Antonio’s POV
The night air was thick with tension as I stared out over the city, the lights twinkling beneath me like embers. My thoughts kept circling back to Laura, her fragile face when we had last spoken. Something in her had shifted. The carefully constructed walls I had built between us—the ones that kept our arrangement strictly business—were crumbling.
The news about her grandmother wasn’t something I had planned for, and yet, here it was. How was I supposed to navigate this? It had all been clear at the start: I wanted a child. She would give me one, and in return, I’d take care of everything. Simple. Clean. But things weren’t simple anymore.
She was suffering, and for some reason, it bothered me more than I cared to admit.
My phone buzzed on the table beside me, a harsh inte
