Dr. Julian Croft smirked when the nurse’s voice crackled over the intercom. “Doctor, we have a patient in complicated labor. She needs immediate attention.” From the gurney, Cecilia Morgan—the woman he had thrown out of his house nine months ago—looked up at him, her eyes clouded with pain. What he was about to discover would change his life forever.

Julian adjusted his $40,000 Audemars Piguet as he admired his impeccable reflection in the polished chrome doors of the elevator at St. Jude’s Medical Center. At thirty-five, he had meticulously crafted a reputation as the city’s most successful—and ruthless—obstetrical surgeon. With a personal fortune of eight million dollars, he also possessed the coldest, most arrogant heart in the state.

His private office on the 12th floor was an obscene monument to his ego. It featured white marble walls imported from Italy, gold-framed diplomas that cost more than a nurse’s annual salary, and a panoramic view that constantly reminded him he was literally above the insignificant ants suffering in the emergency rooms below.

But Julian’s greatest pleasure wasn’t his astronomical wealth; it was the sadistic power it gave him to decide who deserved his care.

“Dr. Croft.” The trembling voice of Nurse Maria cut through his thoughts of superiority. “There’s an emergency in the delivery ward. A patient with severe complications.”

“Does she have private insurance?” he replied, a cruel smile spreading across his tanned face. “You know I don’t attend to just anyone.” For the last five years, Julian had perfected his personal system of medical discrimination. If a patient couldn’t afford his exorbitant fees, he simply passed them off to less experienced residents. It was his most sadistic entertainment: playing God with the lives of others.

“Doctor, she… she specifically asked for you,” Maria stammered, clearly nervous. “She said she knows you. Her name is Claire Morgan.”

The name struck Julian like a lightning bolt to the chest. Claire Morgan. The woman who had been his wife for three perfect years. The woman he had loved with an intensity that terrified him. The woman who had shattered his heart with a supposed betrayal he could never prove, but which had been enough to expel her from his life forever.

It had been exactly nine months since that night. He had come home to find Claire whispering on the phone, smiling in a way he had never seen before. His pathological jealousy, fed by years of watching other men desire her, finally detonated. “Liar! Traitor!” he had screamed, hurling the cruelest words of his life at her, accusing her of having a lover without a shred of evidence. “Get out of my house and never come back.”

The memory of her tears, her desperate pleas to explain, and the way her hands trembled as she gathered her few belongings while he watched without compassion—it still haunted him on sleepless nights. But his pride had been stronger than his love. His ego, more important than the truth.

“Doctor, are you there?” Maria’s voice pulled him from his torturous reflections. “The patient is losing a lot of blood, contractions are irregular, and the baby is showing signs of fetal distress.”

Julian felt the world crumble beneath his feet. A baby. Claire was pregnant. His hands began to shake as he did the math he didn’t want to confirm. Nine months pregnant. Nine months since he had kicked her out.

“I’m on my way,” he muttered, his voice a stranger’s.

As he walked through the sterile hospital corridors, each step echoed in his brain like a hammer of guilt. Memories assaulted him with brutal clarity: Claire trying to tell him something important on the night of the fight; him, interrupting her with jealous shouts; her, placing a hand on her stomach in a gesture that now held a devastating meaning. She had been trying to tell him she was pregnant.

When he reached the delivery room door, Julian froze. He had entered this room hundreds of times with the absolute confidence of the city’s top surgeon. Now, his palms were sweating, and his heart pounded as if he were a first-year intern.

He took a deep breath and pushed the door open. The sight that greeted him stole the air from his lungs. There on the hospital bed, her face contorted in pain but maintaining a dignity that broke his soul, was Claire Morgan. She was no longer the woman he had cast out. Nine months of suffering had carved lines of strength into her face that made her even more beautiful, and at the same time, completely unattainable. Her large, expressive eyes, which had once looked at him with infinite love, now met his with a mixture of physical pain and something far more devastating: indifference.

“Hello, Julian,” she said, her voice strangely calm despite the contractions tearing through her. “Thank you for coming.”

The formality in her tone was a slap. For three years, she had called him “Jules” with a tenderness that melted all his defenses. Now, he was just Julian, a stranger hired to do a job.

“Claire, I…” Julian tried to find the words he had been rehearsing for nine months, but he was struck dumb when he saw her belly. The baby was his.