Cohen reached out, brushing away the tears from the corner of my eyes. Then, as if mocking my vulnerability, he ruffled my hair, something he knew I despised.
"Giselle, you lost my trust the moment you tried to trap me with a pregnancy." His voice was calm, almost indifferent. "There won’t be a second chance."
A month ago, I discovered I was pregnant. The news had shaken me to my core.
Growing up in a fractured family, abandoned by my father and shuffled into my mother’s remarriage, I had been fostered by Cohen’s family since childhood. Cohen, ten years older, had been a constant presence, watching me grow up.
People often teased, "When Giselle grows up, she’ll marry Cohen, won’t she?"
What started as a harmless joke became my reality, though not his.
When I finally reached adulthood, I summoned the courage to confess my feelings, but Cohen always found ways to remind me that I was just a child under his care until that night.
That night, drunk and reckless, he stumbled into my room and whispered that if I was willing, I wouldn’t let him finish. I had said yes before the words fully left his lips.