Page 18 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 4

He looked at me.

“That’s the point.”

Priest studied my face for a long moment. “You know this doesn’t stop being ugly just because it’s working.”

“I know.”

Truth came to mind then.

Asleep at home.

Our daughter safe inside her.

Both protected behind walls and men I trusted with their lives.

Every name disappearing from that board was one fewer place Rahsaan could stand while deciding how to hurt them.

One fewer door.

One fewer account.

One fewer friend.

One fewer soft place to land.

And somewhere beneath all of that sat Elias and Silas, seventeen forever because Rahsaan had decided they wouldn’t get eighteen.

I looked back at the board.

Fourteen down.

Seventeen waiting.

“Give me the names for tomorrow,” I told Priest.

Rahsaan had spent years building himself places to hide.

I was going to make him watch me erase every fucking one.

Chapter 4

AMAI

Istood on Delphine’s porch with a bottle of wine tucked under one arm, a pink box of pralines from the bakery on Claiborne balanced against my chest, and a bunch of flowers I’d bought from a gas station because the good florist was closed by the time I finished handling business, and I was nervous as hell.

Days into peeling Rahsaan’s whole life apart layer by layer, days of bodies and burned-down safehouses and Priest calling me at four in the morning with updates I didn’t want to hear before coffee, and none of that had my palms sweating the way this porch did. A shotgun house with chipped paint and a wind chime made from forks. That was what had me standing here running through what I was supposed to say if Delphine asked me something I didn’t have a clean answer for. This was our third Sunday dinner at Delphine's, and it was an interrogation with a side of greens every time.

This wasn’t new. It still felt like walking into somebody else’s church without knowing the hymns.

The door opened before I could knock, and Truth was standing there in a sundress with her hair pulled back, belly rounding out under the fabric in a way that still felt surreal every time I saw it fresh.

“You bought gas station flowers,” she said, taking them from me and inspecting them like evidence.

“They were the best the gas station had.”

“That’s not the compliment you think it is.” But she was smiling, and she leaned up to kiss me, quick and easy, like it was nothing, like I hadn’t spent all week wondering if she was going to look at me differently because of what happened in that ultrasound room. She didn’t. She never had. “Come on. Mama’s already got an opinion about the wine.”

“I haven’t even given her the wine yet.”