NO CHANGE
Roman checked the calendar again.
Red dots.
Numbers circled.
Days marked in a pattern only he understood.
He had counted every time he entered her.
Every drop he spilled inside her.
Every sip of the medicated tea.
Still nothing.
---
He watched her closely at breakfast.
Her skin glowed the same way it always had — not from warmth, but from the way she refused to break.
Her chest rose gently. Her hands moved without tremble. Her eyes didn't flicker once toward him.
> "Nothing's changing," he murmured.
Lelo sat beside her, humming softly, brushing Serene's hair with a gold comb.
> "She still looks like a doll," the little girl whispered.
"Dolls don't get pregnant," Roman muttered back.
---
He called the maid that night.
> "You've been adding it every day?"
"Yes, sir."
"No skips?"
"None."
He dismissed her with a single look and sank into his chair.
Something wasn't right.
---
That night, he didn't go to her room.
He stayed in his office.
Pacing.
Reviewing.
Doubting.
His mind twisted into spirals:
> Did the drug fail?
Is she barren?
Is her body rejecting me?
Or worse.
> Is she hiding something?
---
Serene, in her locked room, lay still in bed.
The pill bottle was half empty now. She counted each one every night — her last army. Her last line.
She didn't dream anymore.
Dreams belonged to people who had choices.
She had none.
Except this.
---
Lelo peeked into her room in the morning.
> "Mama, why don't you grow?"
"What do you mean?" Serene asked quietly.
> "You're supposed to be full of us by now."
The little girl smiled — as if it was the most obvious truth in the world.
Serene's stomach turned.
But she smiled back.
Empty. Hollow. And terrified.
---
Roman watched her that day from the hallway mirror.
She laughed once at something a maid said.
It wasn't real.
He could tell.
And that terrified him more than anything.
---