THE BILLIONAIRE’S FAKE PREGNANCY: Two Bellies Hit The Floor At The Gala, But The Little Boy’s Secret Whispered In The Dark Was Far More Terrifying

The hallway was lined with reinforced glass cells, each illuminated by pale ultraviolet light. But they were empty—stripped bare in a frantic evacuation. Medical files lay scattered across the linoleum floor, trampled by combat boots.

Julian stepped forward, his heart pounding in his throat like a sledgehammer.

At the end of the corridor, behind a blast door marked *PROJECT GENESIS*, a faint light flickered. Julian kicked the door open with a deafening crash, his weapon raised.

Inside, surrounded by humming servers and banks of life-support telemetry, sat a glass incubator.

Inside the incubator lay a newborn baby girl, barely a few days old, wrapped in a white blanket stamped with the Vance crest. Her tiny chest rose and fell, her small fists clutched against her cheeks.

Beside the incubator, strapped to an operating table tilted at a forty-five-degree angle, was a woman.

Julian’s weapon slipped from his grip, clattering loudly to the tiled floor.

Her hair was cut short, dyed an unnatural platinum, and her skin was ghost-pale, mapped with networks of blue veins beneath translucent skin. But the curve of her jaw, the slight arch of her dark eyebrows, and the small scar above her lip from a childhood fall—it was Clara.

"Clara..." Julian choked out, falling to his knees beside the operating table.

Her eyelids fluttered open, dark and dazed from sedatives. She looked at him through a haze of tears and agony, her cracked lips parting slowly.

"Julian...?" she whispered, her voice like sandpaper on stone. "You... you took so long."

Julian grabbed her ice-cold hand, pressing it against his tear-streaked face. "I'm here. I’m here, Clara. It’s over. I have you. I have our daughter."

Clara’s eyes suddenly widened in sheer, paralyzing terror. She used the last reserve of her strength to grip Julian’s wrist, her nails digging into his skin until they drew blood.