Rain lashed violently across the windshield while city lights blurred into streaks of gold and white.
“Faster,” I growled.
My fingers dug into the leather seat hard enough to strain the material.
Restless energy vibrated beneath my skin like a live wire. Every second felt unbearable.
Every red light felt personal.
Every slower vehicle ahead of us looked like an obstacle begging to be destroyed.
The Bugatti weaved between vehicles with terrifying precision.
A horn blared behind us.
Another.
I barely heard them.
All I could see was Loretta alone in some hospital room in pain while strangers stood around her instead of me.
The thought made something savage claw up my throat.
My knee bounced violently before I forced it still.
Control yourself.
But control had become difficult the moment I heard the wordlabor.
Because suddenly, questions were everywhere.
Loretta had been pregnant for the entire eight months since she vanished, and she had not even bothered to reach out to me—let alone tell me.
My jaw tightened painfully at the thought, a sharp, controlled fury settling beneath my skin.
Nine months ago—on a desperate, emotionally brutal night after weeks of distance between us.
I remembered it too clearly.
Loretta standing near the bedroom window in silk nightwear, arms folded tightly across herself while rain hammered against the glass outside.
We had barely spoken properly for weeks back then.
Not after the funeral anniversary of Zara—my first wife, my late wife.
The ghost that had poisoned everything.
I had drowned myself in work and violence after Zara died. I became colder. Crueler. Harder to reach.
Loretta—sweet, gentle, persistent—had tried to pull me back from the cold shell I had become, from the darkness I no longer bothered to hide. She wanted me to see it, to accept it... to heal and move on from Zara’s death.
But I pushed her away every single time.
Coldness was all I gave her. Distance. Silence. The kind of emotional absence that leaves no room for anything to survive.
And so she lived under the same roof with a man who refused to let go of his dead wife—who refused to move forward—while she endured him in silence, loving someone already buried beneath grief.
Until that night.
