I Pretended to Be a Prostitute Just to Make My Rich Brother Notice Me—But That Night at the Party, I Discovered the Truth He Had Been Hiding From Our Family…

Chapter 5

“Do not ‘Ma’ me.” Her voice rose, and it cracked in the middle. “Look at your eyes. Look at how you vomit every morning. Look at your stomach. I am a mother, Nelly. I know these things. I am going to ask you one more time, and you are going to answer me truthfully. Are you pregnant?”

I fell to my knees.

“Yes, Mama.”

The sound she made — I will carry it to my grave. It was not a scream. It was the noise a person makes when the ground they have trusted their whole life suddenly is not there anymore. She grabbed the doorframe, her face draining of color.

“Who?” Her voice shook. “Who gave you this pregnancy? Tell me his name. I will go to his family myself. I will drag him here and make him face what he did!”

I could not breathe. The secret had been a fire in my chest for weeks, burning a little higher every day, and now it was either come out or kill me.

“Mama. Remember the night I brought the money? The night I said I worked?”

“Yes.” Her eyes were wild now. “What of it?”

“I went to a club.” The words came out in pieces, jagged as broken glass. “A club near Benjamin’s street. I saw him there. He was so drunk, Mama. He did not know it was me.”

The silence that followed was worse than any scream.

“What are you saying, Nelly?”

“It is my brother.” I said it. I said it out loud, and the whole room tilted. “He is the father. He was drunk, Mama. He did not recognize his own sister. We— we—”

She collapsed before I could finish.

She hit the floor like a sack of stones. Her eyes rolled back, her head struck the tiles with a sound that is still in my ears, and she went still. I screamed her name. I screamed it over and over, but she did not move. The neighbors came running through our open door. Someone lifted her onto a stretcher. Someone else called for an ambulance, and the whole street crowded around us, and I could not breathe, I could not breathe, I could not breathe.

I rode with her to the hospital, holding her hand, begging God not to take her. Please. Please. I will carry the shame. I will carry everything. Just do not take her too.

At the hospital, the doctors said it was a stroke. A mild one, they said. She would recover. But she would need to stay for observation, and she would need her family.

They asked for the next of kin.

I gave them Benjamin’s number.

I watched the nurse dial it. I watched her speak into the phone, her voice calm and professional. I watched her face change slightly as she explained that our mother was in the hospital, that the family needed him, that it was serious.

I did not know whether he would come.

I sat in the corridor and waited, and I remembered the last time I had seen him — the gold watch on the table, the smell of wine, the dark room. And I prayed, for the first time in a long time, that my brother would walk through those doors.

Benjamin came.

He arrived in a big black car that stopped in front of the hospital like a piece of the city had broken off and followed him there. He stepped out wearing a suit that cost more than our house, his shoes gleaming, his face smooth and unreadable as a mask.

He walked past me without looking at me.

“Where is our mother?” His voice was cold.

I pointed at the ward. He went in without another word.

I sat on the floor in the hallway and waited. I could hear his voice through the thin walls, low and careful. I could hear the doctor’s voice, lower still, explaining. And then I heard the doctor say something that stopped the whole corridor.

“She is stable. The baby is fine. Your sister’s pregnancy is progressing normally—”

“No.” Benjamin’s voice, sharp. “No, you are mistaken. My sister? Who told you that?”

“Your sister Nelly confirmed the father’s identity. We will run a test to be certain, but—”

The door opened. Benjamin came out, his face red, his eyes wide and wild. He grabbed my arm and pulled me down the corridor, past the vending machines, into a corner where the lights flickered.

“Nelly.” His voice was shaking. “How? How are you pregnant for me? What kind of madness is this?”

I pulled my arm free. “You do not remember, do you?”