Page 101 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 4

The rhythm picked up, hot and relentless. Every thrust hit that sweet, aching spot deep inside me until my entire body tightened like a drawn bowstring. I was right on the edge, the pleasure coiling so tight in the pit of my stomach I couldn’t breathe⁠—

WAAAAAAAH.

The sudden, loud squawk through the baby monitor shattered the silence of the room like a brick through glass.

Amai froze mid-stroke, his muscles locking up, his face buried in my neck.

We both stayed completely still for three seconds, holding our breath, praying it was just a sleep-whimper.

WAAAAAH-WAH-WAAAAAAH.

Amai let out a long, muffled groan against my collarbone that sounded like a dying animal. “I know this little girl did not just cock-block her own father.”

A helpless burst of laughter bubbled up in my chest, shaking my whole body. “Boy, you so childish!”

“I’m serious,” he grumbled, lifting his head, his face a hilarious mix of agonizing frustration and defeated amusement. “She waited until I was ninety-nine percent done. That was premeditated.”

“She’s hungry.” I laughed, pushing playfully at his chest. “Get off me, daddy. Duty calls.”

Amai rolled off me with a heavy theatrical sigh, collapsing onto his back with his forearm over his eyes. “I’m telling you, she’s plotting. It’s psychological warfare.”

Still giggling, I grabbed my silk robe, tied it securely around my waist, and padded across the hall into the nursery.

Trumai was thrashing her little legs, her face scrunched up in annoyance. The second I scooped her up and cradled her against my shoulder, she quieted down, sucking eagerly on her fist.

Footsteps padded softly across the hardwood behind me. Amai stepped into the nursery, his pajama pants low on his hips, bare-chested and still flushed. Without a word, he took the burp cloth off the glider chair, draped it over his shoulder, and reached for the bottle warming on the dresser.

He took Tru from my arms and sat in the rocking chair, easing the nipple of the bottle into her mouth.

She latched on greedily, her little dark eyes gazing up at him while the chair rocked back and forth with a soft, steady creak.

I leaned against the doorframe, watching them in the dim amber glow of the nightlight.

It was messy. It was exhausting. It was interrupted sex and spit-up towels and endless laundry. But as I watched the Demon of New Orleans gently wiping a drop of milk off our daughter’s chin with the tip of his thumb, I knew this was the only life I ever wanted.

It felt earned. It felt solid.

It felt almost normal.

Chapter 17

KAISEN

2 Weeks Later…

Timing is everything in New Orleans. If you push too hard, the city pushes back. If you don’t move with enough weight, men like my brother assume you’re just part of the scenery.

For fourteen days, I moved like water.

I didn’t hire Landry soldiers. I didn’t touch the family accounts Winston monitored or use any of the usual street runners who answered to Priest. Instead, I routed forty thousand dollars in clean cash through three separate intermediaries in Kenner and New Orleans East. Small-time stick-up crews. Desperate young men who didn’t ask where the envelope came from, only what needed to be hit.

The rumor was simple, elegant, and impossible for Amai to ignore: Rahsaan Boudreaux’s people had regrouped with out-of-town muscle from Baton Rouge, and they were hunting Landry blood.

At 6:15 in the evening, the plan went live.

The first crew hit the Landry stash house off Chef Menteur Highway, firing a dozen rounds of 7.62 into the reinforced front facade and tossing a Molotov cocktail onto the driveway before speeding off. Exactly four minutes later, a second crew shot out the plate-glass windows of Winston’s primary check-cashing front on South Broad. No bodies. No prolonged gun battle. Just enough loud, coordinated violence to make Amai believe the war he thought he’d finished on the pier had crawled back out of the grave.

I was sitting in my Audi four blocks from Amai’s Garden District home when my phone buzzed on the console.