The Bitter Arrangement (The Bitter Arrangement)

Sophia

Waiting was a special kind of torture.

Whoever invented pregnancy tests was either incredibly cruel or a complete genius, because there was no logical reason anyone should have to sit around for three minutes while their entire future hung in the balance.

I sat on the edge of the marble bathtub with my phone resting loosely in one hand, doing my best to focus on anything except the pregnancy test sitting on the vanity across the room. Looking at it before the timer went off wouldn't change the result, but that didn't stop my eyes from wanting to drift back to it every few seconds.

Instead, I forced myself to look out of the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city.

The early morning sun had painted everything gold. From thirty floors above the streets, the view was almost ridiculously beautiful. Traffic moved through the roads below in neat lines, the river reflected ribbons of sunlight across its surface, and the glass towers surrounding the penthouse sparkled as though someone had polished them overnight.

It was strange how different things looked from a distance. Up here, the city appeared calm and orderly, its rough edges softened by height and perspective. The Morettis reminded me of that sometimes. Most people saw the magazine covers, the charity galas, and the endless headlines about billion-dollar deals. They saw power, success, and a family that always seemed to come out on top.

What they didn't see were the expectations that came with carrying the Moretti name, or the pressure that seemed to follow every member of the family no matter how successful they became. Living among them for the last two years had taught me that appearances were often the most convincing lies.

A quiet laugh escaped me at the thought.

If only people knew.

Leaning back against the bathtub, I let my head rest against the cool marble wall and glanced around the room. The bathroom alone was bigger than the entire downstairs of the house I'd grown up in, which still felt ridiculous even after two years. Cream marble stretched across every surface, interrupted only by gold fixtures and fresh white roses arranged in crystal vases. The flowers were replaced every few days by someone whose name I still didn't know, and the vases themselves probably cost more than my first car.

When I first moved into the penthouse, I had been terrified of touching anything. Every room looked as though it belonged in a luxury magazine, and I was convinced I would accidentally scratch something worth more money than I had ever earned. Over time, I had grown used to the lifestyle, but there were still moments when I caught myself standing in the middle of a room wondering how I had ended up here.

Because the truth was that some part of me still felt like I was borrowing this life.

Mrs Sophia Moretti.

The name no longer felt completely unfamiliar, but there were days when it still caught me off guard. Not because I disliked it, but because it belonged to a future I had never imagined for myself.

Growing up, I had always known exactly who I was. Sophia Hartwell, daughter of one of the most respected shipping families in the country. My grandfather had built Hartwell Shipping from the ground up, and my father had spent years expanding it. For most of my childhood, I genuinely believed our success was permanent. Money, stability, and security were simply facts of life.

Then everything started falling apart.

Looking back, the collapse happened so slowly that none of us realised how serious it was until it was too late. One bad business decision became another, and then another after that. Problems that first seemed manageable slowly grew into something far more dangerous. Lawyers began showing up at the house, conversations stopped whenever I entered a room, and my father spent nights locked inside his study.

I still remembered the tension that settled over our home during those months and the way worry seemed to follow my parents everywhere they went. Most of all, I remembered how quickly my father changed. The confident businessman I had grown up admiring suddenly looked exhausted all the time, as though he was carrying the weight of the entire company on his shoulders. Even now, I hated thinking about the conversation where he finally told me the truth.

The company was drowning in debt. The family was running out of options. And the only people powerful enough to save us were the Moretti's.

I remembered sitting across from my father and waited for him to tell me there was another solution. Some hidden alternative he had been saving until the end. Instead, he explained that a decades-old debt existed between our families, and that debt had suddenly become very valuable.

The arrangement that followed should have made me angry. It probably would have made most people angry.

My father expected tears, arguments, maybe even refusal. Instead, all I could see was the guilt in his eyes. He looked like a man who believed he had failed everyone who depended on him, and in that moment I couldn't bring myself to make things harder for him.

So I said yes.

At the time, it seemed like a simple decision. Looking back now, I realised it had changed the course of my entire life. The strange thing was that I didn't regret it.

When I first heard the proposal, I had spent weeks preparing myself for the worst. The Moretti name carried enough rumours to fill several books. Depending on who you asked, they were ruthless business geniuses, terrifying power brokers, or something much darker. Nobody ever seemed to know the truth, but everyone had an opinion.

I had convinced myself I was about to marry a monster. Instead, I married James.

Just thinking about him made me smile.

James Moretti was everything I hadn't expected. He was kind in all the ways that actually mattered, the sort of man who remembered little details and paid attention when other people spoke. He knew exactly how I took my coffee, remembered the names of people I mentioned in passing, and somehow always noticed when something was bothering me before I said a word.

Over the last two years, our arranged marriage had quietly become something real.

There had never been some dramatic moment where everything changed. It happened slowly, through shared breakfasts, late-night conversations, and countless small gestures that built trust one day at a time. Somewhere along the way, James stopped feeling like the man I had married out of obligation and started feeling like the person I couldn't imagine my life without.

That was what made mornings like this so difficult.

James never pressured me about children. Not once. He attended every appointment, listened to every doctor, and reassured me after every disappointing result. Whenever I apologised, which I knew I shouldn't do but couldn't seem to stop myself from doing, he reminded me that none of this was my fault.

Still, I knew how much he wanted a family. Not because he ever said it. Because I saw it.

I saw it in the way he smiled whenever one of his cousins brought their children to family gatherings. I saw it when he held a baby and his entire expression softened. Most of all, I saw it in the hope he tried so hard to hide every month.

The problem with thinking about James was that it almost always led to thinking about Luca.

My smile disappeared instantly.

Luca Moretti had spent the last two years making it abundantly clear that he didn't trust me. To be fair, he had never actually said those words out loud. Luca was far too intelligent for that. Instead, he communicated his opinions through carefully timed comments, lingering looks, and a level of doubt that bordered on impressive.

As far as he was concerned, I had married James purely for his money. I shouldn't have cared what Luca thought of me. Unfortunately, that didn't stop me from caring anyway.

The sudden buzz of my timer shattered the silence and pulled me from my thoughts.

My stomach immediately tightened.

Looking down at my phone, I saw that the three minutes were finally up.

For a moment, I remained exactly where I was, staring at the vanity from across the room. Hope fluttered stubbornly inside my chest despite everything. Maybe this time would be different. Maybe after two years of trying, countless appointments, blood tests, specialists, vitamins, and whispered prayers, this would finally be the month everything changed.

My heart was beating so hard it almost hurt as I crossed the room and reached for the test.

The result was impossible to miss.

Negative.

For several seconds, I simply stared at it.

The surprise had disappeared a long time ago. That wasn't what hurt anymore. What hurt was the hope. Every month I promised myself I wouldn't let it grow, and every month it found a way back anyway.

The disappointment settled quietly in my chest, familiar enough now that I recognised it immediately.

Without thinking, I opened the drawer beneath the vanity.

Inside sat a white box.

My throat tightened as I lifted the lid and looked down at the dozens of pregnancy tests stored inside. Two years' worth of hope sat neatly arranged in a place nobody else knew about. Month after month, each one had carried the possibility of a different future. Each one had ended the same way.

Carefully, I placed the newest test beside the others before closing the lid once more.

The drawer slid shut with a soft click.

For a moment, I stood there in silence before my hand drifted unconsciously to my stomach.

Because for all the affection that had grown between James and me, and for all the happiness we had somehow managed to build from an arrangement neither of us had chosen, there was one truth I could never completely escape.

I had become Sophia Moretti for a reason. And if I couldn't give the Moretti family an heir, I wasn't entirely sure what that meant for my future.