Page 118 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 4

“Get in here,” I said.

He stepped across the threshold, and the smell of him hit me immediately—gunpowder, cold rain, raw adrenaline, and the sharp, sour tang of terror. He looked around my small living room like he didn’t know where he was, his large hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. He looked like he was about to collapse right onto my braided rug.

“Sit your ass down,” I ordered, keeping my voice low and firm, the way you talk to a wounded dog before it decides whether to bite or whimper.

He didn’t argue. He sank onto the edge of the sofa, his elbows on his knees, his head dropping into his palms. His whole frame shook—just once, a violent shudder that racked his spine before he locked his jaw to kill it.

I walked into the kitchen, brought back a glass of tap water, and held it in front of his face until he looked up.

“Drink it.”

He took the glass with a hand that wasn’t steady, swallowed two gulps, and set it on the side table.

“Now,” I said, pulling my wooden rocker around so I was sitting directly in front of him, my knees almost touching his. “Spit it out, Amai. Stop looking at the floor and tell me what happened to my daughter.”

He looked at me then, and the raw agony in those dark Landry eyes nearly broke my heart.

“Kaisen,” he whispered. His voice was ruined, cracked and hoarse like he’d been screaming until his vocal cords bled. “He took them, Mama D. He took Truth. He took Tru.”

The room went completely still.

A cold blade slipped right between my ribs, but I didn’t flinch. I didn’t scream. When you’re a mother from New Orleans, and you’ve buried people you loved, you learn real quick that falling apart don’t buy you back a single second.

“Start from the beginning,” I told him, keeping my voice like iron.

“He set up a hit on two of my money houses,” Amai said, the words coming out fast, ragged, tripping over each other. “Made it look like Rahsaan’s old crew retaliating. I left the house to handle it. Priest went with me. While I was gone… Kaisen walked right up to my front door. Security let him through because he’s my brother. He told Truth I sent him to move her somewhere safe. She called me, but I was in the middle of a raid—I brushed her off. I told her I was sending someone to keep them safe but didn’t tell her who. I gave her right to him, Ms. Delphine. I handed my family to him on a silver platter.”

He gripped his hair with both hands, his knuckles turning stark white.

“I tore my security detail to pieces,” Amai choked out, tears finally spilling over his bottom lids, hot and furious. “I went to Winston’s house. I put my hands on my father’s throat. I got my hacker running FLOK cameras, street feeds, traffic monitors across every parish from here to Baton Rouge. We searched the highways. We searched Kaisen’s house. He cleared it out. He’s gone. I’ve exhausted every resource I have in this city, and I don’t have a goddamn thing. I don’t know where they are.”

“Not all,” I said sharply.

Amai blinked, looking up at me through bloodshot eyes. “What?”

“I said not all,” I repeated, leaning in close so he couldn’t look away from me. “Don’t you sit on my couch and tell me you ran out of resources when the biggest one you got is the woman he took. Don’t you dare underestimate the love and the bond you and Truth built. You think she’s just sitting in a corner, waiting to die? You think my daughter forgot who she is? Who you are to her?”

Amai swallowed hard, his chest rising and falling in shallow, jagged gasps. “She’s with a monster, Delphine.”

“I know what he is,” I said coldly. “I knew what he was the second he stepped through my front door with that little bowl of soup and that soft-spoken bullshit.”

Amai frowned slightly, listening.

“I never trusted your brother,” I told him flat out. “Not for one second. Too nice. Always saying the exact right thing at the exact right time, smiling like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Men who are that clean on the outside are rotting underneath. A man who comes in loud and wicked—like you—at least I can see where the blade is. But Kaisen? He performed harmlessness like an actor on a stage. I watched the way he looked at Truth in this very house. He looked at her like something he’d already bought and paid for in his mind. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.”

Amai’s jaw tightened until the bone jutted against his skin. A dark, terrifying stillness settled over his features, washing away the panic and replacing it with the predator he truly was.

“I’m going to kill him,” Amai said. It wasn’t a threat; it was a vow whispered in the dark. “I’m going to rip his throat out with my bare hands. I’m going to make him bleed until there’s nothing left of him to bury.”

“I expect nothing less,” I answered without hesitation. “You’re a Landry. You do what you have to do to a dog that bites your family. But you don’t do it blind with rage. Rage is stupid, Amai. Rage makes noise. Rage kicks down doors that don’t need kicking while the man with your baby slips out the back window.”

I reached out and grabbed both of his wrists, squeezing tight enough that he had to feel it through the numbness.

“Listen to me,” I commanded. “For right now, Kaisen is not going to lay a violent hand on Truth or that baby. You hear me? He won’t hurt them.”

“You don’t know that⁠—”

“I know how sick men think!” I snapped. “In Kaisen’s twisted-up, delusional mind, he thinks he’s the hero of this story. He thinks he’s saving her from you. He needs Truth alive, and he needs that baby whole so he can play house and prove his little fantasy right. He needs her approval, even if he has to force it. That means you have time. But you don’t have forever.”