh his words. Six weeks. That’s all I have left before my dream crashes and burns.

For one shameful moment, I consider it. How easy it would be to just say yes. Just forget my principles for long enough to save everything I’ve built—what’s the harm in that?

I could play the game the way Dr. Walsh did when she pretended she cared, when she walked alongside me as I conducted my research and built my client roster, only to steal it all out from under me with a smile on her face.

“You don’t understand,”I had told her then, watching her pack up my life’s work.“These aren’t just patients. These are women who trust us. People who have put their faith and their families in our hands.”

“No, Olivia,”she’d replied, scorn and pity in her eyes. “Youdon’t understand. Money is the only language that matters in this world. You speak it or you die.”

Standing before Stefan Safonov, I see the same devil’s bargain in front of me. The same invitation to compromise wrapped in the guise of practicality.

And for a heartbeat, I waver.

I think of my last patient—a waitress with PCOS who wept when she saw her viable embryo on screen.“That’s my baby,”she’d whispered, hope blooming in her eyes for the first time in years.

She came to my clinic because we don’t cut corners. Because we don’t see women as walking incubators. Because we believe every woman deserves the chance to make her own choices about her body, her future, her family.

That’s why I didn’t crumble when Dr. Walsh stole everything. And it’s why I’m not backing down now.

I will not pimp out wombs to mobsters playing Dynasty Tycoon.