Page 150 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 4

The morning sun was just beginning to cut through the heavy gray clouds over the Seventh Ward when the Bentley pulled up to the curb on Derbigny Street.

The neighborhood was quiet. An early street sweeper rumbled three blocks away, and the smell of damp asphalt and magnolia leaves drifted through the open car window.

I sat behind the wheel for five minutes, staring at the small, well-kept shotgun house. The yellow trim on the porch was peeling slightly at the corners, but the porch light was on, burning steady in the dawn.

“You want me to come in?” Priest asked from the passenger seat.

“No,” I said. “Wait here.”

I got out of the car. My knees popped with a sharp ache. My clothes felt stiff and dirty against my skin. I’d worn the same charcoal button-down for three days, the cuffs frayed and darkened with engine grime and sweat.

I walked up the wooden front steps. Before my knuckles could touch the screen door, the interior latch clicked.

Delphine opened the door.

She was wearing a faded floral duster over her cotton nightgown, her graying hair wrapped in a silk scarf. Her eyes were sharp, dark, and clear, taking me in with a single, sweeping glance that stripped away every layer of defense I had left.

She saw the hollows beneath my cheekbones where twenty pounds had melted off me in a month. She saw the thick, uneven beard covering my jaw, the bloodshot veins in my eyes, and the tremor in my right hand as it hung at my side.

She didn’t ask what happened. She just pushed the screen door open.

“Get in this house,” she said.

I stepped into the narrow hallway. The house smelled of lavender floor cleaner, bacon grease, and menthol cigarettes. It was warm. It smelled like Truth’s childhood.

I stopped in the middle of the front parlor. The silence in the room felt heavier than the riverboat had.

“Delphine,” I started, my voice cracking, catching on the sharp edge of my own throat. “I…”

I couldn’t finish the sentence. The words died behind my teeth.

I had faced down Winston with a gun in my face. I had gutted Rahsaan’s organization without blinking. But standing in this woman’s front room, looking at the photographs of Truth on the mantle—Truth in her cap and gown, Truth holding her sisters, Truth smiling with that fierce, stubborn light in her eyes—I completely fell apart.

“I promised you,” I whispered, my vision blurring with hot, humiliating tears that I couldn’t stop. “The night we had Sunday dinner… I sat in your kitchen, and I promised you she would never become collateral damage. I promised you I would protect her.”

My shoulders shook. I pressed the heel of my palm against my forehead, fighting for air, the weight of the last month crashing down on my spine all at once.

“I lost them, Delphine,” I choked out. “Kaisen took them, and I can’t find them. I’m tearing the city apart, and I’m coming up with nothing. I failed her. I failed my baby girl.”

Delphine didn’t rush forward to hug me. She didn’t offer a soft, pitying pat on the shoulder.

She walked right up to me, stopped six inches from my chest, reached up, and grabbed the lapels of my wrinkled shirt with hands that were rough, calloused, and unyielding as iron.

She yanked me down until my eyes met hers.

“You listen to me, Amai Landry,” she said, her voice low, harsh, and steady. “You don’t stand in my house and bury my daughter while she’s still breathing. You hear me?”

I stared at her, my breath catching in my chest.

“Truth is a Renois woman,” Delphine said, her grip tightening on my shirt. “She is in that man’s face right now, figuring out how to survive. She is keeping my grandbaby alive, and she is watching him for a mistake. She ain’t broken, and you damn sure ain’t allowed to be broken neither.”

A tear slipped down my cheek, burning against the rough stubble.

“I don’t need your apologies,” Delphine stated, shoving me back just enough to break the hold, though her eyes never left mine. “Find my babies. We can discuss your guilt after.”

She turned on her heel and marched into the kitchen.

“Sit down at that table,” she called out over the sound of a cast-iron skillet hitting the gas burner.