Page 148 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 4

The final piece was the vessel classification: an old two-hundred-foot commercial riverboat, previously used as a floating dining charter in the late nineties, purchased at private auction and registered as undergoing industrial scrap refit.

I stared at the invoice for the water filtration system, my chest tightening until I could barely draw breath.

Hector told us water.

Terrance had pulled that name out of a scrap yard job two days ago, and now the paper trail was confirming every single word.

“Who did the refit work?” I demanded, my hands curling into fists against the table.

“Three different independent contracting crews,” Priest answered, pulling another sheet from the folder. “None of them knew what the others were installing. One crew handled the hull and engines. One handled the generators and plumbing. The third did the interior luxury finishes and the nursery framing. Kaisen paid them in cash, fired them the second they completed their section, and had the vessel moved by a private pilot before the final paperwork cleared the maritime registry.”

“Where was the last recorded inspection?”

“Plaquemines Parish,” Priest said. “Six weeks before Truth gave birth. The contractor who signed off on the electrical work runs a private marine salvage yard off the Intracoastal cut near Belle Chasse.”

I pushed back from the table so fast my chair crashed against the hardwood floor.

“Get the truck,” I said.

The fog hung over the canal like wet gauze, thick and smelling of stagnant mud, rotting water hyacinths, and old diesel fuel.

It was three in the morning.

We cut the headlights two hundred yards before the rusted chain-link gate of the salvage yard. The rain had stopped an hour earlier, leaving the gravel road slick and black under the moonless sky.

Priest killed the engine of the truck. Silence settled over us, broken only by the low, rhythmic lapping of the canal against creosote-soaked pilings.

Through the mist, I saw the silhouette.

A large, double-deck river vessel sat moored against an abandoned loading dock. Its white paint was peeling in long, jagged ribbons, but through the darkness, I could see modern, dark-tinted glass windows fitted along the upper deck—brand-new frames bolted into sixty-year-old steel.

My heart slammed against my ribs like a battering ram.

Truth.

Trumai.

“We go in quiet,” Priest whispered, checking the slide on his suppressed pistol. “If Kaisen has armed detail aboard⁠—”

“I don’t give a fuck who’s aboard,” I said, racking the slide of my .45.

I didn’t wait for him. I moved down the muddy bank, boots sinking into the wet clay, my focus narrowed to the steel gangway resting against the vessel’s lower deck.

We cleared the lower gangway in three seconds. The heavy steel door leading into the main salon had been retrofitted with an electronic keypad lock, but the latch hadn’t caught completely in the strike plate. I threw my shoulder into the metal, bursting the door inward with a sharp crack that echoed down the hollow corridor.

“Clear left,” Priest hissed, sweeping his weapon through the gloom.

The smell hit me first. Not lavender linen spray. Not baby lotion.

It smelled of stale tobacco, motor oil, and damp cardboard.

“Truth!” I roared, completely abandoning stealth. “Truth!”

I kicked open the first cabin door on the left. Empty. Just bare steel ribs, exposed insulation, and stacks of rusted pipes.

I took the metal stairs three at a time, sprinting up toward the upper deck where the tinted windows were located. My lungs burned. My vision was swimming with red, adrenaline pulsing so violently behind my eyes that my hands shook against the grip of my gun.

I slammed through the double doors of the upper salon.