Page 171 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 3

I hit the front door and threw it open.

The scene outside didn’t look real for a second—too violent, too fast, lit up in the cold white security lights like some kind of stage. Kaisen’s men were scattered across the driveway, three of them already down, one crawling toward the gate with blood streaming from his nose. More security vehicles than I’d ever seen at once were parked at odd angles across the lawn, doors hanging open, engines still running.

And there, cutting through the middle of it like the men swinging at him were nothing but static⁠—

Amai.

He wasn’t even breathing hard. He drove his elbow into one man’s throat and didn’t slow down to watch him drop. Another came at him from the side, and Amai caught his arm mid-swing, twisted it until I heard the pop from twenty feet away, and shoved him aside like furniture. Behind him, more of his own men poured through the gate, matching violence for violence, but Amai wasn’t waiting for them to clear a path.

He was making his own.

His eyes found me standing in that doorway, and everything about him sharpened—the rage, the intent, the singular focus that had nothing left in it for anyone else in that yard.

He was coming for me.

He crossed the last few feet like the men still standing didn’t matter, like the whole yard had already emptied itself out for him. Up close, the violence on him was worse—blood on his knuckles that wasn’t his, a tear in his shirt sleeve, and eyes so dark they didn’t look like eyes anymore.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” His voice hit low and hard, vibrating in my chest before it even registered as words.

I lifted my chin. I wasn’t about to shrink just because he was pissed, and I wasn’t backing down regardless. “Trying to have a conversation. Since Kaisen was the one who actually had time for me.”

His jaw flexed. “So, that’s what this is.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“You called me. I told you I was in the middle of something that could end this war, and instead of waiting, you drove straight to my brother’s house.” His voice climbed, tight and furious. “So, yeah, Truth—that’s exactly what this is. I couldn’t drop everything the second you snapped your fingers, so you ran to him.”

“Watch it.” My voice came out sharper than I meant it, but I didn’t care. “I don’t like what you’re implying.”

“If the shoe fits,” he said, low and mean, “put that muthafucka on and lace it up.”

Heat crawled up my neck. I knew what he was doing—turning my hurt into evidence, making this about my loyalty instead of his absence. He always did this. Made me the variable that needed explaining while he stood there covered in somebody else’s blood like that was just a normal part of his day.

“Get your shit,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

“I’m not going anywhere until I’m done talking to Kaisen.”

“You are done.” His eyes cut past me, toward the hallway, toward the man leaning heavy on his cane just out of the light. “Get your shit, Truth. Now.”

Behind me, Kaisen’s voice slid in, quiet and almost gentle, which somehow made it worse. “I told you.” He didn’t even sound smug about it—just tired, like a man watching a prophecy fulfill itself. “This is what happens when you color outside his lines, Truth. You feel the frame. The one you don’t see until you touch it.” He shifted his weight off the cane, wincing. “You better go. Before he decides the next place to lock you away is somewhere you can’t leave at all.”

The words landed somewhere deep, somewhere I didn’t want them to. Because, for a second—one ugly, unwanted second—I could see it. The version of my life where Amai’s love came with walls I couldn’t measure until I hit them.

But I also saw Kaisen for exactly what he was in that moment—a man handing me fear like it was truth, hoping I’d mistake it for rescue.

I stood there between the two of them, blood on the grass, sirens threading somewhere far off in the night, and I made myself remember one thing clearly:

Whatever I did next, it was going to be my decision. Not his. Not either of theirs.

“I’m leaving,” I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt. “Because I’m done. And I don’t want you doing anything else to him.”

Amai’s head tilted slowly, like he needed a second to make sure he heard me right. “So, you care about how I fuck him up?”

“He’s the father of my son.” I let that sit in the air between us, heavy and undeniable. “Of course I care, Amai.”

“What?” The word came out flat, confused in a way I’d never heard from him. Amai didn’t do confused. Amai did control, calculation, certainty. Not this.

“If you had listened when I called you,” I said, each word deliberate, “you would’ve heard me tell you that you’re the father of our daughter. But you were so fuckin’ busy handling your business that it went in one ear and came right out the other.”