23. Sebastian
Chapter 23
Sebastian
T he knock at my office door is sharp. Predictable. Just three short raps. I don’t need to ask to know who it is. It’s Dom’s signature knock.
I don’t bother looking up. "Come in."
Dom steps inside, a manila folder in hand, his expression a mask of calm. That’s the first warning. Dom is steady under pressure, but he’s not emotionless. When he goes blank, it means he’s carrying something he knows won’t sit well.
He places the folder neatly in front of me, then takes a step back without a word.
I drag the folder toward me, flipping it open with two fingers. Genevieve St. Claire.
For a moment, the room around me fades, replaced by the brutal memory of her standing between Max and Silas, their bodies close enough to crowd her, their hands brushing against her skin with a familiarity that makes me sick to my stomach.
She was radiant, glowing under the ballroom lights, but all I could see was the betrayal splintering across her face when her gaze locked with mine. The way the blood drained from her cheeks, the way her body stiffened, told me everything I needed to know before she even opened her mouth.
Jealousy isn’t an emotion I indulge in. I control. I acquire. If I want something, I take it. There’s no room in my life for the petty, useless sting of wanting what I walked away from. Yet seeing her there—flushed, trembling, standing so close to men who know exactly how to get under my guard—felt like a blade slipping beneath my ribs and twisting until it found something soft.
The anger had been immediate. Blistering.
At her. At them. At myself.
A woman I barely knew six weeks ago should not have had the power to get under my skin. She shouldn’t have been able to crack through the armor I spent years building. But Genevieve is different.
I force the memory down, back into the cold, locked place where it belongs, and refocus on the folder in front of me.
Her face stares back at me from a clipped passport photo stapled to the corner of the first page. Genevieve’s life spills out in neat, clinical reports. I skim the first few pages—background, education, finances, bank records, travel logs, employment history. All of it checks out. No debt. No scandals. No skeletons in the family closet worth chasing. She's not a gold digger. Not a social climber. Every time she looked at me with those wide, trusting eyes, she wasn’t playing a game. She was exactly who she said she was.
But that can’t be true. I’m missing something. I must be. I know Dom. He wouldn’t bring me a folder for something I already know. There’s something deeper. Something worse.
I keep turning pages until I hit something that forces my hand to go still.
Medical report.
Pregnant.
Ten weeks.
I reread it once, then again, as if repetition will change the reality printed in sterile, detached language.
The math isn't complicated. Ten weeks is before Max. Before Silas.
Before everything burned to the ground between us.
Mine. The baby is mine.
The slow, seething burn that coils through my chest is heavier than anger, sharper than betrayal. It's rage—cold, suffocating, absolute. Rage at her for not telling me. Rage at myself for walking away. Rage at the reality pressing down, tighter and tighter, until it feels like breathing takes too much effort.
The breath I take is controlled, measured, but the world around me seems to tilt anyway. A low roar fills my ears.
I flip the folder closed with deliberate care, trapping the words inside as if that will change them, and look up at Dom, who hasn’t moved an inch.
"You’re sure."
It’s not a question. It’s a command for confirmation.
"Positive," he replies. "I verified it myself. Her last appointment was three days ago.”
I sit back in my chair, hands braced on the arms to keep myself still. Movement would be dangerous right now. I can feel the tight pull of my muscles, the way adrenaline wants to push me out of the chair, out the door, across the city to where she is.
She didn’t tell me. She didn’t try hard enough to make me listen.
Or maybe she did. Maybe I made it impossible for her to reach me.
The thought sinks deep, lodging in a place I don’t examine too often. Down to the part of me that knows exactly how easily I cut people out of my life. How ruthlessly I walk away when something threatens the control I built my world around.
"Who else knows?" I ask, my eyes still locked on the closed folder.
“She's been keeping a low profile. Working late. Minimal outside contact. No family involved."
No family. No support. No safety net.
She’s handling it on her own, because I left her no other option.
The fury tightens inside me, dense and unrelenting. It isn’t clean, isn’t precise, the way I usually process anger. This is messier. Heavier.
"No one else?"
"Only Thorne and Whitmore. No other flagged contacts."
A sharp pain fills my chest, and I rub at it absently. I trusted them. I still trust them, to a point. But the image of her standing between them shreds whatever calm I have left.
The idea of either of them stepping into the void I left behind gnaws at me.
And the idea of my child—the one she’s been carrying in silence—being raised by anyone but me? It turns the slow burn of anger into a blade honed sharp enough to cut through steel.
"Where is she?" I demand.
“Her office, I imagine. No indication she’s moved residences. No signs she’s reaching out to family."
Of course she hasn’t. Genevieve would rather bleed quietly in the dark than ask anyone for help. She’s too proud.
"Send me the address," I say.
Dom already has his phone out, fingers moving over the screen. A second later, my phone vibrates in my pocket.
I rise from my chair, grabbing my jacket from the back of it without slowing down. My mind is already moving, calculating next steps, stripping the situation down to what matters.
Genevieve.
The child. My child.
The fact that no one else is going to take what belongs to me.
"You want backup?"
"No."
I move through the office without looking back, my mind already mapping the fastest route to her. She’s not going to hide from this. She’s not going to bury my bloodline in silence and shame because I made the mistake of thinking I could walk away from her.
This ends tonight.
* * *
The elevator dings on the third floor, the doors sliding open to a dimly lit hallway that smells faintly of fresh paint and sawdust. The building is new, barely occupied.
I cross the hall in long, controlled strides, my hand already curling into a fist before I reach her door. It’s slightly ajar, a thin slice of warm light bleeding into the corridor. She’s inside. Alone. Vulnerable.
And that makes me far angrier than it should.
The room is spartan—white walls, scattered papers, a half-empty coffee cup sitting abandoned on a corner desk—but I don’t see any of it.
All I see is her.
Genevieve stands by the drafting table, a pencil in one hand, her other hand pressed flat against the plans spread out in front of her. She’s frozen in place, her body tense, but she doesn’t look surprised to see me. If anything, she looks resigned. Her eyes lift slowly to meet mine, and the force of it hits me harder than I expect.
She’s paler than before. Thinner too. There’s a tightness around her mouth, a hollow bruising under her eyes that’s new. She looks exhausted. Fragile. But when our eyes lock, there’s no fear. No apology. Only a raw, stubborn strength that twists something inside me.
I want to go to her.
I want to tear the distance apart, bury my hands in her hair, crush her against me until I can feel her heartbeat against my own. I want to lay her down on that table, rip the stubborn, silent distance out of her with my hands and my mouth and my body until the only thing she can think, the only thing she can say, is my name.
The need hits so hard, so fast, it nearly drives me to my knees.
I force it back down, locking it behind every ruthless instinct I’ve spent my life sharpening. She deserves my rage. She deserves the words clawing their way up my throat. She doesn’t deserve my touch.
I cross the room in three long strides, closing the distance until I'm standing directly in front of her.
"You should’ve told me," I say, my voice low, razor-edged.
Genevieve exhales slowly, the pencil slipping from her fingers to clatter against the floor. She doesn’t flinch at the sound but she’s braced for impact.
"I tried, Sebastian," she says, her voice tired. "You made your choice."
I clench my fists at my sides, fighting the instinct to reach for her anyway. To pull her against me and erase the last two months in the only language my body knows when it comes to her.
I snarl, the fury finally slipping past the tight rein I’ve kept on it. "So, you decided to use Silas and Max to get my attention?"
Her laugh is sharp, brittle, scraping against the walls of the room and making something savage rear up inside me.
"Are you serious?" she snaps. "You dropped me without a second thought. You made it very clear I was nothing more than a mistake you needed to erase. And now you're mad because someone else was willing to pick up the pieces you left behind?"
She’s breathing harder now, her chest rising and falling with quick, shallow breaths, but she doesn’t back down or soften.
She stands her ground, and fuck if it doesn’t make me want her even more.
Every part of me screams to close the last few inches between us. To pin her against the wall, to force the truth out of her with the one thing she can’t fake—her surrender, her need.
But I don't move. I’m not even sure I can.
“You practically threw me at them. Are you so surprised this is what happened? It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
I don’t have a chance to respond. The door creaks behind me, the sound pulling both of our heads around sharply.
Silas steps through, a takeout bag swinging loosely from one hand. His easy, lopsided grin freezes the second he sees me. In a blink, his whole demeanor shifts. The casual, lazy posture evaporates, replaced by something tighter. Harder. Protective.
His gaze flicks to Genevieve, reading her in an instant, then snaps back to me with a warning in it.
He crosses the room slowly, deliberately, and sets the bag down on the nearest surface without taking his eyes off me. When he straightens, his body slots subtly between Genevieve and me, shielding her without saying a word.
Silas stands in front of her, his body tight with tension. His hands flex once at his sides, a small tell he probably doesn’t realize he’s giving away. He thinks he’s ready for me. Thinks he’s protecting her from something she needs saving from.
The message is clear.
But I don’t care.
He’s too late.
She’s mine. Always has been.
My focus cuts through him, back to her, but she drops her gaze the second our eyes meet. That alone is a bigger blow than anything Silas could throw at me. She won’t meet my eyes.
"You need to back off," Silas says, his voice low and steady, but there’s something in it—an edge—that snaps my attention back to him.
“Oh, you must be loving this. You get to step in and play the hero. This time you get to keep the girl because she needs you, is that it?”
“Sebastian!” Genevieve’s shock should set me straight, but I can’t let go of the anger long enough to stop hurtling down this road.
"She’s pregnant," I say, my voice flat, letting the words fall between us like a gauntlet thrown at his feet. "And that child isn’t yours. It’s mine ."
Silas doesn’t blink. He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t even look surprised. He just stares back at me with the same steady, infuriating calm he always wears when he’s already made up his mind about something.
His silence punches hard.
He knew.
He fucking knew.
"You knew," I snarl, stepping forward.
Silas squares his shoulders. He meets my eyes without hesitation, not a flicker of guilt or apology on his face.
"I figured it out," he says evenly. "She never said it out loud, but I’m not stupid."
The casualness in his voice is a lie. I see the edge under it, the weight behind every word.
"You knew," I say again, louder this time, stepping forward until there’s barely a foot of space between us, "and you didn’t fucking tell me."
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t back up. His mouth hardens into a grim line. "It wasn’t my place."
Every muscle in my body goes taut, pulled tight enough that moving feels dangerous. I want to hit him. I want to tear this room apart until there’s nothing left but the truth between us.
"She tried to reach out to you," Silas says, voice cold now, stripped of all the easy charm he usually wears like armor. "You didn’t answer. You made it very clear you didn’t want to talk. She respected that."
My fists curl at my sides, the force of it sharp enough to send a bolt of pain up my arms. It grounds me, barely.
"You had no right to decide what I deserved to know," I grit out.
Silas’s expression doesn’t change, but his eyes darken, a dangerous weight settling behind them. "No? What were you going to do, Sebastian? Storm back into her life because you feel guilty? Show up out of obligation because you suddenly realized you left something behind?"
I step forward again, crowding into his space, close enough to feel the heat coming off him, the tension coiling between us, ready to snap.
"She deserves better than that," Silas says, his voice cutting across mine before I can respond. "Better than you showing up because you finally realized you fucked up."
I breathe hard through my nose, the force of it scraping against my ribs. The room feels smaller, heavier, the air charged with violence waiting for a spark.
"Yeah?" I snarl. "Apparently, she deserves both of my best friends. You can keep the gold-digging whore."
The words are out before I can stop them, vicious and poisonous and meant to wound.
For a half-second, everything freezes.
And then Silas moves.
His fist connects with my jaw, snapping my head to the side with enough force to send me stumbling back a step. The crack of impact echoes through the room.
Pain blossoms along my jawline, radiating out through my skull, white-hot and blinding.
I move my jaw, the taste of blood sharp against my tongue, and straighten.
The fire that ignites in my chest is immediate. I can feel it threatening to consume me. I want to hit him back. I want to drive him into the nearest wall and remind him who the fuck he’s dealing with.
But some small part of me recognizes he’s not entirely wrong.