Page 26 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 4

“You’re not. You’ve got that look you get when you’re building something in your head instead of dealing with what’s in front of you.” He studied me for another moment, and for once, there was something almost like curiosity in it instead of contempt. “What is it you think you’re going to do about this, Kaisen? Realistically. Every time I turn around, Amai is tagging your ass for trying to fuck around with his pussy.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean you can’t out-charm him with her family. You’ve tried. She let you come inside that house once, and then the truth came out about the clinic, and that opening closed. You can’t out-money him—he’s richer than both of us combined at this point, and everyone in this city knows it. You can’t out-violence him. He put a bullet in your spleen like it was nothing, and you’re still walking around telling yourself that was a warning shot instead of a message about exactly where you rank.” Winston’s voice hadn’t risen at all, which somehow made it worse. “So, what’s left, son? What are you actually planning to do?”

“That was a message about his ego,” I said, sharper than I meant to. “Amai don’t love Truth like I do. He’s bad for her, but she just can’t see the shit.”

“Maybe she can’t see it because Amai nut is in her eyes. I don’t fucking know. But what I do know is that girl made her choice.”

“Whatever.”

Winston’s expression flickered—something that might have been the beginning of sympathy, gone before it fully formed. “The boy,” he said, quieter now. “I heard about that too.”

I said nothing.

“That’s a real loss, Kaisen. I won’t pretend otherwise.” He set the pen down for good this time, folding his hands on the desk like a man about to deliver a verdict. “But grief makes fools of smart men, and you were never as smart as you thought you were to begin with, no offense. If you’re sitting there thinking that girl still living because your brother’s blood runs stronger in her somehow evens a score⁠—”

“That’s not what I think.”

“Then what do you think?” He leaned forward, and for a moment, the study felt smaller, the cedar smell thicker, the way it always did when Winston decided to actually look at you instead of through you. “Because I know what losing a child does to a man’s head. I’ve buried two of my own. I know exactly the kind of thinking that starts to sound reasonable when you’re standing at that particular edge. And I’m telling you—whatever’s forming in there, whatever shape it’s taking—you need to be very careful it doesn’t turn you into something you can’t walk back from.”

“You’re worried about me.”

“I’m worried about what you’ll cost this family if you do something stupid while I’m still trying to clean up the mess your brother’s obsession has made.” He said it plainly, no apology in his voice, and somehow, that honesty was easier to sit with than false concern would have been. “Whatever you’re building in that head of yours—be smart about it. You’ve already lost a son this year. Don’t lose the rest of what you’ve got left chasing something that isn’t yours to chase. You see I let the shit go. A girl child can’t carry the Landry name anyway. I washed my hands of it all.”

I stood, because sitting there any longer meant sitting with that sentence, and I wasn’t going to give Winston the satisfaction of watching it land the way he clearly wanted it to.

“I’ll see myself out,” I said.

He didn’t stop me this time. Didn’t call my name at the door. Just let me go, which was somehow its own kind of statement—that he’d said what he intended to say, planted whatever seed he’d meant to plant, and now the rest was up to gravity.

“You okay, baby?” my mom asked.

She caught me in the foyer just about to walk out. Just being around Winston drained me in way I couldn’t explain fully.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I heard about the baby. I’m sorry, sweety. You’ve had it so hard lately. Why won’t you let this foolishness go, baby? It’s plenty of women in New Orleans.”

“There’s only one Truth, Mama. The short time I was around her, it changed me as a man. The way she sees the world. How ambitious she is. The dimple in her right cheek. The way she makes me feel just being near her.”

“That woman was hand picked by your brother. You wrong, baby. You driving a wedge between you and your brother for nothing. You have no rights to that woman or that baby now.”

“No, Amai has no right!” I barked.

My mama jumped.

“You looked worse than Amai when you said that. The expression on your face sent a chill crawling down my spine, Kaisen. You’re becoming unrecognizable.”

I let the front door close behind me and stood on the wide stone steps for a second, breathing through a rage that had teeth.

Nobody understood, because nobody else had sat in that ultrasound room and saw one heartbeat where there should have been two. Nobody else had built a nursery with their own hands for a child who then simply stopped existing, absorbed into the sister who got to live because her father was the one with money and violent enough to make the universe bend around him.

Amai wasn’t just taking Truth. He was taking the family too—the whole warm, loud, forgiving thing I’d wanted and never gotten, not from Winston, not from anyone, until Truth let me come around for a few weeks and pretend I might belong somewhere.

He was becoming family in a house that should have belonged to me.

That thought sat in my chest the whole drive home, heavier than anything Winston had said directly because Winston’s words, I could dismiss as an old man’s manipulation, another test disguised as advice. This one I couldn’t dismiss so easily. This one had roots, and the roots went down into ground I recognized—the same ground where I’d once imagined Truth’s sisters teasing me at Christmas, where I’d pictured Delphine finally softening toward me over a second helping of gumbo. Amai was standing in that exact soil now, and it didn’t matter how many times I told myself he didn’t deserve it, he was there, and I wasn’t.