A quiet unease stirred in my stomach. “What?” I watched him, suddenly aware of my own heartbeat as though my body had divulged secrets, revelations I hadn’t had the courage to voice myself. The missed cycle, the tenderness, the quiet hope I chose not to bloom, unsure how I’d handle it.
“You’re pregnant.”
For a moment I pretended not to understand, the two words hovering somewhere just out of reach, unreal and disconnected from the dull pain in my body.
“Pregnant?” I repeated.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “The bullet missed critical organs, and the blood loss didn’t impede it. You were lucky.”
Lucky. I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. Shot in a mafia war I didn’t understand, losing blood like it was free to give. Yet here I was, alive, and inside me a second heartbeat had quietly begun its own story. Cells dividing. A heart forming. Life moving forward while I’d walked through gunfire and blood, believing myself untouchable.
I pressed my palm more firmly against my abdomen. How could I bring something so fragile into this insane world? How could I protect it when I couldn’t protect myself?
A strange sound left me, half laugh, half exhale, and my eyes stung unexpectedly. “I didn’t…I mean I suspected.” I swallowed hard. “Are you certain, Uncle?”
“Would I lie to you,chibi-sensei?” The quiet assurance in his voice pulled on maternal instincts I didn’t know I possessed.
Gently, my fingers traced a slow pattern across the sheet hiding my abdomen. I was going to be a mother. “Wow.”
Images flashed uninvited through my mind. Tiny fingers, tiny feet, a little nose and mouth. Remo holding something impossibly small in hands built for violence. His expression when he realized he was not only an underboss feared by men twice his size, but a father, the way his jaw would tighten, how he’d pretend not to feel and fail.
Fear followed immediately after the warmth. Remo lived in a world that swallowed innocence whole.
My sister stepped closer to the bed, her voice softer now, less clinical. “You said you didn’t know if you wanted this.”
“I didn’t,” I whispered, staring at the ceiling as though the answer might be written there. “Not like this.” Abruptly something else flickered beneath the trepidation.
Excitement. Terrifying, wild, bright, bursting at the seams to reveal itself. A part of me wanted to laugh. To cry. To find Remo and tell him just to see his composure fracture.
“He’ll lose his mind,” I breathed.
“Yes,” my uncle said before he added in a more somber tone, “his world is not designed for children,chibi-sensei.”
The warmth in my chest faltered. “He would protect it,” I replied almost defensively.
He sighed, placing a hand on my arm. “Men like him build empires through force that generates opposition. And a child tied to that name won’t remain invisible. It will become leverage. His enemies won’t assess like they did yesterday.”
My sister’s gaze sharpened. “They adjust when bloodlines appear.”
I looked at her, recognition dawning. “They’ll come for my baby, Dee.”
She slipped her hand into mine. “Let them try, I’ll bury them before they even sniff the air around you.”
“If they knew,” my uncle added.
Eyes wide, my gaze shifted to him, cognizant of what he was saying. “Remo doesn’t know,” I whispered, because that mattered more than anything in that moment. “If he finds out I’m pregnant and I disappear, he’ll tear the world apart.”
“And once he finds you?” Uncle Haru asked.
Remo would build walls thick enough to keep out armies. He’d assign guards, fortify homes, erase threats before they formed. And in doing so, he’d paint a target so large we’d never see the bullet coming.
“He’ll cage me,” I whispered, the words tasting like surrender. “He’ll burn cities looking for me. He won’t rest. He won’t forgive.”
The room seemed to narrow again, my numb mind accepting the inevitable and a strange, almost selfish relief washed through me. This baby was mine to give him. This miracle, this terrifying, beautiful secret was mine.
My uncle’s gaze did not waver. “Then he must prove he is worthy of both of you,” he said, voice so calm, it struck a nerve.
I looked at him sharply. “You’re testing him?”
