Page 186 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 3

He was mine to help raise, whether she wanted to hear it phrased that way or not. That boy was half of me. Nothing Amai did—no bullet, no threat, no throne he thought he was sitting on—was going to change the fact that my blood ran through that child, same as his ran through the girl. We were even now, in the one way that actually counted. He might have Truth’s heart tangled up wherever it was tangled, but he didn’t have my son. He never would.

I parked, checked my reflection in the visor mirror out of habit—still hollow, still healing, but presentable—and made my way inside, using the cane less than I probably should have. Moving fast enough that my side pulled again, and I ignored it again.

Truth was already in the waiting room.

And so was Amai.

Of course he was.

I understood that logically—she’d made it clear enough times that this was co-parenting now, that both of us had a claim she intended to honor whether we liked sharing space or not—but understanding something and liking it were two different animals entirely. My eyes went to Truth first, the way they always did, and something in my chest loosened at the sight of her. She looked good. Glowing, even, the roundness of her stomach unmistakable now under a soft white dress, her hand resting there the way pregnant women do without seeming to notice they’re doing it.

I didn’t look at Amai. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

“Hey,” I said, crossing the room straight to her, ignoring the chair he was sitting in three feet away like he wasn’t even a fixture in the room. “You look beautiful.”

“Hey, Kaisen.” She said it warm enough, tired around the edges in a way that tracked with everything going on, but warm. “How’s the back?”

“Better every day.” It wasn’t, not really, not in any way that would hold up to scrutiny, but I wasn’t going to complain in front of him. Weakness was currency I didn’t intend to spend here. “I wouldn’t have missed this.”

“I know.”

I felt him watching me. I refused to look. If he wanted acknowledgment, he could ask for it out loud like a man instead of sitting there, radiating whatever quiet, coiled thing he radiated when he wasn’t actively trying to kill somebody.

A nurse called Truth’s name before I had to find out whether the silence would hold.

Dr. Broussard was a tall woman with steady hands and the kind of face that gave away nothing until she wanted it to. She glanced between the three of us as we filed into the room—Truth settling onto the exam table, me easing onto the chair against the wall because standing too long had started to punish me, and Amai taking the other chair on the opposite side like we’d choreographed staying as far apart from each other as the room allowed.

“Both fathers,” Dr. Broussard said, not quite a question, her eyes moving to Truth like she was checking that this was really what Truth wanted and not something she’d been talked into.

“Both fathers,” Truth confirmed.

“Alright.” The doctor’s expression didn’t judge, didn’t linger on it, just filed it away the way I imagined she filed away everything unusual that walked through her door. “After everything you’ve been through, I want you to know you didn’t have to do this. But if this is what you want, we’ll proceed.”

“This is what I want.”

Dr. Broussard nodded and pulled the ultrasound machine closer, snapping on a pair of gloves with the efficient, unhurried motion of someone who’d done this ten thousand times.

I leaned forward in my chair despite the cane leaning against my knee, because I didn’t want to miss a second of it. I’d missed the first ultrasound. I’d missed weeks of this pregnancy, locked in a concrete hole in the ground while my own brother decided what I deserved to know and when I deserved to know it. I wasn’t missing this one.

Truth lay back, lifted the hem of her dress, and Dr. Broussard squeezed the gel onto her stomach, the sound of it small and wet in the quiet room. She pressed the wand down, and the screen beside the table flickered to life.

I watched Truth’s face instead of the screen at first. I always watched her face first—some instinct in me needing to read her before I trusted anything else in the room. I saw something cross it almost immediately. A small furrow. A stillness that hadn’t been there a second before.

“Everything okay?” I asked before I could stop myself. Before I even knew what I was asking about.

“Give me a second,” Dr. Broussard said. Her voice had changed too. Not alarmed. Focused. The kind of focus that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up before I understood why.

She moved the wand. Adjusted the angle. Moved it again, slower this time, her eyes locked on the monitor with an intensity that hadn’t been there thirty seconds ago.

“What is it?” Truth’s voice had gone tight, thin.

“I’m just getting a good look,” Dr. Broussard said, which wasn’t an answer. It was the kind of thing doctors said right before they said something you didn’t want to hear.

I looked at the screen now. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be seeing—all of it looked like static and shadow to me, gray shapes swimming in gray water—but I could see the shape of a heartbeat flickering somewhere in there, steady, small, alive.

One shape.

I frowned. I didn’t say anything yet. I told myself I was wrong, that I didn’t know how to read an ultrasound, and that this was exactly the kind of thing a person without medical training panicked over for no reason.