Page 157 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 4

Then the clinic door swung open wider, and Kaisen stepped out into the frame.

A vicious, blinding fury flared behind my eyes. Every muscle in my shoulders and forearms turned to stone.

Kaisen was dressed in a crisp, cream-colored linen shirt, dark trousers, and sunglasses. He carried a heavy canvas diaper bag over one shoulder. As he caught up to Truth on the walkway, he leaned down close, smiling—a bright, effortless expression of domestic warmth that made my stomach turn. He reached out with one hand and gently adjusted the corner of Trumai’s blanket, tucking the edge around her neck with the ease of a proud father walking his family back to the car.

He was acting out the whole goddamn fantasy in broad daylight.

The urge to reach through the glass and rip his windpipe out of his throat nearly broke my control. I could hear the blood roaring in my ears, hot and demanding.

Look at her, I told myself, forcing my lungs to draw air, dragging my mind back from the edge. Look at Truth.

“Trey,” I said, my teeth clenched so tight my jaw ached. “Zoom in on Truth’s upper body. Slow it down fifty percent.”

The screen adjusted, the pixels sharpening around Truth’s face and shoulders as they approached the gravel lot.

Truth wasn’t looking at Kaisen.

Her expression was calm, guarded, completely still. She didn’t pull away when he adjusted the blanket, but her body was angled two inches off his center, her weight balanced, her chin held level. She was enduring the performance, giving him just enough cooperation to keep him calm, but her eyes were darting across the street, cataloging the cars, the buildings, the light poles.

Then, at 11:15:02, she walked directly beneath the utility pole where the municipal camera was mounted.

She didn’t stop. She didn’t yell for help. She didn’t break her rhythm.

But just as she entered the center of the frame, her eyes flicked upward—a sharp, intentional glance straight into the camera lens.

And in that exact moment, her right hand lifted from Trumai’s swaddle.

Her fingers reached up to the base of her neck.

Beneath the linen cardigan, resting flat against the golden brown skin of her chest, was the custom chain I had forged with my own hands—the solid eighteen-karat gold link holding the flawless, seven-carat emerald-cut diamond I gave her in this very room.

Truth took the heavy stone between her thumb and forefinger.

She held it firmly against her collarbone, letting the midday sun catch the facets of the diamond for three clear seconds, before letting it rest back against her skin as she walked out of the camera’s frame toward the private dock.

The room went completely still.

Priest stared at the screen, letting out a slow, low whistle. “She kept the stone on.”

“She’s signaling,” I whispered, my eyes locked on the empty frame where she had just been standing.

It was subtle. To some local cop or a municipal clerk reviewing traffic tapes, it was just a young mother absentmindedly touching her necklace in the heat.

To me, it was a flare fired across the dark water.

She hadn’t broken. She hadn’t surrendered to his delusion. She was awake, she was watching every camera and every intersection, and she was holding onto the one thing I gave her to say, I am here. I am fighting. Come get us.

“Trey,” I said, stepping back from the desk, my mind cold, clear, and locked onto the target.

“Yeah, Amai?”

“Pull every commercial fuel delivery and private bunkering record within fifteen miles of that Intracoastal City dock for the last seventy-two hours,” I ordered. “Find out where that three-hundred-foot casino hull took on diesel.”

“On it,” Trey replied, his keys already rattling. “I’ll have the delivery coordinates in twenty minutes.”

I looked over at Priest.

“We don’t chase her down the river,” I said. “We find the exact cut where she’s anchored, we go in from the waterline under the cover of night, and we get Truth and Trumai off that steel first. Then I’m going to put Kaisen at the bottom of the bayou.”