Page 157 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 3

Truth shifted on the settee, tucking one leg beneath her, and I felt the conversation change direction before she said a word. She had a way of doing that—going quiet in a specific way that meant she was choosing her next question carefully.

“What about Syx and Yaya?” she asked. “Are they still⁠—”

“Still there,” I said. “Still being held.”

“Have you gotten anything out of her?”

I leaned back, studying her face in the low light. This was the part of my life I usually kept separate, sealed off in a different room of myself, but she’d asked, and I’d told her I wouldn’t lie to her about the shape of things, even when I couldn’t give her the details.

“Not yet,” I said. “But she’s holding something back. I know it.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve sat across from enough people telling the truth and enough people managing the truth to know the difference. She answers fast when she doesn’t care about the answer. She slows down when it matters. There’s a specific hesitation—right before she talks about her father—like she’s deciding how much of the picture to hand over.” I turned the memory over again, the way Yaya’s eyes had moved when I’d pushed her on Victor’s routes, his contacts, the machinery underneath Baptiste Logistics. “She’s got something. A name, a place, a way in. I don’t know what yet. But it’s there, and she’s protecting it.”

“Protecting her father.”

“After he left her locked in enemy territory with her accounts frozen and no way out. Yeah.”

Truth’s mouth pressed into a thin line, not quite disagreement, something more complicated than that. “He’s still her father, Amai.”

“He abandoned her.”

“That doesn’t erase twenty-something years of him being the only parent she had left.” She said it steady, no heat in it, just fact laid down like she was setting something heavy on a table between us. “You don’t stop loving somebody the second they disappoint you. If that’s how it worked, half the people in this city would’ve stopped loving their daddies decades ago.”

I thought about Winston. About the version of him that used to teach me and Kaisen how to throw a punch in the backyard, patient in a way he never was again once we got old enough to be useful to him instead of just his sons. That man didn’t exist anymore, if he ever had. But some nights I still caught myself wanting his approval like a boy who hadn’t learned better yet.

“I know it doesn’t work like that,” I said, quieter than I meant to.

“Then don’t act surprised that she’s not just handing her father over because he stopped being convenient for you.”

“I’m not surprised. I’m frustrated. Those are different things.” I met her eyes. “She’s sitting on information that could end this faster. Could keep you safer. And she’s choosing loyalty to a man who threw her away like she was nothing.”

“Or she’s still figuring out how to survive losing him,” Truth said. “Those aren’t the same thing either.”

I didn’t have an answer for that right away. She had a habit of pulling threads I hadn’t examined closely enough, and this was one of them—the difference between what I needed Yaya to do and what it actually cost a person to do it.

“You haven’t met Victor,” I said finally.

“No.”

“You’ve met Winston.”

“Once was enough.”

“Victor’s the same animal. Different fur.” I watched that land, watched her go still in the particular way she did when she was actually listening instead of just waiting for her turn to talk. “Winston uses fear. Everybody in a room with him knows exactly what he is within five minutes—the scars, the guns, the way he talks like every sentence is a threat wearing a suit. Victor’s not like that. Victor will sit across from you and make you feel like the only person in the world he trusts. He’ll call it family. He’ll call it sacrifice. And the whole time, he’s deciding what you’re worth to him and what he’s willing to lose to keep you.”

“Sounds like somebody I know,” Truth said, but there was no venom in it, just an observation, and it landed harder for that.

“Maybe,” I said, because I wasn’t going to pretend I hadn’t done my own version of that math with people I claimed to love. “But I’m telling you this because I don’t want you underestimating him just because Yaya still loves him. That love doesn’t mean he’s safer than Winston. It might mean he’s more dangerous because people don’t see him coming the way they see Winston coming.”

Truth was quiet for a moment, turning that over. “So, what happens if she never tells you?”

“Then I find another way to Victor. I always do.” I said it plainly, no threat in it, just the truth of how this worked. “But I’d rather she give it to me than make me take it from her.”

“Because it’ll be worse if you have to take it.”

“Because it means she chose to survive instead of making me choose for her.” I looked toward the hallway, where the sound of her sisters’ laughter had faded into something lower, more private. “I don’t enjoy what happens in that room, Truth. I want you to understand that, even if you don’t ever have to see it.”