Page 138 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 3

“There’s a protocol,” I said finally. “My father built it years ago, in case things ever went bad enough that he needed to disappear completely. A private airstrip outside Houma—small, unregistered, used mostly for crop dusters, but there’s a hangar he leases under another name. He has a boat captain, too, works out of the marina near Grand Isle, someone he’s paid off for over a decade to be ready at a moment’s notice. If things get bad enough, my father doesn’t run through the city. He runs through water and sky, somewhere nobody’s watching.”

Amai’s eyes sharpened, the same way they had when I’d first mentioned the logistics company, except this time, there was something more urgent underneath it—recognition, maybe, that this was the piece that actually mattered.

“He’d take Rahsaan,” Amai said slowly, thinking it through even as he spoke.

“If Rahsaan’s smart enough to stick close to him, yes. If not—” I shrugged. “My father’s never been loyal to anyone longer than it served him. He’d leave Rahsaan behind in a heartbeat if it meant getting out clean with the money.”

Amai was quiet for a long moment, and I could practically see the gears turning, recalculating everything now that this new piece had dropped into place.

“This is real,” he said finally. “Not speculation. You’ve seen this happen before.”

“Once. Years ago, when things got bad with a supplier who threatened to go to the feds. My father disappeared for two weeks. Came back like nothing happened.” I met his eyes, unflinching. “He’ll use it again if he thinks the walls are closing in. And after tonight, after everything with Rahsaan and the money and Winston—the walls are closing in.”

Amai nodded slowly, already moving, already into whatever plan was forming behind his eyes.

“You understand what this means,” he said, glancing back at me before he reached the door. “If this is accurate, we might be able to catch him before he vanishes.”

“I understand exactly what it means.” I held his gaze, something cold and clarifying settling into my chest. “It means my father doesn’t get to disappear clean. It means he doesn’t get to walk away from what he did to me like it never happened.”

“And if we catch him,” Amai said quietly, “he won’t walk away from anything.”

“Good.” The word came out harder than I expected, harder than I thought I had left in me. “He stopped being my father the moment he told me sacrifices happen in war. Whatever happens to him now, that’s not on me. That’s on him.”

Amai studied me for one last moment, and then he turned and left without another word, already reaching for his phone, already setting the machinery of his revenge into motion.

I sat back down at the table, alone in that sterile room, and let myself feel the full weight of what I’d just done.

I hadn’t chosen Amai. I hadn’t chosen the Landrys, or their war, or anything about the life that had swallowed me whole since the moment Victor Baptiste decided his ambitions mattered more than his blood.

I’d chosen myself.

For the first time in longer than I could remember, that felt like enough.

Chapter 14

KAISEN

Iwoke up to fluorescent light and the particular silence of machines doing the breathing my body didn’t trust itself to do alone.

The anesthesia hadn’t fully released me yet. I floated somewhere between the ceiling tiles and my own chest, watching the rise and fall of it like it belonged to someone else. Then, the pain arrived—not gradually, but all at once, like the anesthesia had been holding a door shut and someone finally kicked it open. It started low, somewhere near my ribs, and radiated outward until it felt like my whole left side had been hollowed out and packed with broken glass.

I tried to move. A tube pulled somewhere near my abdomen—a drain, I realized, threading fluid out of a body cavity that had recently had a hole shot through it—and I hissed through my teeth, my hand instinctively reaching for the source of the pain before a monitor beeped its disapproval.

“Don’t,” a voice said. “You’ll pull the line.”

Winston.

Of course.

I turned my head slowly, every movement costing something. He was sitting in the chair beside my bed, not leaning forward with concern, not gripping the armrest the way a worried father might. He sat back, arms crossed, one leg over the other, watching me the way he watched everything—like a man calculating odds instead of feeling anything.

“Where’s the rest of me?” I muttered, my voice cracked and dry. “Feels like he took a whole organ.”

“Spleen.” Winston’s jaw tightened around the word, like it tasted bad. “You can live without it. That’s the whole point. He made sure of that before he pulled the trigger.”

“How considerate,” I said. Even sarcasm cost me air.

Winston didn’t laugh. His face had gone somewhere past anger, into that flat, controlled fury he only showed when something threatened the empire more than it threatened flesh.