He didn’t answer.
The realization settled heavily in my chest. This wasn’t only about safety, but also the truth. Would Remo choose control or choice? Possession or love?
Fear twisted with something dangerously close to hope, churning in my chest until I slowly rubbed the spot and exhaled on a long, drawn-out breath, the weight of indecision pulling me down.
“I won’t let my child grow up as leverage,” I said quietly. There it was, not strategy, or war.
Just a mother.
My sister’s expression softened for the first time. “Then don’t.”
I swung my legs carefully over the edge of the bed. White-hot fire scorched my abdomen, the stitches pulling tight. I gritted my teeth, refusing to lie there while the world decided for me. Pain sharpened my resolve. “If I stay,” I said, meeting my uncle’s gaze fully now, “I stay because I choose him. Not because I’m hidden behind his men.”
“And if you leave?”
“Then he has to find me, not cage me.”
The room fell quiet again, but this time it pulsed with something alive.
Excitement. Fear. Love. Defiance.
I rested my hand over my abdomen once more. “Let’s see what he does,” I murmured.
Slowly, the words settled into me, reminding me of roots pushing into soil, determined to grow, to breath. I’d been strong in so many ways, had stood beside a man the world called ruthless and quietly loved him without apology. But this felt different, like stepping into a vast, uncharted ocean. I wasn’tafraid of bullets in the same way I was afraid of loving something this much.
Tears slid silently down my cheek as I stared out the window, trying to reconcile the woman who’d bled on asphalt with the woman who now carried life. I didn’t feel robotic or invincible. I felt small and enormous at the same time, as though my body had become both a battlefield and sanctuary.
“Ishika,” my sister murmured, brushing a strand of hair away from my face. “You’re going to be okay.”
I turned my head, looking at her then at my uncle standing guard at the foot of the bed, and let myself breathe carefully around the pain. “We are,” I whispered.
The word we meant something new now, something fragile and fierce and impossibly precious.
sixty-four
. . .
Remo– 36 years old
I was still replaying the doctor’s words in my head as I strode back through the hospital doors.
Ishika was pregnant. Carryingmychild.
My world was nothing but chaos, drenched daily in gunfire, blood, and the coppery taste of adrenaline. Yet that single revelation cut through the noise in my head, a light in my never-ending darkness.
It hit something deep in me, something dangerously raw and new I couldn’t explain. My chest tightened, and I couldn’t stop the way my hands shook, not with violence this time, but a strange phenomenon terrifyingly close to happiness. Every step toward her room quickened my pulse and admittedly, I’d never been this eager to see someone in my life.
I pushed open the door to her room and paused, my smile slipping into a frown. The bed was empty, mattress stripped, monitors off, no IV stand, no her. For a second, fear I refused to acknowledge surfaced, images I didn’t want, quick to delude my overthinking brain.
I shut it down fast. “Calm the fuck down, they probably moved her,” I muttered. They must’ve taken her for more tests, scans, bloodwork, something routine, part of me reasoned. She was shot. Stable but fragile, they wouldn’t just move her, the other part argued.
Stepping back outside, I headed down the corridor to the nurse’s station at the other end. “Where’s the patient from Room 413?”
The nurse glanced up from her computer. “Let me check.” She typed, frowned then looked at me again. “There’s no patient scheduled for Room 413, sir.”
Rage descended. “What the fuck does that mean?” I gritted. She jerked back, her smile fading. “Ishika Sharma is not in her room,” I said slower, my tone a quiet menace. “So tell me where the fuck she is.”
The nurse swallowed, leaned into her computer and typed again. “Sir, there’s no–” she began.
