Page 135 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 3

“You didn’t have to.” Something in my chest was collapsing, my heart plummeting into something dark. “You’re not coming.”

“Yahmaria—”

“You’re not coming.” I said it again, slower, like saying it would make the truth less real. “You knew this could happen. You knew when you sent me in there. Did you—did you want this? Did you want them to⁠—”

“I need you to be strong right now.”

“Answer the question.”

The pause was too long. Too heavy. And in that silence, I heard everything he wasn’t saying—every calculation he’d made, every version of this outcome he’d already considered and accepted before I ever walked into Amai’s house that night.

He’d expected this.

He’d expected them to hurt me. Maybe kill me. And he’d sent me anyway because I was expendable in a way that made sense to him, the same way everything made sense to him—cost, benefit, strategy, survival. I wasn’t his daughter in that equation.

I was a variable he was willing to lose.

“You son of a bitch,” I whispered.

“Yahmaria, listen to me⁠—”

I ended the call. My hand was shaking so badly I nearly dropped the phone onto the table.

Amai hadn’t moved. Hadn’t spoken. He just watched me fall apart across from him, and for once, there was no cruelty in his expression. Just something closer to confirmation—like he’d expected exactly this outcome and needed to witness it firsthand.

Syx had told me. God, Syx had told me as soon as we got here, sitting in that cell, warning me that Victor would let this happen, that he’d never intended to save me, that I was collateral in a war he’d started and had no intention of losing gracefully.

I hadn’t wanted to believe him.

I believed him now.

“He’s not coming,” I said quietly. Not to Amai. To myself. Making it real.

“No,” Amai agreed. “He’s not.”

I looked up at him, something shifting inside me—not trust, never trust, but a cold, clarifying rage that had nowhere else to go now except toward the man who’d actually orchestrated this. “Rahsaan’s been moving money through a shipping company. Baptiste Logistics, but it’s a shell—my father set it up years ago under a cousin’s name in Metairie. If he’s hiding assets from you, that’s where he’d start.”

Amai’s expression didn’t change, but something in his eyes sharpened. “Keep talking.”

“I want Syx moved somewhere safe first.”

“That’s not how this works.”

“Then we’re done.” I sat back, arms crossed, meeting his stare without flinching. “I’m not giving you anything else until I know he’s not in a room like this one.”

Amai studied me for a long moment, and for the first time since I’d known him, I saw something that almost looked like respect.

“Fine,” he said. “But you’re giving me everything you know about that logistics company first. Then, we’ll talk about Syx.”

I nodded once, hard, and started talking—not because I trusted Amai, not because I owed him anything, but because Victor had made his choice, and now I was making mine.

Survival didn’t require loyalty.

It just required knowing who’d already stopped being worth it.

Amai pulled a chair close enough that I could see the calculation running behind his eyes, the way he was already three steps ahead of whatever I was about to say.

“Baptiste Logistics,” he said. “Start from the beginning. Address.”