“It feels like the point.”
He stared at her as though he could not believe she had stepped outside the role he had assigned her.
Then he looked at me again and chose the cruelest weapon he had left.
“Fine.
Tell everyone, Chloe.
Tell us who did this to you and disappeared.”
My hand covered my stomach.
The baby moved—not a kick exactly, but a faint flutter beneath my palm.
Dante noticed.
His face went still.
“I’m four months pregnant,” I said.
A murmur traveled through the room.
Derek’s lips parted.
Tiffany’s hand slipped from his arm.
Dante moved one careful step closer to me.
“What date did you find out?”
I told him.
He asked when the doctor believed the child had been conceived.
I answered that too.
Each word stripped another layer of arrogance from Derek’s face.
Dante looked at me for a long moment.
Then he said, “There will be a test, if that is what you want.”
“It is.”
“Good.” His answer came without offense or hesitation.
“You should never have to depend on my certainty when evidence can give you your own.”
That was the first thing he said that made me trust him.
Not that he would protect me.
Not that he would provide for the baby.
Not that no one would dare insult me again.
He offered proof before power.
Derek recovered enough to scoff.
“You cannot seriously believe her.
She probably came here hoping someone wealthy would see the performance.”
Dante’s eyes shifted toward him.
“I came here because my people located her this morning.”
My breath caught.
Dante continued speaking to me, not Derek.
“The employment list from the private event at the Viper Room contained a misspelled surname.
By the time we corrected it, the agency had closed.
I found your old address, but you had moved.
This morning, someone recognized you leaving the subway.”
I remembered the black sedan that had moved slowly behind me for two blocks.
I had dismissed it as traffic.
“I was on my way inside when I heard him,” Dante said.
Derek’s face changed again.
Until that moment, part of him had still believed Dante’s arrival was coincidence.
Now he understood that Dante had come specifically for me.
“Chloe,” Derek said quickly, “we should talk privately.”
“No.”
His voice hardened.
“You don’t know what you’re getting involved with.”
The irony almost made me laugh.
Derek was warning me about danger while standing there with the man whose reputation had silenced an entire bakery.
Yet the only person trying to control me was still Derek.
Dante glanced toward the man near the window who had been recording.
“Keep the video,” he said.
