Aiden Pell and I were three years into a contract marriage.
He gave me money and the surname Pell on a black AmEx. I kept his board off his back about the right-family wife they kept floating.
Everyone in our orbit knew there was a girl he'd never gotten over. She was abroad, getting treatment. Sick. Saintly. Forever.
Then I got pregnant.
I told myself, before the contract ran out, this one thing could be the exception between us.
The day Celeste Mowbray flew back into New York, Aiden slid a Form D-7 termination authorization across the breakfast island.
"Terminate the pregnancy. Celeste's heart can't take a shock right now."
I signed the divorce settlement instead.
On my way out of the penthouse, I sent him one text.
Forgot to mention. The day we got married, you signed the partner-binding consent for the SynchroniSync trial. As of right now, every pregnancy reflex is yours.
Three hours later, in the dining room at Daniel, while he was cutting Celeste's steak for her, Aiden Pell threw up across her white silk dress.
Aiden finds the ultrasound printout in the passenger seat of the Range Rover.
He's just come from JFK. His suit jacket smells like tuberose — Diptyque, the one Celeste has worn since she was twenty-two. Not mine.
I'm in the seat next to him with the OB packet in my lap, listening to him take a call on Bluetooth.
The voice on the other end is gauzy and small. "Aiden. I landed. Are you coming for me?"
He glances at me. His voice drops half a register. "Yes. I'm on my way."
He kills the call and pulls the car over on Hudson.
"Wren. Take a cab home."
I don't move.
He frowns. "Don't make this a thing."
I hand him the printout.
"Six weeks."
The car goes quiet. Five, six seconds. He doesn't reach for it. His eyes land on the paper the way they land on a deal memo he's about to kill.
"Terminate."
The way he asks his assistant to cancel a meeting.
My fingers close on the door handle.
"It's yours."
He finally looks at me. There's nothing in his face. Not anger. Not even inconvenience.
"Celeste just got back. Her heart can't take a shock. If she finds out, she won't make it through the week."
I laugh once.
"So she can't take a shock. And I can take a D&C."
His eyes cool.
"Wren. This is a contract marriage. Three years ago you took seven million dollars and we both signed the prenup. Clause 14.3 was very clear. No unilateral expectations."
He opens the glove box and pulls out a folded printout. He hands it to me.
A Park Avenue Reproductive Medicine appointment confirmation. Procedure room booked. Anesthesiologist assigned. Tomorrow morning. Nine a.m.
Not a spur of the moment.
He had this in the glove box before he picked her up from the airport.
My stomach does a slow, sour roll. Aiden mistakes it for hesitation, and his voice goes another degree colder.
"Sign it. I'll have the divorce settlement on your desk by tonight. Compensation doubles."
I take the pen out of his hand.
His face softens by a millimeter.
A second later, on the signature line of the Voluntary Termination Authorization, I write three words.
DO NOT CONSENT.
Aiden drives me to Greenwich.
It isn't a conversation. It's custody.
Two of the estate's security detail are at the front door when we pull in. The housekeeper takes my phone and my key fob out of my bag without asking.
Vivienne is on the cream sofa in the long room with a cup of tea. She looks up at me and her mouth tightens before I've even taken off my coat.
"Wren. A woman in your position doesn't make a scene. You've been married to my son for three years. He has not been ungenerous. Celeste is back, and the appropriate thing is not to use a pregnancy as a wedge."
I'm still in the foyer. Coat still on.
"This isn't a wedge."
She sets her cup on the side table hard enough to make the saucer skip.
"Then why now, of all times."
I look at her.
She looks away.
Aiden comes down the staircase with a folder under his arm. He sets it on the coffee table between us and opens it.
"Sign."
A divorce settlement. Open to the asset schedule. Generous, the way the prenup never was. The Tribeca penthouse goes to me. Ten million in cash. A piece of an offshore fund I didn't know existed.
One condition.
Termination of the pregnancy.
I lift the pages and flip through them. Slowly. Aiden's patience runs out at page four.
"Wren. I don't have time."
A small cough drifts down from the second-floor landing.
Celeste is at the top of the staircase in a white silk slip-dress, one hand on the banister, the other at her collarbone. She looks like she's been backlit on purpose. Her eyes are wet.
"Wren — I'm so sorry. I didn't know you were pregnant. I'll just go. I don't want him torn between us."
Vivienne stands up at once and crosses the room to her. "Sweetheart. Where exactly do you intend to go in your condition."
Aiden's already up the first three steps. He pulls his jacket off and lays it across Celeste's shoulders. The whole motion is automatic. Practiced.
She tucks herself into the crook of his arm and looks down the staircase at me.
"Wren — the baby is innocent. I know that. But Aiden is the only person I have left."
She lets the first tear go on the word left.
Aiden's face closes completely.
"Wren. Don't make me handle this another way."
I nod.
"All right."
The room exhales.
I pick up the pen and sign the divorce settlement.
Vivienne starts to smile.
I slide the Form D-7 back across the coffee table toward Aiden.
"This one. No."
Aiden's face is past anger. It's at the place anger goes when it stops being useful.
"You're playing me."
I cap the pen.
"I'll take the divorce. I'm keeping the baby."
Celeste makes a noise and presses her hand flat against her chest. Her breath catches.
"Aiden. I can't — I can't —"
Vivienne whips around to me. "Are you happy now, Wren?"
The house doctor is there inside ten minutes. He keeps a room on the third floor; that's the kind of estate it is. Aiden lifts Celeste off the stairs and carries her up. On his way past me he doesn't look at my face. He just says, low —
"If anything happens to her tonight, I will end you."
I don't turn around.
Ten minutes later, Wes Tran comes down with my phone in his hand. Seven years at Aiden's elbow. He doesn't make eye contact. He sets the phone in my palm like he's returning a borrowed pen.
"Mrs. Marchetti. Mr. Pell would like me to confirm. Park Avenue Reproductive Medicine, nine a.m. Anesthesia and the procedure room are both reserved."
I look up.
Wes looks at the wall behind me.
So the other way he meant was already booked before he carried her upstairs.
I unlock the phone. Forty-seven messages. The one on top is from an app I haven't opened in two and a half years.
[SynchroniSync — Marital status flagged: dissolution in progress.] [Pregnancy paired-binding criteria satisfied.] [Initiate somatic transfer to paired subject: AIDEN PELL?]
I stare at the screen and a small, ugly laugh comes up out of my chest.
Three years ago, on our wedding day, Aiden complained that the prenup packet was too thick. He flipped to the asset schedule, signed the last page, and slid the rest aside.
He did not read the SynchroniSync paired-binding consent.
Why would he. SynchroniSync was a Marchetti family trial. My mother started the bench work in 1999. By the time she died, she had a Phase-1 protocol on her desk for partner-somatic-sync — a clinical device that lets a consenting partner share the reflexes of a high-risk pregnancy. Nausea, fatigue, glucose drops, eventually labor. To redistribute the load.
The trial binding criteria are narrow on purpose. Lawful marriage. Voluntary written consent from both partners. Pregnancy in progress. Non-medically-indicated termination requested by one party against the other's will.
He completed every single one of them himself. The last one tonight, with the Form D-7 in the glove box.
I press CONFIRM.
[Transfer ratio: 100%.]
I close the app, drop the phone in my coat pocket, and walk through the foyer past the security detail. The housekeeper is so surprised she doesn't move to stop me.
From the second floor, through the open landing, I hear Aiden Pell make a small, dry sound at the back of his throat. The kind of sound a person makes when something turns over in their stomach for the first time.
It's stopped raining by the time my car gets back to the city.
Wes calls before we hit the FDR.
"Mrs. Marchetti. Mr. Pell is — he's been throwing up since you left. The estate's physician can't get it to stop."
I watch the streetlights run backward on the East River.
"Call a doctor."
"The doctor can't find anything."
There's a clatter on his end. Aiden's voice, between heaves, in pieces.
"Wren — what did — you do —"
I keep my voice flat.
"Forgot to mention. We're paired on SynchroniSync."
The line goes quiet for two heartbeats.
Then the sound of him moving fast across a bathroom floor.
I finish the sentence into the call.
"As of right now, every pregnancy reflex is yours."
He cuts the line.
Five minutes later, a voicemail from Celeste comes through. She's crying so hard I have to play it twice.
"Wren — please — Aiden is only worried about me, that's the only reason any of this is happening, please don't do this kind of thing to him — please —"
I text her back: You can throw up for him too.
She doesn't write back.
Nine a.m. the next morning, the procedure room at Park Avenue Reproductive Medicine is empty. No one came to put me on a table.
Aiden is, in fact, at lunch.
By 12:40 it's on Page Six. By 12:55 it's the third trending story on X.
Pell Ventures CEO publicly ill during reunion lunch with rumored partner
The video has 1.3 million views in an hour. Daniel's main dining room. A two-top by the window. He's leaning across the table to cut her steak — the white silk shoulder of her slip-dress is in frame, the carving knife is in frame, his cufflink is in frame.
Celeste lifts a piece of beef on her fork toward his mouth.
His expression changes. He turns his head an inch to the side and is sick all the way down the front of her dress and across the linen.
He braces a hand on the table to stand. He can't. He dry-heaves again, into his napkin this time, and the napkin isn't enough.
In the corner of the frame Celeste's face stops being soft. For maybe three quarters of a second it stops entirely. Then she remembers she's on camera and her hand goes back up to her mouth.
The replies eat the platform.
does the billionaire have morning sickness too
did HE get pregnant
the look she gives him at 0:14 holy SHIT
I close the app and drink a glass of water at room temperature.
This is only the start.