I Left the Masquerade Pregnant
Description
Elara Voss thought the worst thing in her marriage was the silence. Cold dinners. Colder stares. A Manhattan penthouse that felt more like a mausoleum than a home. But the night she whispers the word divorce, her powerful billionaire husband finally sends her an invitation to a secret midnight masquerade. Masked. Dangerous. Seductive. The man who finds her in the shadows touches her like he's been starving for her... He whispers her private nickname and makes her feel alive for the first time in years. There's just one problem: the man behind the mask wasn't her husband. And when two pink lines show up weeks later, Elara realizes the truth is far more explosive than heartbreak: the father of her child might be Caspian Voss... or his forbidden, sinfully charming cousin, Rhys. Suddenly Elara is caught in a vicious war inside the Voss dynasty, a family whose wealth is built on power, secrets, and blood. Caspian wants her back, desperate and newly awakened. Rhys wants to claim what he believes is his. And both men are willing to burn the world-and each other-to win her. But when a stalker emerges, threatening her newborn baby and revealing knowledge only an insider could have, Elara must uncover the truth behind the masquerade night before the wrong man claims her child and the right man loses her forever.
Chapter 1
Dec 24, 2025
POV Elara
The clink of my fork against porcelain sounds like a gunshot in this silence.
Across twelve feet of walnut table, Caspian scrolls through his phone, tie loosened but still immaculate, jaw set in that way that tells me he's somewhere else entirely.
Probably at Voss Global, the empire his father built and he was born to inherit. Three billion dollars in assets and he can't spare five minutes to look at his wife.
The candlelight flickers over salmon neither of us has touched, over wine glasses that stopped meaning celebration two years ago.
I set my fork down.
"Caspian."
His thumb keeps moving across the screen.
"Caspian, I'm talking to you. Look at me, please."
The thumb pauses.
His ice-blue eyes lift, but they don't land on me.
They land somewhere past my shoulder, at the dark Manhattan skyline beyond our floor-to-ceiling windows. Sixty floors up, the penthouse his family owns outright, and I've never felt more alone.
"I have a merger closing in forty-eight hours, Elara." He says my name like it's an item on his calendar. "If you have something to say, say it."
The words burn in my throat.
I've rehearsed them a thousand times in the shower, in the car, in the dark hours when his side of the bed stays cold. But now, I feel them crumbling.
I try anyway.
"I miss us."
He blinks. Once.
Then his mouth curves into something that isn't quite a smile.
"Us." He repeats the word like he's tasting something unfamiliar. "We had dinner together three times this week, Elara. We attended the Harrington gala on Saturday. We're sitting here right now, sharing a meal. What exactly are you missing?"
"Oh, you mean the gala where your mother called me a broodmare in front of thirty guests?"
His jaw tightens. "She'd been drinking."
"She was sober enough to suggest—loudly—that maybe the problem was genetic." I shove my plate away. "And you sat there chewing your filet mignon like she'd commented on the centerpieces."
"What did you expect me to do? Cause a scene at a charity event?"
"I expected you to open your mouth. To say literally anything."
"My parents want grandchildren, Elara. You knew that when you married me."
"I knew a lot of things when I married you. I knew you were cold. I knew your family had more money than God and less warmth than a morgue. What I didn't know was that you'd turn into your father the second the ring hit my finger."
His eyes flash. Finally, something behind that corporate mask.
"Careful."
"Or what? You'll ignore me harder? You'll come home at three in the morning and pretend you were at the office?"
He sets his phone face-down on the table and folds his hands, giving me his full attention for the first time in weeks. Somehow that's worse.
"I was with clients."
"Which clients? Because I called your assistant at midnight. She said you left at eight."
He rises slowly, and the candlelight turns his features sharp, cruel.
"Are you accusing me of something?"
He doesn't wait for a response.
"Because from where I'm sitting, you have everything. The penthouse, the cards, the lifestyle most women would kill for. And yet here you are, telling me something's missing."
"I'm not talking about things, Caspian. I'm talking about connection. About intimacy. About actually being present with each other."
"I'm present." His voice is perfectly even, perfectly reasonable. The voice of a man explaining simple math to a slow child. "You're the one who seems determined to find problems where none exist."
"Are you serious right now? You think I'm imagining this distance between us?"
"I think you have a tendency toward the dramatic."
The word lands like a slap.
"I miss the notes you used to hide in my books. The little folded pieces of paper that said ridiculous things. I miss the two a.m. drives to nowhere just because you said the city looked different at night. I miss the way you used to look at me, Caspian."
He sets the glass down without drinking.
"That was a long time ago."
"It was three years ago." The tears are coming now, hot and unwelcome. "We got married three years ago. You proposed on that rooftop with the terrible champagne and the Christmas lights, and you told me you'd spend every day making sure I knew I was loved. Do you remember that?"
"I remember."
"Then what happened?"
I press my palms flat against the table, steadying myself.
"Because I wait every night for you to look at me that way again. I wait for you to come home before midnight, to ask about my day, to touch me like you actually want to. I feel like a ghost in my own home, Caspian. I walk through these rooms and I wonder if you even see me anymore."
The silence is thick and suffocating.
When he finally speaks, his voice is low. Controlled. The voice he uses in boardrooms when he's about to destroy someone's career.
"You want the version of me that existed before—"
"Before the miscarriage." The word falls out of me like a stone. "You can say it. Before I lost our baby."
His jaw tightens. His eyes meet mine now, and there's something cold swimming in all that blue.
"That's not what I said."
"But it's what you meant."
I'm crying openly now, and I hate it. I hate that he can still do this to me, crack me open with a handful of words and a carefully blank expression.
"You blame me. You think if you'd married someone your parents approved of, someone from your world, you'd have your heir by now."
"Don't."
"Don't what? Don't tell the truth?" I push back from the table, my chair scraping against marble. "You haven't touched me in months, and you want me to believe this isn't about what happened?"
He stands too, and for a moment I think he might actually cross the distance between us. Might actually reach for me the way he used to, when comfort was something we gave each other instead of withheld.
Instead, he buttons his jacket.
"Is there someone else?"
The question tears out of me before I can stop it, raw and desperate and pathetic.
Suddenly, he laughs. This hollow, bitter sound that makes my stomach turn.
"You want to know what I actually think? I think you've been looking for an excuse to play victim since the day we married. Poor Elara, trapped in a penthouse. Poor Elara, with her black card and her husband who works eighty hours a week to keep her in silk."
"I don't want silk. I want you. The man who existed before you decided feelings were a liability."
"Maybe that man doesn't exist anymore."
"Then maybe I want a divorce."
The word detonates between us.
Caspian goes still. Something flickers across his face. Gone before I can name it.
"Those notes," he says quietly. "Those drives, those grand romantic gestures. They were for a woman who was capable of carrying my child."
The air leaves my lungs.
"I have early meetings."
He doesn't look at me as he moves toward the door.
The door clicks shut, and I stand alone in the dying candlelight, tears sliding down my cheeks, until the flames burn themselves into nothing.
***
Morning arrives gray and indifferent.
The sheets beside me are cold when I reach for them, untouched.
If nothing changes by the end of the month, I'm calling a lawyer.
The thought feels like both a threat and a relief, and I’m savoring it until the doorbell rings at nine.
I almost don't answer.
Probably another delivery for Caspian, another acquisition or contract or reminder that his empire grows while our marriage withers.
But something makes me open the door.
A courier stands in the hallway, dressed entirely in black, white gloves pristine against the handles of a crystal vase.
Two dozen white roses, full and perfect, their scent drifting toward me.
"Mrs. Voss?" He extends a black envelope, heavy stock, sealed in gold wax. "For you."
I take it with numb fingers.
Inside, a single gold card catches the light.
Saturday. Midnight. Wear the mask I left in your closet. Come find me.
No signature. No name. But I know.
He finally heard me.
I Left the Masquerade Pregnant
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