Chapter 13: The Check
The brief, unsettling moment of vulnerability in the music room changed nothing. If anything, it made the walls of my gilded cage feel higher. Silas retreated back into his role of distant, calculating patriarch, and I into my role as the carefully managed vessel. The baby grew, its movements becoming stronger, more defined, a constant, secret reminder of the life—and the weapon—taking shape within me.
The weather turned, a cold rain lashing against the windows of the east wing for days on end. The confinement began to wear on me. Clara's constant presence was a needle in my vein, a drip-feed of control. I felt like a specimen under glass.
One evening, the silence of the suite was broken not by Clara, but by Levi.
"Dr. Vance," he said, his voice even more somber than usual. "Mr. Sullivan requests your presence in his study."
A chill that had nothing to do with the rain went through me. His study. The site of the original sin. The place where this entire nightmare had been set in motion.
"Why?" I asked, my voice tighter than I intended.
"He did not say, madam," Levi replied, his eyes downcast. "He only said it was urgent."
Urgent. The word was a trapdoor. My mind raced. Had he found out about the key? The document? Had Liana resurfaced? Had something happened to Kaelen?
I followed Levi through the cavernous halls, the sound of the rain a constant drumbeat of dread. He stopped before the familiar heavy oak door and knocked once.
"Enter." Silas's voice was a low command from within.
Levi opened the door for me and closed it behind me, leaving me alone with him.
The study was just as I remembered it. The fire blazed, casting the same demonic shadows on the walls. The smell of leather and whiskey was the same. He was standing by the fireplace, one arm braced on the mantel, a half-empty glass in his hand. He wasn't wearing a suit jacket. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, and he looked… agitated. It was a subtle thing—a tension in his shoulders, a slight dishevelment to his usually perfect hair.
"Sit," he said, not turning around.
I remained standing by the door, my arms crossed over my chest, over the swell of my stomach. "What's this about, Silas?"
He finally turned. His stormy grey eyes were dark, intense, and they pinned me to the spot. In his hand, he wasn't holding a glass of whiskey. He was holding a small, silver picture frame. He tossed it onto the desk between us.
It was a photograph of Liana Croft. But not the polished, socialite Liana. This was a grainy, long-lens shot. She was leaving a nondescript building, her face drawn and pale. In her hand was a pamphlet I recognized instantly: from the women's health clinic I had visited. My clinic.
My blood ran cold.
"Care to explain," he said, his voice dangerously quiet, "why my son's former mistress was seen making inquiries at a clinic known for its… discrete terminations?"
The world tilted. He thought… he thought the baby was Kaelen's. He thought I'd slept with Kaelen that night and was now passing off his son's child as his own. The arrogance of it, the sheer, monumental ego, was staggering.
But beneath the staggering insult, a colder fear took root. He was having me watched. He was having my clinic watched. My every move was still being tracked.
"You think this is about Kaelen?" I said, my voice laced with a disbelief that was only half-feigned.
"The timeline fits," he stated, his eyes burning into me. "You were in his room that night. Before you came to me."
The accusation hung in the air, vile and wrong. He was accusing me of the one thing I was innocent of. The one betrayal I had not committed.
A hot, righteous fury exploded in my chest, burning away the fear. I took a step forward, my hands clenched at my sides.
"You arrogant bastard," I hissed, the words tearing from me. "You think so little of me that you believe I would crawl from your son's bed into yours? You think I would carry his child and try to pawn it off on you?"
He didn't flinch. "It would be a formidable play. I'd almost admire it if it weren't so treasonous."
That was the final straw. The cold, clinical assessment of my supposed "treason." I saw red. I closed the distance between us, stopping only when I was a foot away, tilting my head up to meet his furious gaze.
"You want proof?" I snarled, my voice shaking with rage. "You want DNA? I'll give you proof. But it won't come from some clinic report."
My hands went to the hem of the soft maternity top I wore. In one furious motion, I pulled it over my head and let it drop to the floor. I stood before him in just my leggings, my stomach rounded and bare in the firelight.
His eyes widened, his composure finally cracking for a split second at my audacity.
"What are you doing?" he demanded, his voice rough.
"You scrutinize every calorie I eat, every vitamin I take, every heartbeat," I spat, advancing on him. "You treat me like an incubator for your precious heir. But you forget. I'm not just the vessel. I'm the woman you pinned to this very rug and took like a beast because you were too out of your mind to know the difference."
I was directly in front of him now, the heat from his body mingling with the heat from the fire. My anger was a live wire, sparking and dangerous.
"This child," I said, grabbing his hand and pressing it flat against the tight skin of my stomach, "is yours. It was conceived right here. In fire and hatred and calculation. Not in some pathetic fumble with your broken son."
His hand was warm and large on my stomach. I felt the baby kick, a hard, sudden jolt against his palm.
He flinched, his eyes dropping to where his hand met my skin. The shock of the movement, the raw physicality of it, seemed to short-circuit his anger. His breath hitched.
I didn't let go of his wrist. I held it there, forcing him to feel the life we had created in our mutual darkness.
"That's your proof, Silas," I whispered, my voice raw. "That's your heir."
His gaze lifted from my stomach to my face. The fury was gone, replaced by something else, something far more dangerous and complex. A hungry, blazing intensity. The same look he'd had the night I walked in and he'd seen salvation.
The air between us crackled, thick with unsaid things and a history of violence and need. My rage had stripped me bare, and in its place, a different kind of heat was rising. A terrifying, familiar heat.
He didn't remove his hand. Instead, his fingers spread, pressing more firmly against me, as if he could feel the truth through my skin. His other hand came up, cupping the back of my neck, his thumb stroking the frantic pulse there.
"You came to me that night," he said, his voice a low, rough rasp. It wasn't an accusation anymore. It was a realization. A confirmation.
"I did," I breathed, my defiance melting under his touch, replaced by a treacherous, unwanted pull.
"You knew what you were doing."
"I did."
His eyes searched mine, and for the first time, I think he truly saw me. Not the doctor, not the vessel, not the pawn. But the queen who had willingly walked into the lion's den.
With a low groan that seemed ripped from the core of him, he crushed his mouth to mine.
It was nothing like the first time. This was not a fevered, desperate claiming. This was a conscious, brutal collision. It was a battle for dominance fought with lips and teeth and tongue. It was hatred and recognition and a dark, twisted desire all twisted into one.
I didn't fight him. I kissed him back with the same ferocity, my fingers tangling in his hair, pulling him closer. The anger was still there, but it had transmuted, becoming a different kind of fuel.
He walked me backward until my knees hit the edge of his desk. Papers scattered as he swept them aside, lifting me onto the cold, polished wood. His hands were everywhere, tearing at my leggings, his touch rough, possessive, and exactly what some deep, broken part of me craved.
This was not about love. It was about power. It was about ownership. It was about two wounded, monstrous people finding a mirror in each other's darkness.
When he entered me, it was with a single, forceful thrust that made me cry out, not in pain, but in savage triumph. My back arched against the cold desk, my nails digging into the hard muscle of his shoulders. The past and the present blurred—the fire, the fear, the calculation, all consumed by the raw, physical reality of him moving inside me.
He was whispering against my skin, filthy, possessive things about his heir, his son, his. I answered with my own gasping promises of victory, of a future I would take from him.
It was over quickly, a frantic, brutal coupling that left us both breathless and shattered. He collapsed against me, his forehead resting on my shoulder, his body heavy on mine.
The silence that followed was broken only by the crackle of the fire and our ragged breathing. The reality of what we had just done—on his desk, in a fury of passion and rage—descended upon us.
Slowly, he pushed himself up. His eyes were unreadable, a storm of conflicting emotions. He didn't look victorious. He looked… unsettled.
He helped me off the desk, his hands surprisingly gentle as he handed me my clothes. I dressed with my back to him, my hands trembling.
I had come to his study braced for a confrontation. I had ended up giving him a different kind of proof entirely.
I turned to face him. He was watching me, his expression once again a guarded mask, but the air between us was permanently, dangerously altered.
"The matter is settled," he said, his voice hoarse.
I simply nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
I left the study, walking back to my gilded cage on unsteady legs. The game had changed again. The lines between enemy and lover, between hatred and desire, had been irrevocably blurred.
I had just checkmated his suspicion. But in doing so, I had potentially lost a piece of my own soul.