I sat on the edge of my bed and rubbed my face.
This was good.
This wasnecessary.
Because Truth Renois was my surrogate.
Not my woman.
She was carrying my child because I was paying her $250,000 to do it.
That was the arrangement.
That was the contract.
And I needed to keep that boundary clear—for her sake and mine.
Because if I didn’t, this was going to get messy.
Messier than it already was.
I thought about the way she’d looked at me in the car.
The way her voice had cracked when she saidI belong to myself.
The way she’d smiled when I handed her the Black card.
The way she’d fought beside me like she’d been doing it her whole life.
I thought about Delphine on that porch, shotgun in hand, telling me she liked me.
That’s a real man.
I thought about the contract in Raymond’s office.
The medical appointments that would start soon.
The hormone injections.
The embryo transfer.
The nine months that would follow.
And I thought about Alexis St. John, sitting at my mother’s dining room table tomorrow night, smiling at me over wine and whatever expensive meal Mama had spent all day preparing.
A woman who didn’t know me.
Who would never know me.
Who was safe.
I stood and walked to the window.
The city stretched out below me—lights glittering like scattered diamonds, streets I owned, territory I’d bled for, an empire built on violence and fear, and the kind of loyalty money couldn’t buy.
This was my world.
And Truth was stepping into it whether she knew it or not.
