For one terrible second, I thought Declan was dying on top of me.
“Declan.”
He didn’t answer.
“Declan!”
Then he lifted his head.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“Not mine.”
I stared.
A Voss security man lay several feet behind us, clutching his shoulder.
Declan had dragged me down so quickly that some of the man’s blood had smeared across his shirt.
Relief hit me before I could stop it.
I hated myself for feeling it.
“Move!” Gavin shouted.
Declan wrapped an arm around me and rushed me toward the SUV while his security team formed a shield around us.
I resisted.
“I’m not going with you.”
“Someone just fired at you.”
“They fired at you.”
“No.”
Declan looked directly at me.
“The first shot hit the window where you were standing.”
My stomach turned.
Gavin opened the rear door.
“Boss, we have maybe thirty seconds.”
Declan looked at me.
“You can hate me inside the armored vehicle.”
It was such a Declan sentence that for half a second I almost remembered us.
I climbed in.
He followed.
The SUV accelerated before the door had fully closed.
I twisted around.
June.
“My landlord—”
“We’ll get her,” Declan said.
“You don’t know where I live.”
“I know exactly where you live.”
Of course he did.
I glared at him.
“That isn’t comforting.”
“I know.”
That surprised me.
The old Declan would have tried to take control of the conversation.
This version simply sat across from me, breathing hard, blood on his shirt, staring at my stomach like he couldn’t believe it existed.
“How far?” he asked quietly.
“Twenty weeks.”
His eyes closed.
I watched him calculate.
When he opened them again, something inside him looked shattered.
“You knew the day you came to my office.”
“Yes.”
“You came to tell me.”
“Yes.”
“And instead you heard that conversation.”
“Yes.”
Declan leaned back and covered his mouth.
For perhaps the first time since I had known him, he looked helpless.
“I called you twenty-three times that night.”
“I saw three.”
“I went to your apartment.”
“I was gone.”
“I thought someone had taken you.”
“I took myself.”
His gaze dropped.
The SUV raced through mountain roads.
Finally, I said, “Explain.”
Declan looked at me.
“The Calloways weren’t offering me a marriage alliance.”
“The television disagrees.”
“They were offering a cease-fire disguised as one.”
“Same difference.”
“No.”
His voice hardened.
“Savannah’s father, Malcolm Calloway, learned about you.”
Cold moved through me.
“How?”
“I didn’t know.”
“And?”
“He told me civilians made powerful men vulnerable.”
My hand covered my stomach.
Declan noticed.
“He never knew about the baby,” he said immediately. “Neither did I.”
“What did he threaten?”
“You.”
I looked out the window.
“He had photographs.”
My head turned.
“What photographs?”
“You leaving your studio. Buying coffee. Walking home. Sitting in Lincoln Park.”
My skin prickled.
Declan continued.
“Malcolm wanted control of two shipping routes and access to businesses I’d spent years keeping away from him. When I refused, he put your photographs on my desk.”
“So you agreed to marry his daughter?”
“I agreed to appear to.”
“Without telling me.”
“If I had told you, you would’ve been part of the deception.”
“I already was.”
“I thought ignorance made you safer.”
I stared at him.
“You thought wrong.”
“Yes.”
The immediate admission disarmed me.
Declan leaned forward.
“The conversation you heard was about moving you out of Chicago.”
My pulse jumped.
He continued.
“When Savannah asked about you, I said you were civilian because I was reminding her you weren’t part of this. When I said you’d be resolved quietly, I meant Gavin was arranging a safe location, new security, and enough money for you to disappear until I dismantled the Calloway threat.”
“You were going to make me disappear without asking me?”
His jaw flexed.
“Yes.”
“That isn’t better.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
His voice became quiet.
“I know because you disappeared without asking me, and it nearly destroyed me.”
Silence filled the vehicle.
I looked away first.
We reached an isolated property forty minutes later.
Not a mansion.
A mountain lodge surrounded by trees and Voss security.
“I’m not staying here indefinitely.”
“You’re staying until we identify the shooter.”
“You don’t decide.”
“No,” Declan said. “You do.”
Gavin looked at him through the mirror, clearly surprised.
Declan ignored him.
“If you want to leave after we know you can do it safely, I won’t stop you.”
I studied his face.
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
“Your promises don’t mean much right now.”
That landed.
He nodded.
“Fair.”
Inside, Declan ordered a doctor brought immediately.
“I don’t need one.”
“You were thrown onto pavement.”
“By you.”
“To avoid a bullet.”
“Still counts.”
His mouth almost moved.
Almost.
Then his gaze dropped to my belly.
“Please.”
That single word changed my answer.
“Fine.”
The doctor arrived within an hour.
The baby’s heartbeat was strong.
Declan stood outside the bedroom because I refused to let him in.
But when the Doppler amplified the rapid heartbeat, I saw his silhouette stop beyond the partially open door.
He didn’t move.
Afterward, I found him alone in the hallway.
“You heard?”
He nodded.
His eyes were red.
Declan Voss had men who would kill for him.
Judges took his calls.
Politicians attended his parties.
And yet the sound of a twenty-week fetal heartbeat had reduced him to silence.
“Is it...” He cleared his throat. “Is it a boy or girl?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t ask?”
“I want it to be a surprise.”
He nodded.
Then he said, “I missed everything.”
It wasn’t an accusation.
That made it worse.
I returned to the bedroom.
Later that night, I woke hungry.
Pregnancy had apparently transformed my body into a demanding roommate.
I found Declan in the kitchen making grilled cheese.
I stopped.
“You cook?”
“No.”
“That answers why it’s smoking.”
He looked at the blackened bread.
“I can run twenty-seven companies.”
“Apparently bread is twenty-eight.”
For the first time in months, I laughed around him.
It escaped accidentally.
Declan stared at me.
The warmth disappeared almost immediately.
He put another sandwich in the pan.
“June’s safe,” he said. “Gavin moved her.”
“Does she know why?”
“She told Gavin that if any of my men scratched her furniture, she’d shoot them herself.”
I smiled.
“That sounds like June.”
Declan handed me a plate.
The sandwich was unevenly browned.
I took it anyway.
“Why Savannah?” I asked.
He leaned against the counter.
“Because Malcolm believed marrying her to me would eventually give him influence over my organization.”
“And Savannah?”
“She knew it was political.”
“Did she know about us?”
“Yes.”
That hurt.
“She agreed?”
“She wanted the alliance.”
“And you?”
“I wanted time.”
He looked at me.
“I planned to expose Malcolm’s betrayal to the other families, break his coalition, and end the engagement before there was ever a wedding.”
“You could have trusted me.”
“I should have.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Declan stared at the counter.
“Because every lesson I learned growing up said loving someone means hiding them behind walls.”
“And every lesson I learned growing up said if somebody hides the truth, run.”
His gaze lifted.
There it was.
The real problem.
Not Savannah.
Not even Malcolm.
Declan believed protection meant control.
I believed survival meant escape.
Neither of us had trusted the other enough to choose differently.
A phone rang.
Gavin entered.
His expression erased whatever fragile peace had formed.
“We identified the shooter.”
Declan straightened.
“Calloway?”
“No.”
Gavin placed a tablet on the counter.
Security footage appeared.
A man entering a rental property outside Asheville.
I didn’t recognize him.
Declan did.
His face hardened.
“Impossible.”
“Who is he?” I asked.
Neither man answered.
“Declan.”
He looked at me.
“That’s Eric Vale.”
“So?”
“He worked for me.”
Past tense.
My stomach tightened.
Gavin swiped to another image.
Eric speaking to someone at a Chicago parking garage.
The second man was blurry.
But the next photograph wasn’t.
Savannah Calloway.
I stared at her face.
“She sent him?”
“We don’t know,” Gavin said.
Declan’s phone buzzed.
He looked at the screen.
His expression changed.
“What?”
He handed me the phone.
A message from an unknown number.
There was a photograph attached.
Me.
Inside Miller’s Grocery.
Taken less than an hour before the shooting.
Below it were nine words.
THE CHILD CHANGES THE AGREEMENT. BRING AMELIA BACK TO CHICAGO.
I looked at Declan.
He was no longer staring at the message.
He was staring at me.
At my stomach.
And I understood something that terrified me more than the bullet.
The secret I had crossed half the country to protect was no longer a secret.