Page 101 of Dark Billionaire Stalker
That was the night I became Brotherhood. The night I became who I am.
And now I discover that the monster I killed had a daughter. A daughter who grew up never knowing her father. A daughter who's currently sleeping in my bed, carrying secrets I can't decipher.
A daughter who might be carrying something else as well.
The thought surfaces unbidden, connected to all the observations I've been cataloging without understanding. Her nausea. Her fatigue. Her strange appetites and stranger moods. The changes in her body that I've noticed but haven't named.
Could she be pregnant?
The possibility takes root in my mind, growing tendrils that wrap around every other thought. If she's pregnant—if she's carrying my child—then Dwayne Thomas's grandchild is growing inside her. My child and his grandchild, combined in one impossible life.
The symmetry is almost too perfect to be a coincidence. Too cruel to be anything but fate's idea of a joke.
I killed her father. And now I might have created a life that binds us together forever, connecting my bloodline to his through the woman we've both, in our different ways, possessed.
The estate appears through the trees, its familiar silhouette somehow alien now. Changed, the way everything has changed in the space of a few hours.
I park the car, but don't move to get out. I sit in the silence, staring at the house where Poppy waits, and try to imagine how to tell her the truth.
I killed your father.
He was a monster, and I was his victim, and I ended him before he could hurt anyone else.
I didn't know about you. I didn't know you existed.
But now you're here, in my bed, in my life, and I don't know how to let you go.
The words sound hollow even in my head. How much worse will they sound spoken aloud?
I think about what Bryan said:Tell her before Zachary poisons her against you completely.
But what if it's already too late? What if the poison has already taken root?
There's only one way to find out.
I get out of the car and walk toward the house, toward the woman waiting inside, toward a confrontation I'm not ready for but can no longer avoid.
Poppy is Dwayne Thomas's daughter.
And one way or another, she's going to learn that I'm the one who killed him.
Chapter 25 - Poppy
Gabriel has been watching me.
Not the usual watching—the heated glances across rooms, the possessive tracking of my movements that I've grown accustomed to. This is different. This is vigilant. Searching. Like he's waiting for me to do something, or say something, or reveal something I've been hiding.
Which, of course, I have.
Two days have passed since I stared at those two lines in a coffee shop bathroom. Two days of carrying the knowledge like a stone in my chest, heavy and impossible to ignore. Two days of watching him watch me, both of us circling secrets we won't share.
Something changed after his meetings in the city. He came home that evening with shadows in his eyes and a tension in his jaw that hasn't relaxed since. He barely spoke at dinner, and when we went to bed, he held me tighter than usual—almost desperately, like he was afraid I'd dissolve in his arms.
I should have asked what was wrong. A normal woman in a normal relationship would have asked.
But we're not normal. Nothing about us is normal. And I have my own secrets pressing against my ribs, demanding attention I can't give them.
The pregnancy test is hidden in the lining of my suitcase, wrapped in a silk scarf, buried beneath clothes I never wear. Every time I pass the closet, I feel its presence like a heartbeat.
