Page 149 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 4

“Drop it! Don’t move!”

A man scrambled out from behind a makeshift plywood partition near the helm, dropping a heavy pipe wrench that clattered against the steel deck. He was an older white man, maybe sixty, wearing oil-stained overalls and a faded ball cap, his face pale and contorted with sheer terror.

“Don’t shoot! God Almighty, don’t shoot!” he shrieked, throwing his hands above his head.

I crossed the room in two strides, grabbed the front of his overalls, and slammed him backward against the reinforced steel bulkhead hard enough to rattle his teeth.

“Where are they?” I screamed into his face, pressing the cold barrel of my pistol directly beneath his jaw. “Where is my wife? Where is my daughter?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” the man sobbed, his voice cracking with panic. “I’m just the watchman! I watch the salvage!”

“You’re lying!” Rage tore through my chest like hot glass. I cocked the hammer back with an audible click. “The tinted glass! The reinforced deck! Kaisen Landry bought this boat! Where did he take them?”

“I don’t know no Landry!” the man wailed, tears cutting clean tracks through the grease on his cheeks. “The bank owns this hull! Some contractor bought the glass at an auction in Houma two weeks ago to flip the cabin! Nobody lives here! There ain’t no woman here! Check the rooms! There’s nobody here!”

“You lying motherfucker⁠—”

I tightened my finger on the trigger. In that split second of blinding, suffocating madness, I didn’t see an old mechanic. I saw the wall of silence that had kept my family away from me for thirty days. I saw every lie Winston had ever told, every smug smirk Kaisen had ever given me, every second my baby was crying for her father while I stood in the dark, holding empty air.

I was going to kill him.

“Amai, no!”

Priest hit me like a linebacker, wrapping both arms around my chest and wrenching me backward with the full force of his weight.

We crashed to the steel floor, my gun discharging into the ceiling with a deafening bang that showered us in rust flakes and burnt powder.

“Get off me!” I snarled, thrashing against Priest’s grip, fighting him like a wild animal. “Get the fuck off me, Priest!”

Priest didn’t let go. He pinned my right arm against the deck, his face inches from mine, his breathing ragged.

“Look at him, Amai!” Priest yelled, shaking me hard enough to rattle my skull. “Look at the man! He’s a night watchman! He doesn’t know shit!”

The old man had collapsed into the corner by the helm, curling into the fetal position, weeping uncontrollably and clutching his knees.

“He’s not Kaisen’s man,” Priest said, his voice dropping into a hard, unyielding anchor. “Look at the room. Look around you.”

I stopped fighting. My chest heaved as I looked past Priest’s shoulder.

The upper deck wasn’t a luxury sanctuary. It was a construction site. Half-hung drywall, exposed wiring, buckets of joint compound, and discarded fast-food wrappers. There was no nursery. No furniture. No life.

It was just another dead-end shell company flip. A decoy vessel using salvage materials from the same contractor.

“If you kill him,” Priest said, his grip slowly loosening on my wrists, “you become a rabid dog. And a rabid dog doesn’t find his family. If Truth left a message—if she told somebody a name, if she gave somebody a clue—and you murder the first person you interrogate without listening, you destroy the only trail she’s trying to build.”

The words hit me like a bucket of ice water.

If you murder the first person you interrogate, you destroy the trail she’s trying to build.

I sat up slowly, leaning my back against the rusted bulkhead. My gun lay on the floor between my boots. My hands were shaking so violently I couldn’t lace my fingers together.

I looked over at the old watchman, who was still shaking in the corner, staring at me like I was a demon that had climbed out of the swamp.

Priest stood up, reached down, and picked up my weapon, uncocking the hammer and engaging the safety before tucking it into his waistband.

“Come on,” Priest said softly, offering his hand. “We’re done here.”

I didn’t take his hand. I pushed myself up from the floor, my legs heavy as lead, the silence of the empty boat pressing down on my chest until I felt like I was drowning in dry air.