The strength went out of my legs all at once. I didn’t try to stop it. I dropped hard to the gravel, sharp stones biting through my trousers, pain flaring uselessly beneath something far worse.
My hands hit the ground, fingers curling into fists as breath tore out of me in broken, uneven pulls.
“I didn’t know,” I rasped, the words ripping my throat raw. “Elena... I swear to God, I didn’t know.”
The confession was pathetic. Too late. Worthless.
She stood over me, unmoving.
Blood darkened her shoulder.
Her body bore the evidence of everything I had failed to protect her from. And her eyes—those empty, extinguished eyes—looked down at me without recognition.
No anger.
No tears.
Just absence.
Petros shifted behind me, uncomfortable, helpless. “Sir—”
I ignored him.
Slowly—so slowly—I reached out, my hands trembling as though they no longer belonged to me. I touched the hem of her shirt, barely brushing the fabric, terrified she would recoil. That she would scream. That she would look at me with the hatred I deserved.
She didn’t move.
“I’ll spend the rest of my life making this right,” I whispered, the vow tearing free from someplace raw and bleeding inside me. “Whatever it takes. Whatever you need. I’ll burn the world down before I let anyone hurt you again.”
The words sounded hollow even to my own ears.
Still, she said nothing.
No forgiveness.
No rejection.
Just silence.
And in that silence, the full scope of what I had destroyed settled over me like a burial shroud.
I had taken her voice.
I had taken her child.
I had taken her trust.
And maybe—most unforgivably of all—I had taken whatever fragile spark of life had still existed inside her when she first walked into my house.
The quiet hope she’d carried without daring to name it.
The possibility that she could ever be safe.
I stayed on my knees there in the shadow of Blackridge, head bowed, body shaking, stripped of power and pride before the woman I had married, ruined, and now desperately needed to save.
The truth settled over me like wet concrete—heavy, merciless, impossible to escape.
Her first trimester.
