When Mischa’s trusted family friend violates her deepest secret, she must choose between protecting someone she once knew well or standing up for herself.
In a world where betrayal wears a familiar face, Mischa learns that forgiveness doesn’t erase consequences… and some stories must be told on your own terms, no matter the cost.
When I found out I was pregnant, I wasn’t ready to tell anyone. Not my friends.
Not my family. I just wanted to keep it between my boyfriend, my doctor, and myself.
I was 20.
Still figuring out who I was. Still making peace with the fact that adulthood doesn’t come with a manual. A baby?
Goodness me. It felt both terrifying and beautiful. Like standing at the edge of a cliff with your arms open.
So, I made an appointment at one of the best OB-GYN offices in town.
It was clean, professional, and discreet. It was exactly what I needed.
Or so I thought.
When I walked into the waiting room, my heart stopped for a second.
Behind the reception desk, flipping through paperwork like it was any normal Tuesday, stood Monica, an old friend of my mom’s.
I froze in the doorway, my heart lodging somewhere between my ribs and my throat. I did remember her from when we were younger though.
Monica used to basically live in our home. Visiting all the time. I hadn’t seen her in years but I knew they still texted occasionally.
Christmas cards. Birthday wishes. The occasional “we must catch up” lunch that never actually happened.
The air in the waiting room felt too sharp, like breathing in tacks.
I told myself not to panic. Monica wasn’t just a receptionist anymore, she was a medical assistant now. She’d know better… she had to.
Right?
Confidentiality was everything in healthcare.
Surely, she would be professional.
Surely.
I filled out the clipboard with shaking hands, feeling her eyes flicker toward me and then away, polite but not oblivious.
Every fibre of my body screamed that this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.
I went through the appointment trying to block it all out, the tension in my shoulders, the tight ache under my skin.
Instead, I focused on the doctor’s kind voice. The cold gel smeared across my belly. The faint, miraculous thud-thud of a heartbeat emerging from the static.
Tiny. Fragile. Real.
Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes as the grainy shape appeared on the monitor.
A life.
A beginning.
Something so impossibly mine that it made my chest hurt with a strange, wild kind of love. I clutched the ultrasound photo on the drive home, holding it against my chest like a fragile secret, emotions swirling too fast to name.
And when I opened the front door, my mom was already there.
Beaming. Congratulating me loudly.
Throwing her arms around me like it was Christmas morning, her voice bubbling with excitement I couldn’t match.
“You’re going to be such a good mom, Mischa! I’m so happy for you! My baby is having a baby!” she gushed, squeezing me tighter.
The room tilted sideways, the walls pressing in.
I hadn’t said anything yet.
I hadn’t even decided if I wanted to tell her today.
Or tomorrow. Or next week. I hadn’t even had time to process the reality myself, let alone share it.
My mom kept talking, oblivious to the way my hands hung limply at my sides.
She floated between baby names, crib shopping, nursery colors… all the while I stood frozen, the blood draining from my face, my heartbeat hammering somewhere near my throat.
Somewhere between “maybe Emma if it’s a girl?” and “I have the old bassinet in the garage,” I found my voice.
It came out thin and brittle.
“Mom,” I interrupted, swallowing hard. “How… how did you know?”
She blinked at me, confused, almost amused.
“Darling, Monica texted me, of course!”
Just like that.
Casual. Cheerful.
Oblivious.
Monica had reached out and ripped away my most personal moment before I even made it home.
I mumbled something about needing the bathroom and stumbled down the hall, locking the door behind me.
The cold tiles pressed against my bare feet. I sank onto the closed toilet lid, pressing my trembling hands into my forehead, willing the spinning in my head to stop.
A deep, hollow ache ballooned inside my chest, swallowing everything else.
It wasn’t just gossip. It wasn’t just excitement.
It was a violation. It was my life and someone else had decided that they had the right to announce it for me.
Every fear I’d carefully tucked away, judgment, pressure, losing control of my own story… came roaring up at once, crashing through the thin walls I’d tried so hard to build around myself.
I wasn’t ready to shout my pregnancy from the rooftops.
I wasn’t ready for advice, for sidelong glances, for whispers behind my back about “the poor young girl who ruined her life.” I wasn’t ready for anyone else’s hands in my future, tugging at it, twisting it.
It was mine. And now it wasn’t.
The knowledge sat like a stone in my stomach, heavy and cold.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted to march back to that OB office and demand Monica’s badge, her job, her dignity. To burn everything down just so someone, anyone, would understand what had been taken from me.
But my mom, still smiling a little too brightly, still hoping everything could be smoothed over, begged me not to.
“She meant well, Mischa,” she said softly, wringing her hands and looking at the freshly baked scones on the table. “Please, baby… just talk to her first.
Give her a chance? Yes?”
Meant well. Meant well?
It was funny how people used that phrase like it erased damage.
I wasn’t feeling merciful.
Not even a little. But I was feeling strategic.
Anger could scorch t
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