Chapter 13 - The Weight of a Hidden Pregnancy and the Fierce Argument That Followed in the Silence of the Master Suite
The elderly doctor packed his instruments into his leather bag, stood up quietly, and backed out of the master suite without uttering another word, closing the heavy double doors behind him with a soft click.
Inside the vast, dimly lit bedroom, the air was thick with an emotional gravity that neither Sloan nor Delphine knew how to navigate.
Sloan remained frozen beside the edge of the king-sized bed.
His massive hands rested on the mattress, his knuckles white.
His chest rose and fell in heavy, uneven rhythms, the invincible king of the underworld suddenly looking entirely dismantled by a single sentence.
“Six months,” Sloan whispered, his voice barely audible, shaking with a mixture of disbelief, awe, and a dark, volatile fury.
“You were three months pregnant when you faked your death and walked out of my house.”
Delphine pushed herself up into a sitting position, leaning her back against the padded headboard.
She pulled the edge of her gray sweater down defensively over her lower stomach, her amber-brown eyes flashing with stubborn defiance.
“Yes,” she answered, her voice steady despite her exhaustion.
“And if I had told you I was pregnant the night I walked out, what do you think would have happened, Sloan?”
Sloan didn’t answer immediately.
He stared at her as if seeing her for the very first time.
“I would have locked you inside the central estate,” Sloan murmured darkly, his brutal honesty laying bare the truth of his old self.
“I would have surrounded your bedroom with twenty armed guards, forbidden you from stepping foot outside the gates, and treated you like a fragile glass vase until the child was born.”
“Exactly,” Delphine fired back, a bitter laugh escaping her lips.
“You would have turned my pregnancy into another battlefield. You would have made my child grow up listening to gunfire, smelling cordite, and living as a target for every rival syndicate in the country. I couldn't do that, Sloan. I couldn't bring a baby into your war zone.”
Sloan straightened up to his full height, taking a slow, heavy step toward the edge of the bed.
“And you thought hiding in a slum, working fourteen-hour shifts on your feet, and starving yourself while carrying my child was a safer alternative?” he demanded, his voice rising in dangerous volume.
“You could have lost the baby! You could have collapsed behind that restaurant counter and bled out while carrying my flesh and blood!”
“It was my child, too!” Delphine shouted back, tears finally spilling over her lashes as she glared at him with every ounce of strength she had left.
“Every single day for three years, I protected our baby with my own body, my own hands, and my own choices! You didn't own me then, Sloan, and you don't own me now—even if you did just shoot your cousin on a marble floor!”
The sheer ferocity in her voice echoed off the walls.
Sloan stopped dead in his tracks.
He looked at the fierce, beautiful, unbroken woman sitting on his bed—the wife who had outsmarted his empire, survived alone in the slums, and carried his child in secret just to keep it safe from his violent world.
Instead of exploding in rage the way his men expected him to, a profound, heavy silence settled over him.
Sloan sank slowly down onto the edge of the mattress, his broad shoulders slumping slightly.
He reached out, his large, calloused hand hovering near Delphine’s stomach before gently, hesitantly resting his palm against the warm cotton of her sweater.
Delphine flinched, her breath catching in her throat.
May you like
She expected him to press, to demand, to command.
Instead, Sloan just closed his eyes, his heavy breathing ragged as he felt the faint, unmistakable movement of life beneath his palm.
