Page 155 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 3

“She has a way of doing that.” Raven laughed.

“Contrary to popular belief,” I said, cutting my eyes toward Truth for half a second, long enough for her to catch it and nowhere near long enough to explain it to the room, “I don’t have women at my house. Ever. This is new territory.”

Nobody needed the rest of that sentence spelled out. Saroya’s eyebrows went up. Raven’s mouth curved into something slow and satisfied like she’d just watched somebody score in overtime.

“So, that bed,” I continued, looking at Truth now, only Truth, “goes wherever you want it to go. Your house. Honor’s house. The dump. I don’t care. If getting rid of it makes you feel better, it’s gone tonight.”

Truth studied me for a second, arms still crossed, something working behind her eyes that I couldn’t quite name yet. “I’m cool with it going to my sister’s house. Honestly.”

“Then that’s where it’ll send it,” I said.

“Well, while y’all get your sleeping arrangements together,” Honor cut in, already moving deeper into the foyer like she owned the place, “somebody show me where the bathrooms at, ’cause I gotta see if the toilet paper folds into a swan or something in a house like this.”

Raven laughed, loud and unguarded, the sound bouncing off ceilings that had never heard anything like it before tonight. Saroya followed them, already pulling out her phone to text something to somebody—probably Delphine, probably lying about where they were. I stood there for a second in my own front hall, watching my house fill up with noise it had never held before.

I didn’t hate it.

That scared me a little more than the war did.

I stood in the archway between the foyer and the kitchen, half-forgotten, while Honor narrated her tour of my own house back to Raven and Saroya like she was doing a walkthrough for a real estate listing.

“This the kind of kitchen where you cook, or the kind where you just look at it?” Honor asked, running her hand along the marble like she was checking it for authenticity.

They had no idea that just a few months back, a dead body was in there. Still pissed at Yaya for that shit.

“Both,” I said.

“Mm-hm. We’ll see.”

Raven had found the wine fridge built into the island and was crouched in front of it, reading labels out loud in a voice that made Saroya cackle. Truth leaned against the counter, watching her sisters with an expression I hadn’t seen on her before—not the guarded calculation she wore around me most days, not the exhaustion of the last few weeks. Just amusement. Unfiltered. Like she’d forgotten, for a minute, that we were all standing inside a house I’d bought specifically because it could be defended.

Somebody put music on from a phone, and Saroya started swaying to it while she scrolled through my cabinets looking for glasses. Honor kept up a running commentary about everything she touched, and the sound filled up rooms that had only ever held the hum of the refrigerator and the click of my own footsteps.

I didn’t know what to do with my hands.

I’d lived in this house for years. I knew every creak in the floor, every angle a man could come through a window, every place a gun could be hidden in a drawer without my mama finding it during one of her surprise visits. I knew this house the way I knew a body I’d have to defend. What I didn’t know was what it sounded like with four women in it who weren’t afraid of anything in the room, including me.

Raven found a bottle of red she liked and held it up like a trophy. “This the good shit, or the shit you keep around for people you don’t like?”

“Depends on who’s asking.”

“I’m asking.”

“Then it’s the good shit.”

She grinned and started looking for a corkscrew.

Truth caught my eye across the kitchen with something soft and unreadable on her face, and I felt it—that thing I didn’t have a name for yet, sitting low in my chest, heavier than anything I’d carried out of that warehouse. Was it adoration? Hope? Love? I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t want it to leave.

I’d grown up in a house bigger than this one. Higher ceilings. More security. And it had never once sounded like this. Winston didn’t do laughter that wasn’t strategic. Mama laughed sometimes, but carefully, like she was checking the room first to see if it was safe. Kaisen and I had learned early that affection came with terms attached, that love in that house was a transaction you had to earn and could lose without warning.

This wasn’t that.

Raven wasn’t performing for anybody. Honor wasn’t calculating what her joke would cost her later. They just existed, loud and unbothered, taking up space in a house that wasn’t theirs like it was the most natural thing in the world—because, with each other, it always would be.

I’d wanted a child. That’s where all of this started, if I was being honest with myself—a want so old and so buried, I’d stopped examining it. Just a fact of my life; the way some men wanted power or money or a legacy with their name on it. I’d wanted something of my own that Winston couldn’t touch, couldn’t own, couldn’t turn into another asset in his ledger.

Somewhere between that want and tonight, I’d ended up with a woman I’d put a bullet in my own brother over. And now, apparently, sisters I’d bury a body for without blinking.