“I got family,” I carefully said.
“That ain’t what I asked.” She sat back down, her eyes sharp. “I asked if you gotpeople. The kind that show up when things go bad. The kind that sit with you when you’re scared. The kind that tell you the truth even when you don’t want to hear it.”
I thought about Priest. About Kaisen, complicated as that relationship was. About my parents and the weight of their expectations. About the empire I’d built and the loneliness that came with being the man everyone feared and no one really knew.
“I’m working on it,” I said finally.
Delphine nodded slowly, like that was an acceptable answer. “Well, you got a start right here if you want it. Long as you do right by my daughter and that baby, you got people in this house.”
Something in my chest cracked open.
I looked at Truth. She was crying—silent tears running down her face, her hand pressed against her mouth like she was trying to hold something in. Not sad tears. Something else. Something that looked like relief and hope and fear all tangled together.
“Thank you,” I said to Delphine. My voice came out rougher than I intended. “That means more than you know.”
“I know exactly what it means,” she said. “That’s why I said it.”
We finished dinner in comfortable silence. Simone left detailed instructions and a meal plan and promised to return tomorrow with fresh ingredients. Delphine started clearing plates. Truth excused herself to the bathroom—still nauseous, still struggling, but she’d kept down half the chicken and most of the rice, which Simone said was a victory.
I should have left then.
Should have said my goodbyes and driven back to my side of the city where everything was clean and controlled and made sense. But I found myself helping Delphine with the dishes instead, standing at her sink with a dish towel while she washed, the two of us working in the kind of easy rhythm that usually took years to develop.
“She’s falling for you,” Delphine said quietly, her hands in the soapy water. “You know that, right?”
I didn’t answer right away. Just dried the plate she handed me and set it in the rack.
“And you’re falling for her,” Delphine continued. “Even if you don’t want to admit it yet.”
“It’s complicated,” I said.
“Love usually is.” She handed me another plate. “But complicated don’t mean impossible. Just means you got to work harder at it.”
“I don’t know if I know how to do this,” I admitted. The words came out before I could stop them. “The kind of relationship where you show up and stay and let someone see who you really are. I’m good at contracts. At transactions. At keeping things clean and controlled. But this—” I gestured vaguely toward the living room where Truth was. “This isn’t any of that.”
“No,” Delphine agreed. “It’s not. It’s messier and scarier and a hell of a lot more real. But that’s what makes it worth doing.” She pulled the plug and watched the water drain. “You seem like a man who’s used to getting what he wants. So, the question is—do you want my daughter? Really want her? Not just the baby, not just the arrangement.Her.”
I thought about Truth sitting on that couch looking exhausted and beautiful. About how she filled silences with words when she was nervous and how she’d stood beside me in the street and fought without hesitation. About how she wascarrying my child, and somehow, that had stopped being the most important thing about her.
“Yeah,” I said. “I do.”
Delphine smiled. “Then you better figure out how to tell her that before somebody else does.”
I left an hour later, after Truth had fallen asleep on the couch and Delphine had covered her with a blanket. I stood in the doorway for a moment, watching her sleep, her hand resting on her stomach where my child was growing.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” I told Delphine.
“I know you will,” she said.
I drove home through the city, the streetlights blurring past, my mind full of food and chicory coffee and the way Delphine had looked at me when she’d saidyou got people in this house.
I’d built an empire on fear and control and keeping everyone at a distance.
But sitting at that table, laughing at old stories, helping with dishes—that had felt more like power than anything I’d done in years.
And I wanted more of it.
I wanted all of it.
