Page 49 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 3

“You gonna shoot me?” he asked.

The gun stayed level. Then, Amai lowered it.

“No,” he said. “But you’re both coming with me.”

He looked at Priest. “Car. Sanctum.”

The sanctum.

Oh God.

Oh God.

“No. No, Amai, please—” I begged, my voice breaking.

“You made your choice,” Amai said, his voice flat. “Now you get to live with it.”

Syx moved to shield me completely, his body between mine and Amai’s, and I felt tears streaming down my face.

“Move,” Amai said.

“No.”

Amai stepped forward, grabbed Syx by the collar, and dragged him toward the door.

Syx fought—God, he fought—but Amai was so much stronger.

Priest pushed off the doorframe and headed out without a word.

I had never been to the Sanctum.

I’d heard the name exactly twice in my years as a Landry wife—once in a conversation Amai had thought I wasn’t close enough to overhear, and once in something Winston had said to a man I never saw again. Both times the word had landed with a specific kind of quiet afterward, the quiet that meant you didn’t ask.

Now I sat in Amai’s car, Syx’s hand locked in mine in the back seat, Priest in the passenger seat, watching the city thin out behind us.

I’d tried the door at the first gate.

Child locks. Of course.

Amai had looked at me in the rearview mirror with the closest thing to amusement I’d seen from him all morning.

“Slow as snail piss,” he’d said.

Syx had called him a narcissistic psychopath, and Priest had laughed—one real, involuntary laugh—before Amai’s eyes flicked over and killed it.

After that, the car was silent.

The city gave way to the outskirts. The outskirts gave way to industrial zones, empty lots, then nothing: trees and darkness and the low smell of the swamp coming in through the vents. The drive took over an hour. I tracked what I could—the direction, the turns, the distance—but past a certain point, the sameness of the trees made it useless.

Then lights through the trees.

Floodlights, white and cold, lighting up a structure that looked like it had been built for the single purpose of making people understand that getting out was not part of the plan. Concrete and steel, massive, the kind of thing that had no windows at normal height and no ornamentation—nothing to soften or explain itself.

Armed guards at the perimeter in full tactical gear. Helmets, face shields, ARs. Surveillance cameras on every angle of every surface, their small red lights tracking in rotation.

Two checkpoints. Biometric scan on Amai. Barriers and electromagnetic locks disengaging with sounds like bodies hitting floors.

We were escorted inside. Priest fell in behind the guards, his expression the same emotionless nothing it had been the entire drive.