54. Brett
Brett
I had eyes on her the second she stepped off the plane.
Krystal didn’t make it three blocks before my guys boxed her in. No drama. No scene. Just a black SUV, a quiet conversation, and the understanding that if she so much as raised her voice, the deal was off and she’d be answering to people a lot less polite than me.
I put her under house arrest in a private wing of a clinic that didn’t ask questions.
Cleaned her up. Watched her twenty-four seven.
Made sure she stayed sober, ate what the doctors told her to eat, and didn’t do anything stupid that might hurt the kid.
She hated every second of it. I didn’t give a fuck.
By the time she went into labor, Kate and Michael’s son — the real one, the one who’d been seven weeks ahead — was already home. Tiny. Healthy. Waiting for his brother without even knowing it.
The night Krystal delivered, I was already in the building. Michael and Kate got there twenty minutes after the call. I met them in the hallway, handed Michael a black duffel, and looked him dead in the eye.
“It’s done the second that baby’s out,” I told him. “Birth certificate’s already drawn up. Your names. Only your names. She signs, she walks with the cash and a ticket to whatever country she wants, and she never comes near this kid again. She tries, I handle it. Permanently.”
Michael just nodded once. Kate’s hand was tight around his. She still had that soft, exhausted glow from giving birth herself only weeks earlier. I could see how much it cost her to be here, but she came anyway.
We stayed in the room.
Krystal pushed. Screamed. Cursed all three of us in every language she knew.
I stood at the foot of the bed with my arms crossed and watched the clock.
Kate stayed near the head, quiet, pale, one hand pressed to her own middle like she was still feeling the phantom weight of the son waiting for them at home. Michael never left her side.
The second the baby cried, the doctor wrapped him up and handed him straight to Kate.
A boy.
I didn’t look at him long. Didn’t need to. He was already Michael’s. Already theirs.
Krystal was still half out of it when I put the papers in front of her. Pen. Signature pages. The whole stack.
“Sign,” I said.
She looked at the duffel on the chair. Looked at the one-way first-class ticket sticking out of the top. Looked at the number on the wire-transfer confirmation that made her a billionaire the second the ink dried.
Then she looked at the baby in Kate’s arms.
Something ugly twisted across her face for half a second. Then it was gone. She signed every page without another word.
I took the papers, checked every signature myself, and sealed the folder.
“You’re done here,” I told her. “Car’s downstairs. Plane leaves in three hours. Don’t ever come back.”
She didn’t answer. Just stared at the ceiling while the nurses finished with her.
I walked Michael and Kate out myself, one hand on the back of Michael’s shoulder, the other ready in case anything went sideways. Kate carried the baby like she’d been waiting her whole life to hold him. Michael kept looking down at both of them like he still couldn’t quite believe it was real.
In the hallway I stopped them.
“He’s yours,” I said. “Legally. Permanently. No one can touch that. I made sure of it.”
Michael met my eyes. Something raw and grateful passed between us. He didn’t say thank you. He didn’t have to.
Kate shifted the baby carefully and looked up at me. Her voice was soft but steady.
“We want to name him after all three of us,” she said. “Something that means something.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I’m not exactly the sentimental type, sugar.”
Michael’s mouth twitched. “We’re naming him Bennett.”
I stared at them.
Bennett.
Ben for short.
It hit me harder than I expected. Not my name. But close enough that it carried the weight of everything I’d done to get this kid here safe. Close enough that it said you’re part of this without making a big speech about it.
Kate watched my face carefully. “It means ‘blessed.’ And it sounds like?—”
“I know what it sounds like,” I muttered.
For a second I couldn’t say anything. My throat felt tight in a way I hated.
Then I cleared it, hard, and nodded once.
“Bennett Waters,” I said. “Yeah. That’ll work.”
Kate’s eyes got shiny. Michael reached out and squeezed my shoulder, hard.
I looked down at the tiny boy in her arms — the second son, the one I’d fought for in the only language I knew how — and felt something shift in my chest that I wasn’t ready to name.
“Take him home,” I said roughly. “His brother’s waiting.”
I watched them walk away down the hall, Michael’s hand on the small of Kate’s back, the two of them already a family of four.
Then I turned around, cracked my neck, and went to make sure Krystal got on that fucking plane.