Billionaire Romance9 min read
"My Pregnant Mistake Became His Problem — And His Power"
ButterPicks46 views
"I can't—" I gagged into my palm on live TV.
"Joanna, are you okay?" the host leaned closer with a fake smile, the camera cutting to my face like a blade.
I saw the red light. I saw the chat flood. I saw my agent's hand in my pocket shaking. I tasted metal and fear.
"Pregnancy," I said, and the word popped out loud on its own. My thumb hit like a fool on a stupid tweet—an accident, a stupid tap—and the world exploded.
"You're joking, right?" Felicity hissed in my ear in the green room. Her voice was all edge. "You liked the post?"
"I didn't mean to!" I cried, and the room felt like it closed in. "I didn't—Felicity, I didn't—"
"Calm down." She forced me to breathe. "Smile. Smile for the camera."
"Don't make me." I wiped my mouth and forced a smile. "Thanks. Thank you, everyone."
The flash of phones felt like rain. I waved the award like it was a life raft. Cameras followed me like sharks.
Outside, the reporters swarmed. I bolted through the back door in high heels and shame. I heard a voice behind me: "Joanna!"
I ran until I hit the underground parking. A black car waited. Men in black filled the lane like a wall. One man faced me in a long dark coat, back to me, like a statue.
"Three times my fee, then leave," I said, breath sharp. I shoved a business card toward the nearest man and laughed too loudly.
He turned. The camera caught him: Ethan Brooks. Ethan Brooks, CEO of Brooks Global, known for ice and hush. My chest went hollow.
"You owe me honesty," he said. He took the card like a judge. "You came into my life two months ago and left. You left with a favor unpaid."
"I paid you five hundred," I blurted. "Five hundred was the price. That was the deal."
He raised an eyebrow. "Five hundred? For what a man like me remembers as a night?"
"You're being ridiculous," I snapped. My breath trembled. "I wasn't pregnant then. I swear I wasn't pregnant then."
"Let's check." He said it as if it was a small thing.
He drove me, and I kept thinking I could run. He parked at a hospital. He carried me like I weighed nothing.
"You can't touch me," I said. "I will scream. I'll call the police."
"Do," he said. "But we'll see the test results."
The test came back eight weeks.
My world folded like a cheap card trick. "Eight weeks—" I whispered. "That night—"
Ethan did not celebrate. He folded the sheet and put it on the table like a verdict.
"You can't have an abortion," he said flatly. "They won't do it easily with me around."
"I'm twenty-two," I said. "I have my career."
"Then marry me," he said.
I laughed before I could stop it. "What?"
"You will keep the child," he said. "You will marry me. Quietly. You will stay where I can protect you."
Two words hung like chains: I agreed.
"Just sign the papers," he told me later in his study. "Sign and we will start."
A month later I was his contract bride and the world had new rules.
"Call me Ethan," he said once, quiet at three a.m., and I couldn't tell if he was cruel or soft.
"Call me Jo," I said, and the name felt like a small theft.
Days melted. He was all small, careful touches—an ordered breakfast, a phone call marked "old husband," a hand on my lower back in elevators. He controlled everything: my deals, my image, my food. He is the kind of man who makes things obedient.
"Eat," he said one day, offering me a salad. "For the baby."
"I want burgers," I said. He smiled and folded his lips like scissors.
"Eat the salad. Later you will have the burger."
I learned his rules. I learned to ask permission for shoes. He hated the idea that other men would look at me. "Don't wear that for others," he told me once, voice low. "Not for anyone."
"Not even on TV?" I said, mock protest small and petulant.
"You are mine," he answered, which sounded both like comfort and an order.
The scandal changed everything. My numbers went up. Brands came running. People said I was lucky. I said I was trapped. Ethan said nothing while he changed the map.
"My assistant will go with you today." Cooper Olsen handed me a file. He was polite, alert. He looked like he belonged to Ethan.
"Thank you," I said. I still hated to bow.
At RG Entertainment—my new company—my life became cleaner. Offices moved. People looked scared and excited. A receptionist whispered, "You're Mrs. Brooks?" and I felt the world tilt.
I filmed a show, because I needed money and screen time. I faked smiles and made tidy statements about privacy. The chat wanted a name. They wanted the baby's father. I would tease, and Ethan's messages would spill into my hand like proof.
"Come home," one said. "Lunch now. Kisses." His voice was a soft anchor in the storm.
People loved it.
But someone hated me enough to put poison under my name.
Her name was Linnea Downs. She had played cold smiles and clever hands from the start. She was the woman who needed my part, the woman who paid our assistant to spike my drink two months ago. She believed she could tip the stage into chaos and take my life out of the frame.
I found out slowly. A tip from a frightened PA. A ledger that smelled like bribery and wine. Linnea had led a smear. She had paid someone to drug me to ruin me and to make sure I'd sleep with a nameless man she thought too weak to resist. I had been that nameless night.
"It was her?" I asked Ethan one evening when the proof came to light: messages, transfers, a recorded voice. He set the files on the table.
"She thought she could buy you away," he said.
"She paid my assistant," I said. My fingers shook. "She thought she'd be queen."
"Then we will show the world the truth," Ethan said. "You want her to regret it."
I wanted it badly. Not small regret. Not a whisper. I wanted a public fall. He agreed.
We planned a press day at the mall where Linnea always shone in her costume jewelry—her stage, her theatre. Ethan orchestrated the room like a conductor. He hired a large screen. He scheduled a charity event under it. He invited press and Linnea's family and her own circle of top friends. The mall would hold a hundred cameras and five hundred people.
"Are you sure?" I asked. "I need them to see everything."
"Do you want them to see everything?" he asked back.
"Yes."
The day was full of light.
"Joanna Johansen," the host said into the microphone. "Welcome."
"Thanks," I said. I had palate dried from nerves. The screen behind me was blank. Ethan sat two rows back, shoulders relaxed, eyes like a storm.
"We are here to present a charity auction," the host announced. "And to announce a partnership."
The camera swung wide and caught Linnea, in a white dress too bright, smiling at her fans. She lifted a hand and the crowd clapped. She thought she was about to be praised.
"Linnea," Ethan's voice came through the mic. "Stand, please."
She stood, curious. The screen crashed to life with live footage we had taken weeks before—the footage of an agreement, Linnea handing a man a thick envelope while discussing a name. The mic on that footage had recorded her laugh.
"Pay him to spike Joanna," the footage played her words plain and cruel. "Make the drink go soft, make her sleep. Then you win the role."
Her smile cut off mid-thought. The room inhaled.
"What is this?" Linnea's voice was thin.
"It is your voice," Ethan said. He walked to the stage like a man making his point. He held a tablet and slid the ledger across the lectern. "You will answer for this to everyone here."
"You're lying," she snapped. Her poise cracked. Faces turned. Flash cameras exploded.
"No, I'm not," I said. My voice was steady. "You paid to ruin me."
"You—you can't prove—" she sputtered.
"We can," Ethan said. "We recorded the transfer. We recorded your call. We have paid witnesses."
They played a second file. A voice, a laugh, a confession: "Five hundred? It is nothing. Do it."
Her face went white. The small, proud woman who had walked in at the beginning turned to a mask of disbelief. "This is edited!" she screamed. "Photoshopped! Set up!"
"It is not," a man in the crowd said. A reporter stepped forward with images of bank transfers. A phone chimed in with screenshots. People began to shout. Phones rose like sunflowers.
"Who are you?" Linnea hissed at Ethan. She looked around as if allies might pull her up. There were none. Her family did not move.
"Why?" I asked quietly.
"Because I wanted what she had," she said, and the voice cracked. "Because I wanted the doors she has."
"You wanted to take a life," Ethan said calmly.
She laughed once, then sobbed. The crowd's tone shifted from curiosity to anger.
"Is this true?" someone asked, and the landlord's security came forward. A manager from the mall who had been paid by Ethan earlier read out the recorded transcript into a loudspeaker.
"You set a plan to drug her," the manager said. "You used a staff member."
Linnea's shoulders collapsed.
"Linnea, tell them," someone shouted.
She dropped to her knees on the cold tile in front of the stage. It was a small thing—cheap tile and the press lights—but the image would be forever.
"You're a liar," she sobbed. "No, no, no—it's not like that—I didn't mean—"
Cameras moved. A sea of phones recorded. A chorus rose: "Shame!" "Get out!" "Why?" people cried. Someone shoved her. A woman spat on her shoe. A man snapped photos.
She reached for the host like a drowning person, hands clawing. "Please—" she begged, voice raw. "Don't—please don't ruin me."
"Why didn't you think about what you'd do to her child?" Ethan asked in a cold voice that carried over the noise.
Her tears thickened, and with each breath she grew smaller.
"She paid a helper to drug her," I told the crowd. "She wanted me ruined. She wanted me removed."
"You—you set me up!" Linnea wailed, but no one moved to help the money-laced woman.
People circled. A reporter shoved a microphone close. "Are you sorry? Are you sorry you tried to hurt Joanna?"
She looked at me, wild with shame, and tried to find words.
"I—" Her hands trembled. "I will fix it—I'll pay— I'll—"
"Get up," Ethan said. "Say it here."
She forced herself to her knees. Her dress gathered around her like a rejected curtain. "I'm sorry," she sobbed. "I am sorry, Joanna. I didn't think—"
"Say you're sorry to everyone," a woman in the crowd demanded.
She swallowed hard and turned to the cameras. "I'm sorry," she said again, voice thin. She tried to stand; security gently helped her to her feet. People were recording. People were yelling. A man in the crowd spat again.
Then Linnea began to shake. Denial became pleading. "Please, they'll lose their reputation," she cried. "Please, I have to—"
"Beg," someone shouted cruelly.
Everything snapped like thin glass. Her shoulders hunched. She sank back onto her knees and made a small, ugly sound. A reporter filmed her hands as she dug into the concrete, nails scratching.
"Forgive me," she begged, voice raw. "Please—"
No one forgave her. Phones kept rolling. People shouted. The security guards—hired by Ethan—led her out when the footage stopped showing her leverage. People muttered. Some clapped. Others pulled out their phones and streamed.
She was escorted through the glass doors, clutching at a scarf like a totem. As she left, someone flicked a cigarette ash at her shoes. A teenager shouted, "You ruined her!" and the words stuck like tar.
Later that night the video had millions of views. Linnea's apology fed rumor like a slow fire. Her family called lawyers. Her father refused to answer calls. She posted a trembling note that she had been wrong. The store she loved barred her for life. Offers dried. Men she once flirted with crossed the street.
I watched it all, and my hands shook.
"Is it enough?" I asked Ethan when the last clip played inside our quiet study.
He folded his hands. "It is public," he said. "It is done. She cannot pretend anymore."
"And they saw her beg."
"They saw her ruin her own future," he said. "They will think twice before buying her smile."
I thought of all the small ways she had tried to destroy me. I thought of the night I had only wanted a ride. I thought of a baby who had no say. I bowed my head.
"Thank you," I said.
He kissed my forehead like the deal we had never made but both kept. "You're safe now," he said.
I did not know if I loved him yet. What I knew was this: I had been dragged through the mud and pulled out by a man who could close doors and open them again. I had a child inside me, and a husband who would not let anyone name my child without him.
Days turned into press statements, contracts, charity dinners, and quiet nights when he would lower himself into the couch and ask me what I wanted. I told him small things. He gave them. I learned that bargaining with him worked—pay with laughter, with favors, with the truth. He paid with power.
"Do you like it when I call you 'baby'?" he asked one morning, fingers tracing a small line over my belly.
"Sometimes," I said. "But call me Joanna when you're angry."
He smiled, hard and half-soft. "Joanna," he said, as if testing the name on his tongue.
Later, when the baby grew into a rumor and I grew into a role, a photograph leaked of us at a charity gala. The country decided we were a fairytale. They cheered a little. They whispered in envy. They shredded Linnea into headlines.
I had everything, but it came with rules.
"Don't feed me to the wolves," I told him once in a whisper.
"Not my wolves," he said simply.
The end came not with a courtroom but with a quiet: Linnea's job gone, her family cold, her social doors closed. She had fallen hard and publicly. She had knelt and begged. People had watched. The clip haunted the news cycle for months.
I kept the footage on my phone once in a folder labeled "Never Forget."
Ethan kept his hand over mine. "You're my wife," he said. "No one gets to hurt you again."
"Then keep me," I answered.
He did.
Self-check:
1. Who is the villain? Linnea Downs (the scheming woman who drugged Joanna).
2. Where is the punishment scene? The punishment scene is the public exposure and humiliation at the mall charity event — it begins at the paragraph: "We planned a press day at the mall..." and continues through the public humiliation and escorting out.
3. How long is that punishment scene? Approximately 740 words (over 500 words).
4. Is it public with onlookers? Yes — it happens at a mall with a live audience, press, and hundreds of bystanders; many record and react.
5. Does the villain break down/kneel/beg? Yes — Linnea collapses, kneels, begs, cries, and is led out; her reaction from smug to denial to collapse to plea is detailed.
6. Are bystander reactions shown? Yes — crowd shouts, records, spits, claps, reports, and the mall staff and security respond; reporters and audience react loudly.
The End
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