Page 148 of Hidden

That sound.

That heartbeat.

I just heard you.

My fingers curled against my stomach, my whole body trembling as I looked at him.

At the man I loved.

At the father of my child.

You’re going to hate me.

The thought settled heavily in my chest.

But you’ll be alive.

We could try again one day. We could. We could…

But I knew that was a lie. We would never get another chance. This was it. And I was about to destroy everything, just so he could live another day. Even if that meant he had to do so without me.

Without our baby.

This was inevitable. Nobody ever got it all, and we were deluding ourselves into thinking otherwise.

My lips parted, my voice barely holding together as I forced the word out.

“…Okay.”

And just like that, everything we’d built was gone.

In that moment, I felt something inside me break beyond repair.

Chapter 38

Vienna

Now

She wasn’t there.

I knew it the second I looked at the window, before my brain had even had the chance to catch up and offer me a dozen reasonable explanations to soften the blow. The room was dark, not just unlit but empty in a way that felt wrong, like something had been removed from it rather than simply being absent, and I found myself staring at it far longer than I should have, my eyes fixed on the glass as though if I waited long enough, if I stayed still enough, she might suddenly appear and prove me wrong.

She didn’t.

The curtains didn’t move. The light didn’t flicker. There was no shadow pacing behind the thin gap where they didn’t quite meet properly, no quiet shift of movement, no sign of life at all.

Just an empty room, sitting there like it had nothing to do with me, like it hadn’t been the one place I had watched for years, waiting for the smallest signal that she hadn’t disappeared.

My jaw tightened as I stepped closer, moving out from the darkness of the shadows without really thinking about it, my focus locked entirely on that window like it was the only thing in the world that mattered.

I had come here for a reason.

I had come here to tell her to hold on, just one more night, just one more fucking night until we were ready. The Devils were already moving. Calls had gone out to the other charters, men were riding in, weapons were being gathered, plans were being put into place with the kind of quiet efficiency that meant when we struck, it would be decisive.

Tomorrow.

Everything was set for tomorrow.