Page 62 of Ruthless Claim

Emma laughs again. “I’m really glad you’re here.”

I scoff and cross my legs. “As if I would be anywhere else,” I tell her, feeling a surge of affection for Emma.

Even if the way she came into our family was fucked up, Emma’s become completely irreplaceable.

“How is my husband?” she asks, eyeing the closed door.

“Pacing.”

She rolls her eyes. “He’s been pacing since my water first broke.” She shifts slightly against the pillows. “He asked the admitting nurse four questions about my cervical dilation. She was very professional about it.” Emma fixes me with a look. “I, however, was not, and I told him that if he says the word effaced one more time I will divorce him.”

I bite back a laugh. “He told me about the fetal heart rate Googling⁠—”

“Oh, that was hours ago.” She waves a hand dismissively. “We’re way past that. Now he’s in a phase where he’s decided he needs to be touching me at all times, which is sweet but I cannot be touched between contractions because I need to, like, exist in my own body for a minute and he cannot seem to understand this, so I sent him out.” She pauses. “Also he asked the nurse if there was a more efficient position for labor and she told him there wasn’t.” She shakes her head. “And then, he decided to mansplain to a nurse. Can you imagine? He said he’d read something about that and she told him, very nicely, to put his phone away. I was so embarrassed for him.”

“Your husband is a disaster,” I inform her.

“Mmm, yes, your brother is,” she agrees, with great fondness. “He’s the most prepared and least equipped person I’ve ever met. He has read every book but has zero instincts.” Another contraction hits her and she crushes my hand.

I watch her face and I hold on, mourning the loss of my fingers.

Poor Emma.

There’s still hours left.

It passes and she exhales. “Tell me something normal,” she orders. “Talk about anything that isn’t happening in this room. How is the apartment? How are”—she gives me a sly look—“things.”

“Things,” I repeat, my heart stuttering.

Emma winks at me. “You know what I mean.”

I do, but I’m not going to make this easy on her. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Valentina.” Suddenly, a female version of Connor Brennan is glowering at me. “I have been up since three in the morning because a not-so-tiny human has decided they want out. I have not had anything to eat since dinner last night because apparently I’m not supposed to eat in labor which is the most unfair rule I have ever encountered in my life, so I am both hungry and exhausted and I would very much like to hear about something that isn’t my own body for five minutes.” She inhales and exhales before turning the full force of that green-eyed gaze back on me. “Now, tell me about Cillian.”

Goddammit, this woman doesn’t play fair. “There’s nothing to tell,” I tell her, which is a lie so blatant she sees through it before I finish saying it.

“Valentina Santoro Brennan.”

“There’s—” I search for any word that could help, “it’s complicated and it’ll take too much time,” I try.

“I’m in labor,” she says flatly. “I have nothing but time.”

Oh goddammit.

Fine.

So I tell her.

Not everything—Emma is my best friend but she is also Leo’s wife and some information flows in directions I prefer it not to—but the cliff notes version.

The rules that stopped holding.

The way things have shifted in the past few weeks into something I don’t have a name for.

The dinner at the Brennan house.

The general quality of watching Cillian navigate their family and feeling something move in me that I wasn’t expecting.