Page 127 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 4

We.

Every sentence out of his mouth was plural. Every verb implied a consensus we had never reached.

“Let me go, Kaisen,” I said, my voice dead and flat.

“I know the adjustment period is hard,” he said, plating the pancakes and setting the dish on the table beside a small crystal vase filled with silk hydrangeas. He’d brought fake flowers aboard because fresh ones would wither, and in Kaisen’s mind, nothing in our new life was ever allowed to die. “Change is always disorienting at first. Especially after everything Amai put you through. The violence, the paranoia, the constant gunfire in the streets… it takes time to decompress from that kind of survival mode.”

“You kidnapped me.” I took a half-step back, my fingers digging into the fleece around Tru’s back. “You drugged my water. You forged a medical report. You took me from my home.”

“I extracted you from a war zone,” he corrected, not even raising his voice. He pulled out a chair, gesturing toward it with an open palm. “I brought our daughter to a sanctuary where no one can ever shoot through the front window. Where Winston can’t touch her. Where Amai’s enemies can’t put body parts on your porch.”

“She is not our daughter.”

“The DNA is settled, Truth. We looked at the markers together.” He took his seat, folding his hands over his linen napkin, looking at me with the unbearable, condescending pity of a doctor dealing with a hysterical patient. “I know your mind is fighting it. You formed a trauma bond with my brother because he made you feel protected while he was the very source of the danger. But you’re safe now. You don’t have to defend him anymore.”

“I want to go back to New Orleans.”

“When you understand,” Kaisen said softly.

He never said never. He never said you’re never leaving. That would sound like a captor. Instead, he placed the burden of my imprisonment entirely on my own perception.

When you understand.

When you heal.

When you come to your senses.

“Sit down and eat with your family, Truth,” he murmured, picking up his fork. “The food is getting cold.”

I turned on my heel, walked back down the narrow mahogany corridor, entered the guest stateroom, and slammed the heavy door until the magnetic locks engaged with a sickening, definitive click.

For thirty days, I waged a war of absolute refusal.

I did not eat at his table. When hunger gnawed at my ribs so badly my milk started drying up, I took dry protein bars, sealed water bottles, and canned fruit from the pantry while he was inspecting the bridge, dragging the supplies back to my room like a prisoner hoarding rations.

I did not sleep in the master suite. Kaisen had unlocked the grand bedroom on the third night, showing me the king-sized bed draped in Egyptian cotton, the vanity stocked with the exact Fenty lip oils and expensive lavender lotions I used at home, the closet filled with linen dresses in my exact size. I had looked at the room, looked Kaisen dead in his eyes, and said, “I’d rather sleep on concrete.”

I stayed in the secondary cabin at the rear of the hallway. It was smaller, functional, and equipped with a heavy deadbolt on the inside that gave me the illusion of safety, even though I knew damn well Kaisen held the master override codes on his tablet. Every night, I pushed the heavy oak dresser in front of the door. Every night, I slept with Trumai tucked into the crook of my arm, my ears straining against every creak of the hull, every hum of the air filtration system, every phantom footstep on the floorboards.

“Good morning, kidnapper,” I said when he brought fresh formula cans to my doorway on day fourteen.

“Good morning, Truth,” he replied with a soft, forgiving smile. “Did Tru sleep through the night?”

“Go to hell, kidnapper,” I said on day twenty-one when he offered to hold her so I could take a hot bath.

“You’re tired, sweetheart,” he whispered back, his voice dripping with unbearable tenderness. “It’s the exhaustion talking. Take your time. I’ll be right outside when you’re ready.”

His patience was worse than a fist. A fist was honest. A fist gave you something tangible to fight, an enemy you could hate with clean, clear lines. Kaisen’s weapon was a suffocating, weaponized grace. He treated my rage like a symptom of an illness he was nobly waiting for me to overcome.

If I screamed, he nodded sympathetically.

If I threw a cup against the wall, he swept up the glass and asked if I needed chamomile tea.

If I cursed his name and promised him that Amai would tear his ribcage out through his throat, Kaisen only sighed, looked down at Trumai, and said, “Your mother still carries so much pain, little one. But we’ll love it out of her.”

It made me want to gouge my own eyes out.

But screaming didn’t open bulkheads. Rage didn’t pilot a massive vessel.