"I'm pregnant with your child." Her hand spreads across her belly, and I can see her pulse in her throat—rapid, frightened. "Growing a life with someone who doesn't trust me enough to let me breathe unobserved. What kind of father—" Her voice cracks. "Will you put cameras in the nursery? Track their first steps through GPS? Read their diary before they learn to lock it?"
Her phone rings—Izzy. She answers on speaker, a deliberate cruelty, letting me hear what trust sounds like.
"Lena, where are you? Miguel's package—"
"I got it. I'm with Zane."
"Mija, get out of there. Come to my place. Now."
"I'm coming." Lena's eyes never leave mine, and I see myself reflected in them—not a man but a collection of violations. "Ten minutes."
"Lena—" Izzy's voice carries worry. "You okay?"
"No. No estoy bien." Her voice breaks completely. "Nothing has ever been less okay."
She hangs up, turns to leave, and my body moves without permission, trying to close the distance she's creating.
"Three days," she says, stopping me with a raised hand. "I need three days to figure out if anything between us was real or if I've just been performing for an audience of one."
"You're pregnant, there's a war—"
"The war you chose over peace? The danger you kept me in to keep me dependent?" She looks back, and her face is a study in controlled devastation—medical training keeping her functional while everything inside breaks. "Miguel sent this to hurt me, but he also did me a favor. He showed me what you really are."
"Lena, please—"
"Did you watch me in the shower?" The question comes like a slap, vulgar and sharp. "Through my phone camera? Did you watch me touch myself, thinking of you, not knowing you were already there?"
The air between us turns solid. I can hear her breathing, rapid and shallow. Can smell her shampoo—vanilla and somethingmedicinal. Can feel the weight of truth pressing against my teeth.
"I had access to everything," I admit, each word feeling like pulling nails from my own coffin. "I tried not to... but yes. Sometimes. I watched."
She nods slowly, like a doctor confirming a terminal diagnosis. "At least you're finally honest."
"Don't leave. Not now—"
"I'm not leaving," she says, and for a moment hope flares. "I'm already gone. I've been gone since the moment you decided I was too fragile to exist unwatched. You didn't lose me today, Zane. You lost me the first time you violated my privacy and called it love."
"Lena, por favor—" The Spanish feels foreign on my tongue, desperate.
"Don't." Her voice turns to ice, sharp enough to cut. "Don't you dare use my language to manipulate me. You don't get to play with my culture after you've violated everything else."
The door closes with a soft click that echoes like a funeral bell.
I sink into my chair, leather creaking under the weight of what I've done. The office still smells like her—vanilla and betrayal. The photos lie scattered across my desk like evidence at a crimescene, which is what this is. I murdered us. Slowly, methodically, one violation at a time.
My phone buzzes. Ghost.
"They just hit the westside shop. It's burning."
Of course. Miguel destroys my relationship and my business in the same day. The king sacrificing the queen to take the kingdom.
But as I stare at the photo of Lena crying alone in her van—mascara running, hand pressed to her mouth to muffle sobs she thought no one would hear—I realize Miguel isn't the one who destroyed us.
I did that three months ago, the moment I decided love meant never letting her out of my sight.
Even when she couldn't see me watching.
Chapter thirty-five
