Page 133 of Ruthless Claim

Emma sits besides me and I can feel her eyes as I focus on the baby, using her sweetness to calm myself down. Emma says nothing because she knows me well enough to know that sometimes the fixing has to wait.

Eventually she says, carefully, “Do you think the boy is actually his?”

I look at where Finn sat and picture him. His brown hair. His warm brown eyes. There’s nothing about him that makes me think, yes, Cillian is your father.

Claire’s face when I said alleged. The tiny flicker. The recovery that was just slightly too fast.

Something has been sitting wrong in my gut since this afternoon, and I haven’t been able to name it. I still can’t name it.

“I don’t know,” I admit, turning Seraphina so her face is in my neck. The baby snuggles in close, tiny fingers clutching the neck of my sweater. “Something’s off. I can’t figure out what.”

Emma is quiet, biting her lip. “Be in that room when the results come back. Whatever happens, you need to be there.”

I nod. “Yes.”

“Promise me,” Emma says urgently. “Do not let Cillian try to keep you from that room.”

“I promise,” I tell her. “I will be in that room.”

She nods. Seraphina starts to fuss, probably realizing I smell and sound nothing like her mother, and I reluctantly give the baby back. My arms feel empty.

“The paternity test,” I say. “That’s one thing.” I look at my hands, my wedding and engagement rings glinting in the light. I twist them, lifting them up and down my knuckle. “But that’s not actually…” I stop, struggling to get my thoughts in order. My throat tightens. “Even if it comes back negative and Finn isn’t his, he still lied to me for a month. Every time I asked him what was wrong.” My voice cracks again and I close my eyes, trying to regain my bearings. “He gaslit me, telling me it was nothing. That I was just tired and not thinking rationally.” I press my hand over my mouth for a second. “That’s the part I can’t get past. That’s the thing that’s actually⁠—”

I stop. Emma looks at me.

“Yeah,” she says sympathetically. “I know.”

I can’t get past how my whole life has blown up.

Outside, people walk around, completely unbothered. In here there is just Emma and Seraphina and the wreckage of my afternoon.

I sit there and I breathe, trying to figure out how to get through tonight.

Just tonight.

That’s all I have to do right now.

16

CILLIAN

The Marriott on 54th has beige carpet and a laminated spa menu on the nightstand and two queen beds I don’t need. I am sitting on the edge of one of them at eleven at night staring at my phone like it’s going to do something.

It’s not going to do anything. She’s not going to call me. I know she’s not calling me, but I’m still staring at the phone anyway because apparently this is who I am now, a man who destroyed the best thing in his life and is now sitting in a shitty hotel room holding his phone waiting for a miracle he doesn’t deserve.

I put the phone face down on the mattress.

I pick it up again.

Great. Super. Really healthy behavior I’m exhibiting.

I order whiskey from room service because I have to do something with my hands and also because I have fucking earned a drink tonight.

And by earning it, I mean I’ve earned it by the way everything has gone completely wrong.

It’s delivered with a small bowl of mixed nuts. I don’t touch the nuts because I fucking hate them.

Instead, I drink the whiskey standing at the window, fourteen floors up, looking at the city going about its business below me like nothing has happened.